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THE CONGREGATIONAL LECTURE.
ELEVENTH SERIES.

THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN.

GEORGE PAYNE, LL.D.

LONDON :
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.

THE DOCTRINE

ORIGINAL SIN

OR, THE

NATIVE STATE AND CHARACTER OF MAN

UNFOLDED.

GEORGE PAYNE, LL.D.

LONDON:
JACKSON AND WALFORD,
18, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.
1845.

P20

PREFACE.

The readers of this volume will gather from more
than one of its statements, especially from the com
mencement of the Fifth Lecture, that its Author does
not altogether approve of the phrase by which the
doctrine, explained and defended in the subsequent
pages, is generally designated. He is free, indeed, to
confess that its banishment from our theological
nomenclature would not give him great concern.
The reasons which have induced this feeling are
stated in various parts of the book : recapitulation
here would be both unnecessary and improper.
Now it may be said, and probably will be said, by
some persons, " Why then is the phrase Original Sin
retained in the title-page of the volume ? " The
Author is bound to state the reasons which have
prevented his discarding it. In the first place, he
could not but feel that the proper designation of the
doctrine unfolded in these Lectures, is . merely a
question of terminology, and, therefore, of com
paratively slight importance. He does not venture

VI PREFACE.
to say, of no importance at all. On the contrary, he
has a deep sense of the value of a correct nomen
clature in theology. If, in other sciences, this is
found to be eminently expedient, how can it prove
otherwise in the Divine science of Theology ? " Men
imagine," says Bacon, " that their minds have the
command of language, but it often happens that
language bears rule over their mind." Incorrect
phraseology may, perhaps, in the first instance, be
generally the result of incorrect thought ; but no one
can doubt that it becomes the means both of perpe
tuating and producing incorrect thought. Interest
is the product of capital ; but it is also the creator of
capital. The Author of this volume would, therefore,
have preferred to designate it, " Lectures on the
Native State and Character of Man ;" but he felt, in
the second place, that the phrase, " Original Sin," is
too highly accredited by long-continued usage to
justify him, at least, in discontinuing it. He admits
at once, that it must be left for writers of more esta
blished authority and influence than himself — if they
should deem that measure expedient — to cast it
overboard. Aware of the indefinite and, in some cases — as the
Author conceives — false conceptions which prevail,
even among Evangelical Christians, of the nature or
essence of original depravity, he is prepared to expect
that certain positions maintained in this volume may
not at present secure universal acceptance. He does
not wish any one to admit them without personal
conviction of their truth. The faith of the reader

PREFACE. VII
should stand, not on human authority, but Divine.
All he ventures to ask is, that those into whose hands
this book may fall, will give to its statements a
careful and candid examination. If he might presume
so far, he would venture to suggest that those state
ments should be considered and judged of as a whole.
Unless the writer deceives himself, it will be found
that the various portions of the volume unfold and
defend different parts of a system of truth, each of
which should of course be viewed in its relation to
every other part, and to the whole, and to the truth
and importance of the whole ; and that the admis
sion of one of its great principles will necessarily lead
to the admission of the entire system. Let it be
conceded, for instance, that the gifts deposited with
Adam were " chartered benefits," and chartered
benefits exclusively, and the Author will dismiss all
apprehension in reference to the ultimate reception
of the entire system he has felt himself compelled to
advocate. May he be permitted to add a word in explanation
of the exclusively exegetical character of the volume.
It has been objected, that the Congregational Lec
tures have been less practical, and experimental, and
popular, than might have been expected. It has
ever appeared to the Author that the objection
founds itself upon a mistake concerning the end
and object of such lectures, — namely, to supply
materials which, in the pulpit, and elsewhere, may
be employed, by the Lecturers themselves, and others,
to promote the interests and triumphs of experi-
a2

Vlll PREFACE.
mental and practical religion. The Author has a
profound conviction of the disastrous results to both
of the rejection of the doctrine of native depravity,
but he felt that he was merely required to expound
and defend the doctrine ; and that if he had attempted
more he would have been stepping out of his pro
vince as a Congregational Lecturer. Besides, suffi
cient space could not have been secured for any
thing approaching to an adequate statement of the
experimental and practical bearing of this portion
of the great Evangelical system, without considerably
augmenting the size and consequent price of the
volume ; and it was his strong desire — while no
statements essential to a full exhibition of the doc
trine should be omitted or injuriously abridged — to
avoid the introduction of all unessential and irrele
vant matter, that the convenience of the public
might, on these points, be consulted as far as
practicable. The Author feels some satisfaction in reflecting
that the Lectures, though not written for that
express purpose, may tend to support the faith of
its readers in the radically essential doctrine of
Divine influence. With the most poignant feelings
of regret he finds that, in some quarters, the in
fluence of the Holy Spirit in conversion, is identified
with that of the truth to enlighten and persuade
men; thus leaving the all-important question — the
only question, indeed, involving the least difficulty,
namely, how a depraved mind comes to understand
and believe the Gospel ?— utterly unexplained, and

PREFACE. IX
even untouched. To those who thus identify two
such radically diverse influences — as that of the
Spirit, and that of the truth — he believes it must
ever appear inexplicable. There is, no doubt, an
essential tendency in the truth of the Bible to
kindle holy affections and volitions ; but how can it
do either, before objective truth becomes subjective
truth — the truth of the Bible the truth of the mind?
Food has a tendency to nourish the animal system,
but it must be eaten ere it can minister nourishment.
Objective food must become subjective food, before
it can produce chyle, and blood, and bone, and
muscle. It is thus also with spiritual food. The
truth of the Bible must enter the mind, and govern
—or, perhaps, we may say, become — the views of
the mind ; the meaning and truth of what the Bible
reveals, the mind must be made to perceive and
admit, previous to the purification of the affections.
Now the whole of the difficulty involved in the
conversion of a sinner to God, lies in the transition
of the light of the Bible into the mind. The great
puzzle is, not how the truth operates when it is
understood and believed, but how the carnal mind
comes to understand and believe it. " The natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God."
He resists the entrance -e£ the truth ; he hates the
truth ; and, the more clearly its holy nature is
discerned, the more powerfully is his hatred elicited.
If no special influence of the Spirit be put forth,
leading such a man, in a manner which we cannot
fully comprehend, into just views of the truth, how

X PREFACE.
are we to account for his first spiritual apprehensions
of the Gospel ? And, if the doctrine of the special
agency of the Spirit in the regeneration and sanc
tification of men should be generally rejected, we
may begin to tremble for the stability of our faith
in the personality of the Spirit. The great work of
the Spirit is not to record successive Divine revela
tions in the sacred Scriptures, but to " take of the
things of Christ " — the things which are recorded
there — and reveal them to the minds of men. If
the influence of the truth, and of the Spirit, be
identified, — that is, if the Spirit be in the truth, then
the Spirit is not of course in the mind, and so cannot
affect the mind, until the truth is in the mind, or is
understood and believed. And then, how is the
transition of the truth from the Bible to the mind
to be explained ?

Western College,
April, 1845.

ADVERTISEMENT.
(by the committee of the congregational library.)

The " Congregational Library" was established with a view to
the promotion of Ecclesiastical, Theological, and Biblical Literature,
in that religious connexion with whose friends and supporters it
originated. It was also designed to secure a convenient locality for
such associations as had previously existed, or might hereafter exist,
for the purpose of advancing the literary, civil, and religious
interests of that section of the Christian Church to which it was
appropriated. Without undervaluing the advantages of union,
either with Evangelical Protestants, or Protestant Nonconformists,
on such grounds as admit of liberal cooperation, it was nevertheless
deemed expedient to adopt measures for facilitating the concen
tration and efficiency of their own denomination. In connexion
with these important objects, it was thought desirable to institute
a Lecture, partaking rather of the character of Academic prelections
than of popular addresses, and embracing a Series of Annual Courses
of Lectures, to be delivered at the Library, or, if necessary, in some
contiguous place of worship. In the selection of Lecturers, it was
judged proper to appoint such as, by their literary attainments, and
ministerial reputation, had rendered service to the cause of divine
truth in the consecration of their talents to the " defence and con
firmation of the gospel." It was also supposed, that some might be
found possessing a high order of intellectual competency and moral
worth, imbued with an ardent love of biblical science, or eminently
conversant with theological and ecclesiastical literature, who, from
various causes, might never have attracted that degree of public
attention to which they are entitled, and yet might be both qualified

Xll ADVERTISEMENT.
and disposed to undertake courses of lectures on subjects of interest
ing importance, not included within the ordinary range of pulpit
instruction. To illustrate the evidence and importance of the great
doctrines of Revelation ; to exhibit the true principles of philology
in their application to such doctrines ; to prove the accordance and
identity of genuine philosophy with the records and discoveries of
Scripture ; and to trace the errors and corruptions which have
existed in the Christian Church to their proper sources, and, by the
connexion of sound reasoning with the honest interpretation of God's
holy Word, to point out the methods of refutation and counteraction,
arB amongst the objects for which " the Congregational Lecture"
has been established. The arrangements made with the Lecturers
are designed to secure the publication of each separate course, without
risk to the Authors ; and, after remunerating them as liberally as
the resources of the Institution will allow, to apply the profits of the
respective publications in aid of the Library. It is hoped that the
liberal, and especially the opulent friends of Evangelical and Con
gregational Nonconformity, will evince, by their generous support,
the sincerity of their attachment to the great principles of their
Christian profession ; and that some may be found to emulate the
zeal which established the " Boyle," the " Warburton," and the
"Bampton" Lectures in the National Church. These are legitimate
operations of the " voluntary principle'' in the support of religion,
and in perfect harmony with the independency of our Churches, and
the spirituality of the kingdom of Christ.
The Committee deem it proper to state, that whatever respon
sibility may attach to the reasonings or opinions advanced in any
Course of Lectures, belongs exclusively to the Lecturer.
CONGREGATIONAL LIBRARY,
Elomfield Street, Finsbury, April, 1845.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.
Introductory Remarks, p. 1 — 4. The connexion between the branches
of evangelical truth, 4. The Scriptures the source of our know
ledge of man's primeval state, 4. The Mosaic account of it, 5, 6.
Adam was formed, both in mind and body, in a perfect state, 7.
His original character, or the image in which he was formed, 9 ;
not found in his station merely, 10 ; not in his body, 11 ;
nor solely in his mind, though of an exalted nature, 12 ; but in
his moral state, 13. The nature of the holiness connate to
Adam, 14. Statements of Turrettine, Knapp, &c, 15. Adam's
holiness consisted not in the right exercise of his powers, but in
predisposition to their right exercise, 17. Spiritual life in him
was, in the order of nature, previous to right thoughts and
feelings, 18, 19. Remarks on the nature of life in general, 19.
Adam became subject to law by virtue of constituted relations, 20.
On his creation he sustained the parental relation only to the
race, 21. How his conduct in that relation solely would have
affected them, 22. The federal relation, how and where consti
tuted, 23 ; the change effected by it in reference to the race,
26 ; it exposed them to the consequences of his disobedience,
i.e. the loss of chartered benefits, 26. Statements of Pictet, &c.
27 ; overlook the distinction between the paternal and federal
relation, 29. Difference in the consequences which may result
from transgression in each relation, 30. Genesis ii. 15 — 17 con
sidered, 31. The existence of the federal relation established,
32 — 36. Examination of the objection, that the consequences of
one man's sin cannot justly reach to others, 37. Various answers
considered, 38; that of Augustine, Edwards, &c, 39. Partial
solution of the difficulty, 40; more full solution, 48.

XIV CONTENTS.
LECTURE II.
Proof that the blessings suspended upon the federal obedience of
Adam were chartered blessings, 50. Examples of such blessings,
50, 51. Being gifts of sovereignty, they admit of such suspen
sion, 51. " Illustrations of this, 52. The blessings deposited in
Adam for the race were of this kind, 54. Proof of this furnished
by Gen. ii. 17, 25 ; the words appear to contain a threatening-
only, 55 ; yet with this form they include a promise, 55. Proof
of this, 56. The extent of the promise, 57 ; secured to him, as
long as he obeyed, the continuance of the life he then enjoyed, 57.
1st, The life of the body, — death was to him the result of federal
failure, 58; is so to his posterity, 60 ; all thus die in Adam, 61 ;
immortal bodily life would have been secured to the race by
federal perfection, 61. 2d, The permanent presence and influ
ence of the Holy Spirit, 63. This the ultimate source of holy
volitions and actions in the case of Adam, 63 ; was yet the gift
not of Equity but Sovereignty, 64 ; its continued possession
might, therefore, be suspended on a condition, 66. The condition
on which the continued enjoyment of these two blessings was
suspended, viz. abstinence from the forbidden fruit, 67; this the
sole condition, 67. What might have been the results of personal
failure, had it been posssible, 69. The results of personal and
federal failure are not necessarily the same, 69. Privileges are
often held by charter on other conditions than those which entitle
to the rights of citizenship, 70. Adam held blessings by charter,
71 ; on another condition than, if not a beneficiary, he must have .
held them, 71. Mistakes of Pictet, Hopkins, and others, 71. The
Adamic dispensation not a covenant of works but of grace, 72.
It was so to Adam, 73. Placed the continuance of life on a single
act of obedience, 76. Is so to us, suspending life to us on a con
dition more likely to be performed by him than by us, 77. Adam
violated the condition of the charter, 78 ; the results reach to us,
but they are the loss of chartered benefits, 78. How far we may
be said to have been guilty of Adam's sin, 79. The strict
meaning of the term " guilt," 79 ; its theological sense, 79 ; how
the whole subject is embarrassed, 81; the right view of it, 82 ;
the estimate which this view leads us to form of the Augustinian
statements, 82 ; mistakes which they involve, and their source,

CONTENTS. XV
82 ; their nature explained, 83. Statements of Jonathan Edwards
and Augustine concerning the identity of the race and Adam, 83.
Statements of Stapfer, 88 ; examined and opposed at length, 89;
are now- generally abandoned, 93. Resulted from a mistake of
the nature of the Adamic dispensation, 94. The loss of char
tered benefits may render our condition as deplorable as if the
strict punishment of Adam's sin had been laid upon us, 94.
Illustrations, 95. Consideration of the objection that our own
interests should have been trusted to ourselves, 95 ; source of
the feeling, 96; its groundlessness and folly, 96. The reasons
which may have led to the suspension of these blessings on the
federal obedience of Adam, 97. The moral lesson taught by his
failure, 98.
LECTURE III.
The historical character of Genesis iii. 1 — 34, defended, 101. The
results of Adam's failure to us more specifically considered, 105.
— Our legal liabilities and depraved moral condition, 105. The
phrase Original Sin used generically to denote both, 105.
Standards of the Church of Scotland, Assembly's Catechism,
President Edwards, Doddridge, &c, 106. The effects of the fall of
Adam upon our relative state or condition, 108; exposed us
legally to the loss of all the suspended blessings, 108 ; to the
death of the body and the soul, 108. It legally exposed us to
this loss, for God's charter has the force of law, 109. It thus
differs from human charters, 109. The suspended blessing Adam
was bound to guard for himself, and to preserve for us, 110.
The difference between the Adamic and the Gospel charter, 111.
The threatening appended to the former gave it the form and
force of law, 111. Disobedience brought guilt, strictly speaking,
upon him, 111. The loss of chartered blessings was punishment
to him, but mere loss to us, 112. Mistakes of the Ultra-Cal-
vinists that Adam's sin was literally ours, 113 ; and brought guilt,
strictly so called, upon us, 115. Remarks upon Haldane's views,
115. The doctrine of personal union, 116. The doctrine of the
imputation of Adam's sin to us, as a legitimate ground of punish
ment, examined, 117; statement of the doctrine, 117; what it
assumes, 120. To impute sin or righteousness to an individual
is to treat him as a sinful or righteous man, 121. Proofs of this

XVI CONTENTS.
statement, 122. To impute Adam's sin to us is to treat us as if
we had committed it, 126. The assumed legal counting, &c,
would not justify punishment, 127. Requires itself to be justi
fied, 128. Difference between the imputation of righteousness
and of sin, 133. Sin cannot be imputed to a substitute without
his consent, 133. The consent of a person to receive good may
be assumed, but not evil, 133. The real explanation of the facts
of the case, 135. The imputation of Adam's sin to us is, as
Turrettine says, direct and immediate, 136. Causes of the other
view, 137. Judgment of the synod of the American Presbyterian
Church, 139.
LECTURE IV.
The effects of the fall upon the native character of man, 142. The
implied threatening was, that if he ate, he should die spiritually,
143. The evil threatened was the departure of the Spirit from
his mind, and not spiritual death in the sense of depravity, 144.
Spiritual death in this sense was not inflicted on Adam, 144.
Statements of Russel, Hopkins, Edwards, 146. Progressive
steps of the change from life to death in Adam, 149 ; none the
result of Divine influence, 151. There was only the cessation of
influence, 152. The ideas we are to form of the state of total
depravity into which Adam sunk, 153. Was it the infusion of
positively unholy principles, or the deprivation of holy ones? 154.
Reasons for the latter opinion, 155. Supported by President
Edwards, 156. How positive ungodliness may spring from a
privative cause, 159. The previous remarks applied to the state
of the infant mind, 160. Something there must be in it tending
to corruption, but is it privative or positive? 160. Original Sin
is a deprivation not a depravation, 161. The opinion confirmed
by the authority of Edwards, Hodge, Bretschneider, Turrettine,
Bellamy, Du Moulin, Howe, Williams, Harris, Gilbert, Russel,
162. Examination of the statements of Hodge and Russel, 169.
The nature of the inferior and animal propensities, 170; are
not evil -per se, being principles of action merely, not of evil
action, 173. The necessity for their existence, 174. Being-
positive principles, they must have come from God, and so cannot
be essentially evil, 175. The inferior principles acting alone,
without the control of higher ones, will lead to ungodliness; but

CONTENTS. XVU-
native depravity consists not in the presence of the former, but
in the absence of the latter, 176. 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, 177. Recom
mendations of this theory, 181. It shows that God is not the
author of sin, 181. It diminishes the difficulty concerning the
propagation of sin, 182. It presents a clear and obvious vindi
cation of the Divine conduct, 187.
LECTURE V.
Examination of Augustinism and Pelagianism, 191 ; of the hypo
thesis of Dr. Woods, Andover, 209.
LECTURE VI.
Examination of the hypothesis of Dr. Knapp, 221 ; of Professor
Moses Stuart, 238 ; of Mr. Ballantyne, 252.
LECTURE VII.
Native depravity ; proof of the doctrine of Original Sin, 274. The
proof need not be adjusted to any particular theory of the nature of
Original Sin, 275. The precise point to be proved ; viz. a tendency
to sin, carrying on to sin unless controlled by grace, 276. The two
sources of proof, 276 ; 1st, tliat supplied by the character and con
duct of men, 277. If all men sin, and sin early, we may infer
tendency, &c, 277. The conclusion verified, supported by the
opinions of Dr. Beecher, Woods, Chalmers, President Edwards,
<fec, 277. The conclusion rests not on the amount, but invari-
bleness, of sin, 282. Defect in the President's reasoning, 283.
How the amount or degree of the tendency is to be measured,
285. Confirmation of the facts upon which the conclusion rests,
285 ; first, that all men sin, or come short of perfect obedience,
and so expose themselves to death, 286. One act of transgression
constitutes a man a sinner, though one act of obedience does not
constitute him a righteous man, 287. Proof that all men are
thus sinners derived from consciousness, observation, history,
Scripture, 289. The proof strengthened by the amount of wicked
ness and the measures taken to restrain it, 292. Proof that men
sin as soon as capable of moral agency, more decidedly proving .
native propensity, &c. derived from observation, consent of ancient

XV1I1 CONTENTS.
philosophers, and Scripture, 296. Second source of proof; viz.
that supplied by revelation, 306. Sub-division of proof, 307.
First, passages which directly affirm it, 307. Gen. v. 3 ; Dr.
Taylor's gloss, &c, 307. John iii. 6 : the explanation of Taylor,
and of opponents generally, examined and replied to, 310. Job
xiv. 4 compared with xv. 14 — 16, 317. Dr. Taylor's explanation
of the word " clean" examined, shown to mean moral purity, 318.
Psalm li. 5 compared with lviii. 3, 320. Examination of Taylor's
criticism, 321. Gen. viii. 21, 324. Import of " youth," 325.
Efforts of opponents to neutralize the . testimony of this passage
examined, 326. Prov. xxii. 15, 327. 2dly, General statements
which imply the doctrine, 328. Passages which represent wicked
ness as a property of the species, 328 ; those which deny the
possibility of justification by deeds of law, 332 ; which assert the
universal necessity of redemption by Jesus Christ, 335 ; and the
universal necessity of the new birth, 338.

LECTURE VIII.
Objections against the doctrine considered, 346. The proper ques
tion here, viz. not, Are there objections against receiving the
doctrine % but, Are there not more against rejecting it ? 347. Sub
division of objections, 348. First, those which represent it
as unnecessary, 348. Men may sin without a sinful nature, 349.
The exact question here, viz. whether universal sin does not prove
tendency, 350. Examination of the statements of Dr. Taylor and
Professor Stuart, 350. Objection of the former obviated ; no
good action before regeneration, 352. Universal sin may be ac
counted for by the contagious influence of bad example, 361.
The objection assigns the thing for the cause of the thing, 362.
Does not account for the existence of bad example, or how it
comes to be universally followed, 363. Example governs actions
merely, does not produce propensities, 367. To ascribe universal
wickedness to bad example does not relieve from the pres
sure of any supposed difficulty, 369. Universal toickedness
may be attributed to the ascendency which the inferior propen
sities obtain over the superior in early life, 371. Examination
of the statements of Drs. Knapp and Turnbull, 371. What is
conceded, viz. that all actual sin is the triumph of the inferior

CONTENTS, XIX
principles, &c, but the question is, " Why are we so constituted
as to lead to this?" 373. The statements of Turnbull, Taylor,
&c. relieve from no difficulty, 373 : involve a doctrine of original
sin, 375. Second class of objections, that the doctrine is inad
missible, 377 ; is incompatible with the nature of sin, 377. Dr.
Taylor and Mr. Stuart's statements, 378. Both derive any force
they appear to possess from a misconception of the doctrine, 379.
We do not maintain that native depravity is sin properly so
called, but a tendency to sin, 379. If such tendency exist it must
be physical in its nature, 382. This objection common in America,
383. This might be allowed, and the objection be invalid, 383.
Physical tendencies are inducements to action, but do not con
strain it ; if tendency to sin were a physical tendency, it would
not render sin necessary, 384. Dr. Taylor's charges refuted, 386.
Augustine's statements unauthorized, 387. In what case only
would native tendency to sin be physical, 389. Cannot be so on
our theory, that it is merely a privation of original righteousness,
390. Examination of the nature of the animal propensities, 389.
A native tendency to sin is contrary to the justice and goodness of
God, 390. The objection does not attach to our views, 391. God
was not bound to continue his Spirit to Adam, or to bestow it
upon the race, 392. Man is responsible because endowed with
the faculties of human nature, — not as enjoying the presence and
influence of the Holy Spirit, 393. Does not impugn the goodness
of God, 394. If it were conceded that more goodness would have
been displayed had the Spirit been a permanent guest, still great
goodness has been displayed, 394. The objection thus resolves
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, 395. Little children are represented as patterns of humility,
&c, 396. Statements of Taylor and Stuart, 396. Reply,
397—401.

APPENDIX.
Note A. — The consequences of transgression do not always
rest with the transgressors themselves  405
B. — Examination of the Rev. Howard Hinton's account
of the threatening, " In the day thou eatest," &c. . 406

XX CONTENTS.

Note C. — The great moral lesson taught by the issue of the
trial of Adam in paradise  413
D. — Original sin not identical with actual sin . . . 414
E. — Is regeneration a physical change ?  416

additional notes.
F. — On the immateriality of the soul . .... 421
G. — On the image of God .... .... 424
H. — On spiritual life   425
I. — The representative character of Adam  425
K. — Punishment can only be theresult of personal offence 427
L. — Analogical illustrations of the fact that the conse
quences of Adam's transgression attach to us . . 429
M. — Death would not have been experienced without sin 431
N. — Death the result of sin  434
0. — The death of the body not all that was included
in the curse  436
P. — The enormity of the sin of Adam  438
Q. — The meaning of v&\  438
R. — Imputation  439
S. — The effects of the original transgression .... 442
T.— On the fall  444
U. — How desire triumphs  446
X. — The desires of men not sinful, " per se'' .... 447
Y. — The degree of original depravity  448
Z. — On Traducianism  449
A A. — On the phrase " Original Sin"  451
B B.— On the nature of Original Depravity .... 451
C C— The extent of God's law  453

OEIGINAL SIN.

LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.  CREATION OF OUR EIRST PARENT 
HIS CHARACTER  RELATIONS TO THE RACE.
It would, perhaps, be impossible for any man, it is
certainly so to me, to enter upon the discussion of
the subject to which I have been invited to direct
the thoughts of the reader, without considerable
anxiety, and somewhat of apprehension. The doc
trine 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 difficulties ; it has been so greatly mis
understood, and, consequently, exposed to so much
obloquy by statements of its nature which it might
be difficult to reconcile with just views of the con
stitution of the human mind, the established principles
of moral science, and the ground of human account
ability — that I cannot but feel, and painfully feel,
the weight of responsibility which rests upon me.
My earnest prayer is, that, though I may question.

2 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
the accuracy of some of the phraseology occasionally
employed 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 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 the 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
reference 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 characterised, 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

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3
iron and clay of their own conceptions. Should this,
in a single instance, be found to be the case, the
Church cannot fail to be a gainer by the separation
of the former from the sterling 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 generation
comes to be weighed in the exacter balance of the
present times, we need not wonder that in some
degree it should be found wanting. Still the
phraseology referred to may have been sufficient
for the purposes of edification then, though it may
not be so now. To those who heard it, it may have
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 should see reason to
attempt 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,
b 2

CREATION OF

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 the
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 presented 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 neces
sarily are our conceptions of one doctrine modified
by the views we entertain of another, presupposed
by it, that I shall take, in this lecture, a somewhat
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 the knowledge we possess of the primeval state
and condition of man. And it is no slight proof of
their inspiration, 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 boundless power
and goodness of God — appears in the narrative of

OUR FIRST PARENT. O
the Jewish historian. It presents no appearance of
splendid invention, but of sober, serious truth. It
has the air, certainly, 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, he would say,
" Here I stand on solid rock, and all is sea besides."
From the narrative of Moses we learn, that, when
there had been made all the necessary preparation
for the reception 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 pro
cedure, what is true of every human plan, concerted
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 vegetables, 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 theatre
being decorated and illuminated, the spectator was
admitted to behold the splendid and magnificent

6 CREATION OF MAN.
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
seeing he might understand, and understanding, adore
its supreme Author and Director."
Of his actual creation we have the following ac
count : " 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 and of spirits : and also to
enlarge a little upon the proof, both metaphysical and

HIS POWERS PERFECT. /
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 im
portance of the topics on which I must treat, prevent,
however, my doing either the one or the other. At
some future time, if life be spared, 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 maturation. The mean
ing 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 j1 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, subsequent,
in his case, as in ours, to his existence. But all his
mental powers, like his bodily faculties, existed at
1 i. e. with the senses in exercise.

b WHERE HE WAS CREATED.
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 anticipating 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 a right 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
otherwise he must have been utterly unprepared for
action, for 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
been 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 com
mon field;" for we read (Gen. ii. 8) that the Lord God
took the man " whom 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 whence he was
taken." (Gen. iii. 23.)
And what was the original state or character of

HIS ORIGINAL CHARACTER. 9
Adam? To this important point — a point so im
portant 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 now differs from that of the first
man when he came from the hands of God. In refer
ence, 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 born 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 descendants.
Of the original character of Adam we have the fol
lowing inspired account, given both prospectively and
retrospectively : " God said, Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness." (Gen. i. 26.) " So
God created man in his own image ; in the image of
God created he him." (Gen. i. 27.) The employ
ment of the two terms, " image " and " likeness,"
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 which
his Maker invested him. No necessity, I apprehend,

10 THE " IMAGE," ETC. NOT POLITICAL.
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 forbidding
males to pray or prophesy, in their religious assem
blies, 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 creatures, held by him in subjection while inno
cent, 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 prospect of his being restored
to subjection to his Maker, we 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
the fishes of the sea.' "
Yet, though the station occupied by Adam, as the
subordinate head of the creation, may possibly be
referred to in the terms under consideration, they
doubtless include more. Placed in this elevated posi
tion, 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 the two con
jointly. It could not, however, be, as it has been frequently

NOT IN HIS BODY. 11
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 inadequate
conception of spiritual subsistences in general; yet
when the sacred writers tell us that " God is a spirit,"
we 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
the image of God. There is no reason to doubt,
indeed, that our first parents, before the Fall, sur
passed their posterity as truly in their personal appear
ance as in the rectitude of their minds. Unques
tionably there existed some external indications of
the glory which shone so brightly within. It is im
possible 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 resem
blance to the eternal and invisible God, even before
it had become robbed of its chief attraction, 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 ; arid, consequently, must

12 NOT SIMPLY IN THE
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 with an immaterial principle — a simple,
uncompounded essence — a soul or mind ; and a mind
of a very high order, possessing those exalted facul
ties which, rendering man a capable subject of moral
government, necessarily involve 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 con
sidered; 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 main
tained, we have an easy exposition of two sets of
passages, — the one declaring that all men are by
nature destitute of the divine image ; and the other,
that all men are possessed of it. " Whoso sheddeth
man's blood," we 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 intimate
" 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 inter
pretation — the possession of which, in some measure,
assimilates man to his Maker. Of the same descrip-

POWERS OF HIS MIND. 13
tion 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 powers 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 recognised — even in adult
age, when their powers have acquired that full vigour
and expansion which were given to the mind of our
first parent by creating energy — as bearing the divine
image. They must be "renewed in the spirit of
their minds " before this preeminently exalted attri
bute can be predicated 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 " like
ness " refer especially, if not exclusively, not to the
high and noble faculties with which Adam was en
dowed, but to his moral state : he bore the likeness

14 IN HIS MORAL STATE.
of the great God's immaculate purity. Proceeding
directly from the hands of God, he must have been,
in his primitive condition, a holy being. It is pos
sible, 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 Committee of the Congregational
Lecture, I consented to deliver the present course,
I determined to have no reserves — 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 mingling of
mistake with correct statements. It is my consola
tion 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 preeminently an
error of his own.
The term holiness is an abstract term, compre
hending 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

THE NATURE OF HIS HOLINESS. 15
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 con-
created with him. The holiness of Adam consisted,
they imagine, in right thoughts and feelings. " It
comprehended," says one, "knowledge in the under
standing, holiness in the will, rectitude in the affec
tions, 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 understand
ing — and his understanding to the divine law."
Now, if this statement were intended to be a de
scription — 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 theo
logians 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 description
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 endowed him— and which, if I may so speak,
he brought into the world with him, I apprehend it is
both a false and an injurious description. Consis
tently with the statement made a short time ago, viz.

16 THE NATURE OF HIS HOLINESS.
that Adam was not created thinking and feeling— that
all actual thoughts and feelings were subsequent1 to
his creation — I at least, it is evident, cannot receive it.
I am not unaware that, in making these and subse
quent 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
1 It is not meant that any considerable time intervened ; he
began, doubtless, to exercise his powers immediately after his crea
tion, so that his first thoughts and feelings were all but contem
poraneous with his existence ; still all were acquired. " These
original endowments of man are not to be understood as excellences
which he possessed in actual exercise, (habitus, Scholast, habitus
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.
" Reason 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 s7riyvo)ine 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 of
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 world." — Knapp, p. 171.

HIS KNOWLEDGE, ETC. ACQUIRED. 17
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 discussions.
I believe, then, that all the knowledge that Adam
possessed of the divine character, and all the love —
perfect as I have no doubt it was — which he
cherished towards that character, was, in the strict
sense of the terms, acquired knowledge and love ; —
that the former was gained from manifest develop
ments 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 character. 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 originating 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 Scrip
ture doctrine of the original holiness of the first
man, that he was created thinking and feeling, and
thinking and feeling rightly,— that he entered the
scene of trial not only in the full maturity of his
c

18 CREATED WITH A HOLY BIAS.
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 appropriate
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 objective 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 character made
ab extra. It is 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
mind. The result of that presence and influence
was by our old divines denominated spiritual life,
and by theologians of modern times — such as Fuller,
Dwight, 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 ;

NATURE OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. 19
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 spiritual apprehensions, and all spiritual affections,
are the evidences and the actings of spiritual life,
rather than the thing itself. The original holiness
of Adam 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 presence 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 subse
quent to his creation.
I shall be told, perhaps, that I can give no intel
ligible 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 concession ; since it is a common diffi
culty. 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 difficulty should
exist with regard to the life of God in the soul of
man ? Yet the animal must live before it can move ;
the vegetable must live before it can grow. The
soul of Adam must have been instinct with spiritual
c 2

20 HOW HE BECAME SUBJECT TO LAW,
life before he saw 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 suggested than
the one supplied by Turrettine in the passage quoted
a short time ago.1
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 the obligation to govern, on
the one side, and the duty to be subject, on the
other, grew necessarily 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
1 " 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 he becomes there a principle or spring of a new nature and
life," &c. — Edwards on Religious Affections, vol. iv. p. 104.
" 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," &c. —
Br. Williams on Divine Government. — Vide chap. vii. sect. 2.

AND DISPOSED TO OBEY IT. 21
obey. Both parties were bound — bound, I mean,
by the unchangeable and eternal principles of right
and wrong — to assume the relative position into
which they actually entered. Yet it may be truly
said, and, perhaps, ought to be said, that the act
was spontaneous on the part of both. Though
bound to govern, God became voluntarily the sove
reign 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 principle — the spiritual life
which we have predicated of him — had its natural
actings in obedience ; it rendered it his " meat and
his 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 legible
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 perfection, 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, but 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 full reasons — to spring from him. 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

22 CONSEQUENCES OF THE
who may descend from them. Now, 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 cha
racter and conduct, in the same way as the posterity
of other fathers are affected by theirs.1 I am far
from saying they would have been unaffected by it,
for it 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, how
ever, 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 maybe affected for eternity by our obedience
or our transgression. Standing, however, in the
1 " This union (i. e. between the race and Adam) was, 1st, natural,
as he is the father, and we are the children. 2dly, 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 which exists between 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 covenant with him
as our head." — Beecher's Views in Theology, p. 185.

PATERNAL AND FEDERAL RELATION. 23
paternal relation 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 infected 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 the
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 constituted 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 trans
gression ; each would have stood for himself, and
answered for himself. Had all men transgressed, all
must have died. Had all men obeyed, all 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

24 THE PROMISE OF A LARGE FAMILY
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 con
sequences of his conduct. To a more full considera
tion of that relation, as well as of its results, we must,
then, now proceed, on account of its intimate con
nexion 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 commenced, 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 man
kind, and not their federal head. Now, it is of some
importance, I apprehend, to remember that the bless
ing 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 rela
tion ; 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 anni
hilation, or rather, to non-existence. That race was,
I imagine, destined, at all events, to exist. The
threatening which guarded the tree of knowledge,
&c, was not that, in case of disobedience, the family
should not be born, but born in circumstances of

WAS GIVEN TO HIM AS THE FATHER OF THE RACE. 25
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 ini
quity.1 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 forbidden 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.2 He lost paradise by his rebel
lion, but he did not lose all the treasures of the vege
table 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 world 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 contemporaneous with the establishment
of what we have been accustomed to call the Adamic
constitution or dispensation. Of this important change
in the condition and relation of our first parent, we
1 Further confirmation of this statement, which is here explana
tory merely, will be found in Lecture II., and at the end of the
volume. 2 Some have supposed that it was originally less fruitful than the
garden, and destined to be so on the foresight of the transgression.

26 CHANGE EFFECTED,
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 com
manded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the know
ledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for
in the day 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 appre
hend, 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 endea
voured at least to state this very important and diffi
cult 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 inter
dict — 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

WHEN TAKEN INTO THE GARDEN. 27
precept of the law written upon his heart, which 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 whether 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 un
sightly 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 can show that divine revelation affords it no
sanction, the readers of this volume will, I doubt not,
join me in thinking that an incubus will be removed
from the evangelical 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 systematic 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 fcedere naturae," 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

28 STATEMENTS OF PICTET AND' HOPKINS.
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 per
fect."1 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 pro
hibition or command only being mentioned, viz. the
prohibition of the tree of knowledge, &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 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," i. e. as he obviously
means, to himself and his posterity. " This positive
prohibition, with the threatened penalty, is thus par
ticularly mentioned, for two very good reasons ; First,
because it was a positive command. Secondly, because
man actually fell from his innocence and happiness,
1 Vide Picteti Theologia, Baynes's' Edition, p. 131.

MISTAKES INVOLVED IN THEM. 29
and incurred the threatened penalty, by disregarding
this prohibition, and eating of the fruit of this for
bidden tree. Had he sinned by transgressing any
other positive command, which we know nothing of
now ; — that, in that case, would have been as particu
larly 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
necessary to understand the whole story."2
The whole of this statement overlooks the impor
tant 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 results, to the race, of his dis
obedience 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 doubt
. Dr. 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 necessity thus bound.
Nothing can release him from this obligation but his
ceasing to be a creature, or a rational creature. The
Doctor is, also, further right in stating that the
violation of any part of the moral law, which it was
2 Vide System of Doctrine, vol. i. p. 220.

30 RESULTS OF PERSONAL AND FEDERAL FAILURE.
possible for Adam to break, must have incurred the
penalty of death, in the full sense of the word. What
ever sin deserves, Adam must have suffered, let the
act of transgression have been what it might. But
we are not entitled, a priori, to assert this of federal
failure. The results to other persons, of the mis
conduct of one individual, may be different in the
different relations he sustains to those persons. We
may conceive, perhaps, of the ruler of a tribe, who is,
at the same time, the father 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 destruction, by plunging into ruinous
war. It is possible, therefore, that one thing may
have been required of Adam as a private individual,
and another thing as a public representative; — 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 term,
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.

THE GARDEN. 31
" 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 ques
tions will occur to every reflecting mind here ; — ques
tions RELATING TO THE GARDEN ITSELF  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 pro
ductions ; its character, as symbolical or not. Ques
tions, again, relating to the two remarkable trees
which grew in it ; — the 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 as
sume, for the present, the historical truth of the nar
rative contained in the second chapter of the book
of Genesis. What little it may be necessary to say,
in support of this assumption, will find a more appro
priate place in a subsequent page. There are, how
ever, 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
Adam, and his posterity, was suspended on his federal
obedience ?" And second, " What was the conduct,
on the part of Adam, which, if continued in till the
termination of his course of probation, would have

32 PROOF OF THE
secured these blessings to both parties?" Or, to
allow the melancholy 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 disobedience ?" and " What
were those consequences?" "What do we lose, and
what do we suffer, by the melancholy lapse of our
first parents?" To put the questions in the form in
which they appear in the writings of our older and
systematic 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 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 constituted when the prohibition of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil was issued
by God ; in other words, that the legal, and, as they
appear to us from our imperfect knowledge, the
arbitrary results of his transgression of the interdict
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 explanatory statements of the federal
relation have been occasionally given which are at

FEDERAL RELATION. 33
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 reference to the forbidden fruit, were destined to
attach to his descendants as certainly 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 conceiving of it —
connecting with it such consequences — does not
identify itself with the federal relation ? Is not his
imagined paternal relation one that is sui generis?
Is it not diverse from that which ordinary parents
bear to their children? No doubt Adam sustained,
as we do, the simple relation of father to his children ;
but, if the death of the race grew out of that rela
tion simply, — if we become directly exposed to the
consequences of his disobedience merely because
we are his children — the parental relation 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. exposed
us to eternal misery. A more full development of
the nature of the federal relation will be made in

34 PROOF OF THE
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 destined 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 declara
tion, as we are bound to do, we shall find it impos
sible 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

FEDERAL RELATION. 35
the flood — hang suspended over it to this day ? Who,
in point of fact, has brought forth children in sorrow?
Eve only ? — or has it not been the lot of her daugh
ters, 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 descendants 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 representative character ?
I gather further proof of the federal character and
relation 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 denomi
nated 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 inti
mate 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 was not really, or literally, the second man.
d 2

36 PROOF OF THE RELATION.
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 representative character of the first
man must, accordingly, render inexplicable the
designation " second man," which an inspired writer
has applied to him.
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 Romans. 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 former. Now, the consequences
of our Lord's perfect obedience even unto death come
to us, and are enjoyed by us, as the legal results of
his righteousness, ft follows, therefore, or the parallel
between Adam and Christ is not complete, that
the consequences of the one transgression attach to
us in the same way, as legal results. " It is true that
we derive sanctification from union to Christ, and de
pravity 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 condemnation."
" The judgment was by one to condemnation, but
the free gift is of many 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.

OBJECTION STATED. 37
Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came
upon all men to condemnation; even so by the
righteousness of one the free gift came upon al]
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.)1
I do not deem it necessary to dwell at greater
length in proof of the federal character and relation
of Adam. Few of the doubts, in reference to this
fact, which have perplexed 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, with 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
1 The reader should observe that this parallel proves two things.
First, that the consequences of Adam's transgression, on the one
hand, — and of our Lord's righteousness, on the other, reach beyond
themselves ; i. e. that both sustained what we mean by the federal
relation; and, secondly, that the consequences of Adam's trans
gression do not reach us through the paternal relation merely, for
Christ sustains no such relation. He is the head, — the representa
tive of his people. He deigns to acknowledge them as brethren,
but he is not exhibited as their father.

38 INSUFFICIENT ANSWERS.
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 punish
ment 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
statements 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 "ordinary fathers sustain only the pa
ternal relation to their children, while Adam bore
the character of their legal representative ;" because
the objection is, in fact, an objection against the esta
blishment of such federal relation between the first
man and the race. It is a virtual assertion that he
ought not to have been constituted their legal repre
sentative, — strict justice requiring that every man
should undergo probation for himself.
Nor is it, I think, a perfectly sufficient answer, to
state that, to the Adamic dispensation, there was
appended a promise as well as a penalty ; a promise
of blessings to the race, suspended on certain con
ditions — on easier conditions than, perhaps, it may

AUGUSTINIAN SOLUTION. 39
be truly alleged, could have been imposed by the
Legislator, if individual, and not representative, proba
tion 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 conditions 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, in
deed, that this is a point which should not be thrown
out of consideration when discussing this subject with
an opponent: but I do not feel it to be a sufficient
answer to the objection, 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
Augustinian and Edwardian mode of obviating the
objection, viz. — as the learned translator of Dr.
Wiggers's " Historical 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 can-

40 THE LOOSE SENSE
not accept it as a sufficient explanation of the alleged
fact, that the penal results of Adam's federal failure
are experienced by the whole race ; and I cannot
accept it as such, just because I cannot 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
consciousness, which testifies to all of us that he
and we are different beings, — that we are men sepa^
rate 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 the term, should not be thrown upon ano
ther, — and if Adam and the race are not one being,
" how," the objector will proceed, " can the race be
punished for the sin of Adam, as the orthodox doc
trine supposes to be the case ?"
The solution of this difficulty may be partly found,
1st, in the loose sense in which the term punishment
is sometimes used. Punishment is, properly speaking,
the infliction upon an individual of evil, i.e. pain, or
suffering, in consequence of a moral offence, and an
offence committed by himself. Nothing is punish
ment, strictly so called, which is not the result of our
own crime or sin. It often happens, indeed, that
one man suffers through the misconduct of another ;
but that suffering is not punishment 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,

OF THE TERM PUNISHMENT. 41
" How can the race be righteously punished for the
transgression of Adam ?" I might properly 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 connexion between Adam and his posterity, as that
the consequences of federal failure, on his part, would
attach to them as if the crime of taking the forbidden
fruit had been their own. We become liable — justly
and legally so — to suffer these consequences, though
not, strictly speaking, 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.1 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 solution of the difficulty under consideration ;
in the meantime 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,
1 Vide, for additional observations, next Lecture.

42 PARTIAL REPLY
therefore, have come upon him to condemnation,
but not upon us. We should not endure the con
sequences of his transgression." Now, it may be
well to test, after the manner of the admirable Butler,
this objection agaiust this particular scheme of pro
vidence, unfolded by divine revelation, by certain
facts in that more general scheme of providence
which experience 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 miscon
duct of its rulers ; a parent entails disease, degrada
tion, and poverty, or affluence and honour, upon his
children ; wide-spreading ruin is ofttimes the result
of unprincipled commercial transactions."1 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 espe
cially 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 1" Did it not
1 Vide Lectures on Divine Sovereignty, by the Author, p. 321.

TO THE OBJECTION.

43

come to be such by the predetermination and influ
ence 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-contra
dictory 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 occur
rence, or maintain that these facts implicate the
justice of God ; and, finally, that, if he will venture
upon this presumption and profanity, we have nothing
more to say to him.1 I answer, thirdly, that, were
1 " It is very strange, and you are pretty sure it is hardly right,
that their posterity should be made to suffer for an offence that is
not their own. Now, first of all, is it not surprising that this should
appear strange to us who 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 consequence 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 complaining of Providence, are yet justly

44 PARTIAL REPLY, ETC.
we as well acquainted with the whole of the divine
dispensations 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
ought we 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 hypo
thesis, as it has been well observed, may have sufficient
strength to parry an objection, while it has not suf
ficient force to establish itself. Yet the hypothesis
does not appear 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
consequences which ensue to a race from the federal
failure of the head of that race — were as well known

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. 40 ; Dod
dridge's Lectures. Vide Note A, at the end of the Volume,

REASONS FOR THE CONSTITUTION. 45
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 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 espe
cially among beings who exist in successive gene
rations, imparting and deriving existence to and from
each other — as that the consequences of the transgres
sion of one should be far reaching, attaching to others
besides himself, not merely his contemporaries, 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
language, the existence and influence of such guards,
constitute 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 strong moral guard, — that it is
among the most pregnant and potent, if it be not the

46 REASONS FOR THE CONSTITUTION
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 injuring 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 belongs to others. How many a hazardous
speculation, how many a dishonourable deed, how
many a licentious act, has been prevented by reflect
ing upon the disgrace, and disease, and poverty,
which would be entailed upon the family, and per
petuated, 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, always prevail ; but it has a tendency to pre
vail. 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
general remarks to the case of Adam when placed in

IN THE CASE OF ADAM. 47
the scene of trial. The consequences which were to
follow transgression were of two kinds — personal and
relative. He himself was to die if he took the for
bidden fruit ; but his posterity also were to die. How
tremendous the responsibility 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, except the
God-man — the man Jesus Christ ! We may plunge
ourselves into ruin — eternal ruin ; we 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 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 atrocity with the
sin of Adam in eating this apple? Transgression
gathers its guilt from the magnitude of the motives
to avoid it ; and that again from the amount of ruin
and wretchedness into which it plunges. Who, then,

48 FULL REPLY
can calculate the guilt contracted by Adam, when he
ate the forbidden fruit !
So far we may go, and not without a good measure
of success, in disposing of the objection, " that a dis
pensation which secures that the consequences of the
sin of one man should be experienced by millions of
other men is radically unjust," even on the popular
views of the connexion which existed between Adam
and his posterity. I have said, however, that the
objection will, in my view of the case at least, be
more thoroughly obviated by —
The 2d reply, which I now proceed to make.
That reply bases itself upon the nature of the bless
ings, on the one hand, which were to have been
secured to Adam, and the race, by his federal per
fection ; 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 sus
tained by the race, was the loss, and only the loss, of
what have been very properly called " chartered
blessings,"1 — blessings, i.e. which God was not bound
1 " Whatever Adam possessed, beyond those considerations which
constituted him a moral agent,, was the fruit of sovereign benevolence.
Hence arises the propriety of regarding the possession of his privilege,
on the observance of a specified condition, under the term covenant.
For, if Adam possessed some spiritual principle, or benevolent
influence, as a person possesses immunities and privileges by charter
for himself and his heirs, and if these chartered benefits be retained
on condition of not offending in a specified manner, it follows, that
a privation of such benefits belongs as much to the heirs as to the

TO THE OBJECTION. 49
in equity to bestow and to continue, — blessings which
had their exclusive source in Divine sovereignty, —
which might, of course, be withdrawn at any time,
and in any way, that should seem meet to God him
self, — or of which the continued and permanent
enjoyment might be suspended on any conditions he
should see fit to appoint ; then will it follow, that
the establishment of the Adamic dispensation was,
merely a suspending of the permanent enjoyment of
chartered blessings upon the performance of a certain
condition by 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
became exposed, by the federal failure of its head,
was the loss of chartered blessings — and the loss of
such blessings exclusively.
individual offending. But if they are treated for breach of such
covenant, or charter held on condition as persons included in the
forfeiture, it is manifest that they are regarded so far guilty, or
worthy to suffer such loss." — Dr. Williams's Notes to Edwards' 'sWorhs,
vol. ii. p. 334.
" Guilty " of what, may we not ask 1 Their guilt can only be
exposure to the loss. Now this generic sense of the term guilt is
found nowhere but in systematic theology. I have no desire to
retain it. It never explains anything ; it often misleads, by suggest
ing the specific instead of the generic sense.

LECTURE II.
THE NATURE OP THE BLESSINGS BESTOWED CONDITIONALLY UPON ADAM
—THE OHAEAOTEK OP THE DISPENSATION.
We now proceed to establish the hypothetical state
ment with which the preceding Lecture concluded ;
viz. that the blessings, whose enjoyment by the race
was suspended upon the federal obedience of Adam,
were chartered 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 considering 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 Ruler 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 consequently be resumed whenever
he pleases. He does not owe reason to any mere
creature ; and, therefore, in the case of any human
being, and without any fault on his part, he may

;\

NATURE OF CHARTERED BENEFITS. 51
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, con
tinued life to the creature ; for that which was ori
ginally 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 accountable creature, a dis
position to employ those powers 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 accountable 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
Creator, irrespective of covenant engagements, owes
nothing but the powers which are essential to ac
countability. Further, it is of some importance to remark, that
what I have called chartered blessings, or sovereign
gifts, may not only be 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 generally 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
e 2

52 CHARTERED BLESSINGS MAY BE
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. Reason is essential to ac
countability. Every accountable being must, there
fore, 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 sus
pending 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 ; for, in that case, it pos
sibly might not reach him at all. A federal consti
tution, as it appears to me, in which one individual,
as we say popularly, acts for others ; or, more pro
perly 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

RENDERED CONDITIONAL. 53
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 another
for him,) which God may see fit to appoint. Con
sidered merely as a creature, and not an accountable
creature, God does not, as we have seen, owe the
gift of reason to man ; 1 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 creatures.
Again, God did not owe simple existence to the
race ; and, therefore, the 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
1 It must be observed here that I am not speaking of man
(though, perhaps, the term man is scarcely 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 merely.

54 BLESSINGS PROMISED TO ADAM
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
suspended — had it appeared wise to him to do so —
the enjoyment of this high faculty by them, upon an
act to be performed by the head of the human 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 char
tered blessings, may riot only be given or withheld,
but bestowed — when imparted — 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
promised statement, and proof, that the blessings,
whose continued possession by the race were sus
pended on the condition of abstinence from the for
bidden 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 which
were not due to them, — which they had, conse
quently, no right to demand, — which might be be
stowed, or not, according to the sovereign will of
God, — which, if imparted, might be imparted either

WERE OF THIS CHARACTER. 55
conditionally or unconditionally ; and, if the former,
imparted on whatever condition 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 individual, but as the
federal head of the race. The threatening is, there
fore, 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, exemption
from the threatened punishment, if the action pro
hibited 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

56 HOW FAR THE
blessing to him, i. e. gave him virtually the promise of
its continuance, how could it have possessed any ten
dency 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 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 was 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
formerly, but now he had a covenant right to it — a
right founded upon the gracious promise of his
Creator — as long as the enjoined obedience should
continue to be performed. A promise was, then,
involved in the threatening. It is, however, im
portant to observe its necessarily limited nature.
Nothing was expressly promised. The promise was
merely couched in the threatening. Now a threaten
ing 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
disobedience. Many unwarrantable assertions on this subject
have been made. Some persons, indeed, have con-

TROMISE EXTENDED. 57
tended 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 duration of the
probation allotted to him. I feel persuaded, however,
that the words of the record do not justify such
statements. Nothing, as we have seen, and as it is
important to remember, was expressly promised to
Adam. The promise is merely couched in the threat
ening : 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 die if he did not
disobey ; i. e. should remain in possession of the life
he then enjoyed.
In expressing this opinion, I have, however, no
intention 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 forbidden 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

58 CONTINUED BODILY
not as a stipulated and earned right, for no such
stipulation" was made.1
Now, whatever more may be supposed to have
been comprehended in the life which Adam then pos
sessed, 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
the 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
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 certainly die ; and die in this sense of the term.
His own body, as the legal result of transgression,
must return to the dust from which it was taken;
though the time and manner of its return were left to
1 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 works, such as Pictet represents, the notion
that obedience would have entitled him to heaven, would be mani
festly less absurd.

LIFE PROMISED. 59
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 inflic
tion of the sentence at the very moment of transgres
sion ; but instant and necessary exposure to its
infliction. 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."2
2 " 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 offence was committed, but that they
should then be subject to death, whatever is meant by death ; that
the sentence of death should be executed at the time appointed by
their Creator. It is not said nri tin, or kwirr dvi, in that day, in that
same day, but simply tin, in that day, and the word ' day' is some
times used in Scripture, generally for an indefinite time, as may be
seen in the Lexicons." — Vide Holden's Dissertation on the Pall of
Man, p. 20 ; also preceding Lecture.
If the words, " In the day," &c. &c. 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 all is the result of the interposition of Christ. Then
how, I ask, is the native depravity of the race to be accounted for ?

60 THE RACE BECAME MORTAL
, Further, all his posterity 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 trans
lated 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,
It cannot, of course, be derived from Christ ; equally impossible is it
that it can have been derived from Adam. A constitution which
doomed us, in case of his transgression, not to be born at all — and
such, by the present hypothesis, was the Adamic constitution — can
not have doomed us to be born in sin. The two things are utterly
incompatible with each other. 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 very 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 deliver
ance, 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 greater
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 the end of the Volume.

BY ADAM'S SIN. 61
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 cir
cumstances 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 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 responsible for
his transgression ; we are legally liable to suffer this
consequence of his transgression. LLn 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 consequences — to eternal death even — of
any other possible transgression on the part of Adam,

62 THE BODY IS MORTAL BY SIN.
instead of the consequences 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 possibly
establish a claim. Is God bound to ask the creature
whether he shall bring 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 recklessness, man has urged many a
presumptuous claim ; but to claim from God the
right to be consulted whether the blessing of im
mortal life in the body should be imparted, and
how, — is a height of folly and daring above which
the arch apostate, who strove of old to grasp heavens
high supremacy, did not reach !
The first blessing, then, whose enjoyment by the
race was suspended upon the obedience of Adam,
was immortal life in the body ; the first loss sustained
was the loss of this blessing.1 When our bodies die,
and return to the dust, we suffer, in that sad calamity,
one of the consequences 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
1 " By the punishment of transgression, Adam lost immortality."
— Augustine, Op. Imp. vi. 30.
" The first pair were so constituted, that, if they had not sinned,
they would have suffered no kind of death." — Augustine. Vide
Wiggers's Presentation, &c. p. 93.

THE SECOND CONDITIONAL BLESSING. 63
of sin in general, — of the atrocity 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 ex
clusive 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 person of the adorable Trinity — with
his mind. The result of that union was, as we have
seen, spiritual life, having its legitimate 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 Spirit penally withdrew from
him. My especial object now is, to show that the
presence and influence of the Spirit, — though partly

64 THE CONTINUED PRESENCE OF THE SPIRIT
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
promise — held by charter, not by natural right, — a
charter which secured them only so long as its pre
scribed conditions 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, contemporaneous 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 endow
ment 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, perhaps, 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 spiritual 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 imme
diately 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

WAS A SOVEREIGN GIFT. 65
action. But equity did not demand that he should
be created a holy man, in the sense in which we
have predicated 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 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, due to the crea
ture 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 accountability. Now, if the holy
principle which we have attributed to the mind of
Adam, — the spiritual life, as we have called it, re
sulting from the union 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
nature spiritually dead ; or if it has been permitted
to sink, i.e. if man by nature is spiritually 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
necessary endowments of human nature having

66 THE HOLY SPIRIT A SOVEREIGN GIFT.
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 necessary 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 sus
tained 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 con
dition which Divine wisdom should appoint. The
only wise God determined to render it a conditional
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 his abode in the minds of his descendants,
was, for infinitely wise purposes, suspended 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 con
ceived, 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

THE CONDITION OF THE COVENANT. 67
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
distinctly, 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 prac
tical lesson taught us by its violation.
The condition on the performance 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 trans
action, 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
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
f 2

68 THE ACT ON WHICH THE DESTINY
the serpent, Because thou hast done this" — i.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," &c. (Gen. iii.
14, 170
Additional proof may be derived from the language
of the Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans.
In the fifth chapter of that book, he expressly de
clares, that the loss sustained by the race, in conse
quence of its federal relation to Adam, was brought
upon them not by many offences, but by one
offence — the single offence 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 transgression 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

OF THE RACE WAS MADE TO DEPEND. 69
tree. The 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, in his federal relation, and for
bidden 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 of federal failure. It is, also, further, and with
equal readiness, admitted that the act of eating the
forbidden fruit, when we contemplate its concomi
tants 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 constitution, established with Adam,
was perfect obedience to every precept of the Divine
law; nor that the consequences — either to him or
the race — of violating the condition 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
obedience ; 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

70 THE PATERNAL AND FEDERAL
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 arrange
ment, 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
suspended blessings.
To the existence of just conceptions on this
subject, it is of essential importance that we con
template 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 govern
ments 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 inter
dict, 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 recorded 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,

RELATION OF ADAM. 71
confirming to himself, and his race, the permanent
enjoyment of its invaluable privileges, on condition of
abstinence from the forbidden gratification. As the
beneficiary, or holder of this charter, i. e. in his
federal or public capacity, no service was required of
Adam, but that he should not touch the forbidden
fruit. But as a man merely, and Dot 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,
perseveringly ; 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 prescribed by the
charter, namely, abstinence from the forbidden 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 sove
reignty, he might require of him as a federal head ;
i.e. he falls into the mistake of supposing that the
condition of the covenant,, as it is technically called,

72 THE ADAMIC DISPENSATION
made with Adam, was perfect and perpetual obedi
ence. And, committing this mistake, he is naturally
drawn into another. He adopts, of consequence,
erroneous views of the whole transaction on which
our present remarks are founded. Instead of re
garding it as the establishment of a charter, securing
the most exalted privileges to the whole 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 covenant, by the performance of whose
conditions, Adam might have won for himself, and
for the race, the blessings 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 esta
blished with Adam. 1 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 sovereign donation, not required
by equity, but bestowed by sovereignty ; since no one
could imagine that abstinence from the forbidden
fruit — whatever painful restraint it might impose upon
sensual desire — conld deserve the exalted blessings
which would have followed in its train. Nothing more
is needed than to reflect for a moment on the vantage

WAS A COVENANT OF GRACE. 73
ground upon which Adam was placed by the bestow
ment of this charter of life upon him, to be convinced
that the Adamic dispensation was, emphatically speak
ing, 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
establishment, death could only be the result of failure
in reference to this single prohibition ; for the threat
ening, "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 pre
cept — was infallibly secured, like that of the angels or
glorified spirits above ;" or he might have exposed
himself to death by the violation of some other pre
cept, 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 contingent, 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,
obedience to other precepts, while He put forth no
such influence 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

74 THE TRIAL TO WHICH ADAM
strength of his own 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 deserving 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 effectual, 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.1 Think of
1 " Besides, as his obedience was confined to a single point, he was
taught, 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 every thing 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 trying him would be thought not only
reasonable, but generous, nobler and strongly indicative of parental
affection. " 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

WAS SUBJECTED. 75
what must have been his condition irrespective of this
dispensation. His hazard of dying must have run
pari passu 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 sus
taining 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 proper sense of the
term ? A being, sustained by sovereign effectual
grace as are the angels, cannot be in a state of pro
bation. In order to this, there must be the pos
sibility of failure, which there is not in the world
above. But for the charter of life graciously vouch
safed to Adam, he must have been dealt with in strict
equity ; i. e. to adopt the phraseology of my excellent
friend, Dr. Russel, of Dundee, he must have been
"left to his natural fallibility in reference to every
apply to Adam in the former 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 accept
ance may be thus suspended : — A person may be perfect as a bene
ficiary, or the holder of a charter, while he is not perfect as a man.
The acceptance, &c. of Adam, which was suspended on his abstaining
from the forbidden fruit, was his acceptance not as a man, but as a
beneficiary. 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 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..

76 THE DISPENSATION WAS TO HIM
obligation that rested upon him." The gracious
charter of which we are speaking diminished his
hazard of sinning, and, by necessary consequence, 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 intelli
gible, 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 metaphysical or philoso
phical discussion was demanded or admitted. No
uncertainty existed as to the degree in which his
obedience was required. He was left at no loss con
cerning the time, the manner, or the nature of that
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 know
ledge, always of high importance, was especially
important to him, so lately brought into existence, so
unversed in argumentation, acquainted only with plain
facts,, and under the guidance of nothing but mere
eommon sense."1 Again, it summoned all his watch
fulness 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.
1 Vide Lecture XXVL

AND TO US A COVENANT OF GRACE. 77
More obviously, however, did this dispensation or
charter place the posterity 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 esta
blished with Adam — suspending 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 intellec
tually. 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 enjoyment 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, would
have secured to us, not merely life for ever, but hap
piness and glory for ever — suspended, I say, the
enjoyment 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

78 THE FEDERAL FAILURE,
likely to he performed without failure by one federal
head than by ourselves.
jf^Xhe small service, however, by the performance of
which the patent of life given to Adam — the perma
nent 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 ate the forbidden fruit. We die by his trans
gression ; die, as it respects the body, directly, i.e. as
the direct result of his transgression : J 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 — constituting, I imagine, that
1 " There is an imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, inde
pendent 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 transgression alone," &c.
" Of the sin of Adam imputed, these are the consequences, — the
death of the body, — and our introduction into a world with a nature
tending to actual offences, and a conditional liability to punishment."
— Watson's Theological Institutes, vol. iii. pp. 139, 140.

AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 79
condemning judgment which the apostle affirms to
have come upon all men by federal failure— involves
no difficulty whatever. I have not said that we are
guilty of the sin of Adam,2 nor that we are punished
for it ; for, though the expressions may be susceptible
of correct interpretation, they are not scriptural
expressions, nor do they naturally exhibit the facts of
the case. To affirm that we are guilty of Adam's
sin in eating the forbidden fruit, is asserting — if the
words are used in their proper sense — that we com
mitted it. Now consciousness 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;3 and punishment
2 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 guilt) " 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'si sin, and Christ of ours." — Biblical Repertory, vol. vii. pp.
294, 295.
3 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 well be supposed to have
intended to intimate that we are really blameable for an act per
formed 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 guilty of Adam's sin, is to be exposed by it to punishment ;

80 THE FEDERAL FAILURE,
to express any suffering which results from an infrac
tion of law, whether 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 technical 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.
i.e. to the endurance of its consequences. Still the phrase is ob
jectionable ; 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 exposure, or liability, is not guilt in any proper sense of
the term, or in common 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 with " he has committed the crime." Out of this
meaning would obviously grow, " he deserves punishment ;" " he is
obnoxious to it." But the. two latter necessarily depend upon the
former, and cannot exist without it. Transgression brings desert of
punishment ; desert of punishment obnoxiousness to it. The term
* guilt is more commonly used in the second sense than in the first ;
and never, except in theology, in the third. It usually means, not
transgression simply, but that desert of punishment which is conse
quent upon it. — Vide Lectures on Sovereignty, pp. 254, 255.

AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 81
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 which
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 consequences 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 and
feel; but the next step, reached by many, is un
sound 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 conclusion. There were conse
quences of that act which attached to him, as a
man, in his personal character ; and there were con
sequences which attached to him in his public
character, or as a federal head. In the latter
G

82 STATEMENTS OF
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 in
curred the sentence of eternal death; but by his
federal failure, he did not bring down so terrific a
sentence upon our heads. He lost for us the per
manent 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 occasionally exhibited —
should be accepted by the reader, they will materially
aid him in forming an estimate of the high Augus-
tinian 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, practically
overlooked the important distinction between indi-*-

AUGUSTINE AND EDWARDS. 83
vidual and representative responsibility. They seem
to have imagined that the arrangement 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.
Responsibility is, with them, not merely the liability
of the race to suffer the loss of chartered blessings,
forfeited to all parties by Adam when he refused the
service on which the charter was held : it is moral
responsibility, identical with that of Adam himself;
strict answerableness 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, re
sponsible 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 Augustinians had no resort but
to identify the race and Adam ; to consider them as
one — not merely morally, or legally, but truly and
literally so ; and thus' any difficulty, resulting from
the fact that the entire human race suffer the con
sequences of Adam's transgression, was by them
attempted to be obviated ; the race suffering, in fact,
according to this view, the consequences of their
g 2

84 STATEMENTS OF
own sin. But, it may be asked, is not this explana
tion of the Augustinians somewhat like bringing the
darkness of midnight to enlighten the obscurity of
twilight? It is to me, at least, infinitely more im
possible 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 that, though
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 supposition is in harmony with facts of
every day's experience!^ Yet such is Augustinianism
and Edwardianism ! <]
-" The propagation of Adam's sin among his pos
terity," says the former (I quote from Emerson's
translation of Dr. Wiggei^s Presentation of Augustin
ianism and Pelagianism), " 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
Adam" — 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

AUGUSTINE. 85
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 well
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, weight, 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 race existing in
him, and each one sharing just so much of the blame
as he will be punished for." (P. 98.) Augustine
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
Christian Theology," is that which affirmed that all
the posterity of Adam were, in the most literal sense,
already in. him, and sinned in him— in his person."
Such,, as we have seen, was the opinion, or rather
such were the words of Augustine ; for I acknowledge
they are to me unmeaning symbols — terms expressing

86 STATEMENTS OF
no definite idea. "What Paul had taught," adds
Knapp, " 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
(<=<£' a,) peccavimus, et culpse successio ab uno in
omnes transfusa est.' Augustine says, 'In Adamo
omnes peccarunt, in lumbis Adami erat genus hu-
manum.' Also, ' Infantes ab eo trahunt peccati
reatum, mortisque supplicium.' " (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 posterity 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 are one.
I apprehend he means — at all events the objection
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

PRESIDENT EDWARDS. 87
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 exposed-
ness 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 coexisted, 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 indi
vidual 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 participa
tion 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 con
currence 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
precise 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 assertion : but he does say

88 STATEMENTS OF
— 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 pos
sible 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 have produced similar and
simultaneous 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, and formed one
being, as the distinct parts of a tree form one tree.
But the race and Adam do not coexist, do not con
stitute 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 affecting the branches
of another on the other side of the 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
President, in supposing him to maintain that the
posterity of Adam were so in him as that his sin is
literally theirs, and his guilt their guilt, is manifest
from the language of Stapfer, quoted with appro
bation by him.
" It is objected, against the imputation of Adam's
sin, that we never committed the same sin with Adam,

STArFER.

89

neither in number nor in kind. I answer, we should
distinguish here between the physical act itself, which
Adam committed, 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 which sense, that act of
transgression, and that fall of Adam, cannot 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 consenting 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
consent to it. We did not, indeed, perform the
physical act, but we consented to it. I am deeply
grieved to see evangelical truth betrayed by 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. We did not perform the

90 FALLACY OF
action ; we did not consent to it. I doubt not that
we should have consented to it, had the wild specu
lation of President Edwards expressed the facts of
the case, i.e. had we existed contemporaneously with
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 rebellion against
God, may be said, somewhat loosely and inaccurately,
to have consented to the sin of Adam, because it
may be fairly assumed that he would 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 ground that, if placed in the same circumstances,
he would have committed the sin, is to broach a novel
and most dangerous principle in moral science.
Should it be alleged by Stapfer that we are not
merely to assume that the posterity of Adam would
have consented to his sin, but that they actually did
so, I answer, first, 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 consequences
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 hypothesis) their act and their sin ? And are
they not punished, then, for this act and this sin ?

THEIR STATEMENTS. 91
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 evangelical 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, punish
ment would overtake them, not for his sin, but their
own. Or, they must mean the assertion to be under
stood in the somewhat loose and secondary sense of the
words, i.e. to denote not literal union, but ordained
or legal 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 determination to deal
with all alike, or to permit the consequences of

92 FALLACY OF THEIR STATEMENTS.
the sin of the head of the race to reach to his
posterity. But, if this be the meaning they attach
to the words, 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 constitution of such a union. It
is not an objection against B's suffering the conse
quences of A's transgression, after God had deter
mined 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 state
ment 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 personally 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, some how 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 evangelical

SOURCE OF THEM. 93
doctrine. When, in that country, the imputation of
Adam's sin to the race is affirmed, the words are
understood to denote, frequently at least, more than
in this country. Here they express the legal exposure
of the race 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 between us,
as at first sight might seem to be the case. They
oppose imputation, 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 imputation 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 Williamses, and
Fullers, and Russells, 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

94 RESULTS OF THE LOSS
profess to adhere to them — would never have been
formed, if the view of the Adamic dispensation
presented in this lecture — viz. that it was a dispensa
tion of grace to our first parent, — a charter securing
certain invaluable blessings to him, and the race, on
condition of his performance of a certain prescribed,
simple, and unmistakable 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 sin of another ; for, though the deprivation of
life was real punishment to Adam, it is merely loss
to us — the loss of blessings which we have no right
to claim, but which may be continued, or reclaimed
and withdrawn, as to the infinite wisdom of God it
may seem meet to determine.
Let it not be forgotten, however, that the loss of
chartered blessings may place us in circumstances as
deplorable as thaugh the punishment of Adam's sin,
in the literal and^strict sense of that term, had been
laid upon us. fvhen the child inherits disease from
his parents, that disease is never spoken of, never
regarded, as punishment 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 CHARTERED BLESSINGS. 95
of the attainder of the head of the family, it is small
consolation 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 we are guilty of Adam's
sin, or are punished 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.l
It is possible that some persons, notwithstanding
the statements previously made, that life to us was
far more safe in the custody of Adam, to whom God
had entrusted 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 something like wrong
had been done to them by the arrangement of the
Adamic dispensation. I trace this feeling of wrong

96 WERE SAFER WITH ADAM THAN WITH US.
— not uncommonly to be found in ignorant and irre
ligious men — to the forgetfulness that the enjoyment
of chartered blessings alone was suspended on the
conduct of Adam. Were they thoroughly convinced
that, by his federal failure, nothing was lost to them
but that to which they have no claim, and no con
ceivable 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 sovereign 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 unre
flecting individuals, that the -chartered blessing of
life had been entrusted to their own custody, I own
I cannot understand it. Is it a wise — is it even a
rational wish ? Is it not preposterously absurd ?
Was not the arrangement made with 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

dr. russell's conjecture. 97
have influenced 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 determination. He curiously
inquires, " Why was it so V 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
diffidence. 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 dispensations of God, we observe a pre-
shadowing forth of the crowning or gospel dispensa
tion. 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 establishment 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

98 PROBABLE REASONS
to shadow forth the way of salvation through Jesus
Christ. Thus the dispensation established with Adam,
and the mediatorial economy which has been estab
lished 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.; accord
ingly, he is called the figure of Him that was to come."
My second remark has reference to the great moral
lesson which the melancholy result of the Adamic
dispensation teaches, and which we are warranted to
infer it was intended to teach. Adam was created
in the image of God, — in the full maturity of his
powers. The law of God, and the law of love, were
inscribed upon his heart. His body was the temple
of the Holy Ghost. Preserved, as we have seen he
was, 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 destinies 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 presence and influence of
the Spirit of God ? Man, in innocence 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

FOR THE ADAMIC COVENANT. 99
are individuals, in the present day, who tell us that i
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 darkness and de
pravity — 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 the dead; that moral instru
ments have been provided, but n© omnipotent arm
to wield them, and render them mighty to the
pulling down of strongholds 3 Is not all this pre
posterous ;? It is surely more difficult to arise, after
we have fallen, and are bruised and 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 arise now that he has fallen 1
Unless I mistake, the grand moral lesson taught
by the issue of the trial of Adam in paradise, is the
entire dependence of man upon the Holy Spirit of
God. God says to us, by the whole of this melan
choly history — may the important lesson not be
given in vain! — -"Without me ye can do nothing."1
1 See note C at the end of the Volume.
H 2

LECTURE III.
THE RESULT OF THE FALL OF ADAM UPON OUR RELATIVE 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 holy being, — care having been taken to explain
the sense in which we are to predicate 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 rela
tions, he became the depository 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 abstain
ing 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, — for
feited all its blessings ; and it devolves upon us now
to exhibit, more fully and circumstantially, what has

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF GEN. II. 101
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 necessary, 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 explain the various circum
stances recorded in that narrative, 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 Lectures,
should there be space for it, somewhat of, all this
may be briefly attempted ; but, in the Lectures
themselves, 1 must dwell upon nothing which has
not an immediate and powerful bearing upon the
great doctrine of Original Sin. Under the influence
of this guiding principle, I shall not attempt at
present to do more than to show, in the briefest
possible manner, that the narrative 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 re
presentation of the ascendency which, at an early
period of the history of the world, appetite and
passion obtained over the higher principles of our

102 THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF
nature.1 The two following arguments, presented
in somewhat different forms by various writers, have
ever seemed to me sufficient to convince any candid
man that the allegorical interpretation of the passage
is baseless. In the first place, the passage is part of a con
tinued history. " It is inserted," says Principal Hill,
"between the account of the creation of the first
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
1 " It is said by some, that the whole is intended to teach, by
allegory, how unhappy man becomes by the indulgence of violent
passions, and the evil consequences resulting from the prevalence of
sense over reason." — Knapp's Theology.
Morus supposes that the serpent denotes those external induce
ments to sin by which men are overcome ; but that we know not
the particular temptation which triumphed over Adam. — P. 29, n. I.
" If the Mosaic history be an allegory," says Bishop Horsley, " it
is an allegory without a key, which no man can interpret ; and
delivering his history in this disguise, the inspired teacher of the
chosen race has in truth 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 truth, nor to serve
any political purpose 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 of the first man's condition ? If the prohibition
imposed upon him was not simply that of tasting the fruit of a
particular tree, but of something else ; what was that something
else really forbidden 1 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 1 ' " — Biblical Criti
cism, vol. i. p. 8.

GENESIS II. AND III.

103

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 written.
In the second place, the entire account of the garden,
and of the trial of our first parents there, and the
melancholy 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 simplicity 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 trans
gression of Adam be an allegory, must not that of
his creation be such too ?2 The former is introduced
2 "No writer of true history," says Bishop Horsley, "would mix
plain matter of fact with allegory in one continued narrative,
without any intimation of a transition from the one to the other..
If, therefore, any part of this narrative be matter of fact, no part
is allegorical. On the other hand, if any part be allegorical, no part
is naked matter of fact ; and. the consequence of this will be, that
everything 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

104 THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER, ETC.
as a fact of the same authority and notoriety as the
latter. " The occasion," says the writer quoted a
moment ago, " of the transgression, 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
sanction 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 melan
choly issue. There are writers, indeed, who admit
the historic fact of the fall, but regard the narrative
as a figurative representation of that fact. The
celebrated Tholuck belongs to this class. Now, I
am not indisposed to concede, with the learned trans
lator 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
narrative, it is not of such consequence whether it
trees ; the rivers that watered it, allegorical rivers ;, and thus we may
ascend to the very beginning of creation, and conclude at last that
the heavens are allegorical heavens, and the earth an allegorical
earth. Thus the whole creation will be an allegory, of which the
real subject is not disclosed ; and in this absurdity, the scheme of
allegorizing ends."
1 Vide, on this subject,, Holden's Dissertation on the Pall of Man,
chapter the second..

DEFINITIONS, ETC. 105
be by an allegorical or literal interpretation." Yet, on
the other hand, it must surely be allowed, that there
is less probability of gathering the historic fact itself
from the former interpretation than the latter. Admit
the literal interpretation of the narrative, and the
fact of the fall is undoubted; for it is distinctly
affirmed. Adam was tried, and failed in the trial;
he ruined himself, and foundered the hopes and
prospects 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 natural
consequence, 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 exist
ence in the present state ?" comprises everything Iwish
to say upon the subject. Many good writers use the
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 all. mankind, the
guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in
sin and corrupted nature conveyed, to, all. their pos
terity descending from them by ordinary generation."

106 DEFINITIONS OF
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 following
statement : — " In the guilt of Adam's first sin, the
want of original righteousness, and the corruption of
his whole nature, which is commonly called — Original
Sin." It may possibly be conceived by some, that the
relative, in the last clause, refers only to the imme
diate antecedent ; so that the compilers of that
generally admirable compendium 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 exclusively, the cor
ruption 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 words are ambiguous :
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 revelation.
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 when," he adds, " the doctrine of
original sin is spoken of,, it is vulgarily," — i. e. as
I understand him, commonly, not improperly, — " un-

ORIGINAL SIN. 107
derstood in that latitude, which includes not only the
depravity of nature, but the imputation of Adam's
first sin ; or, in other words, the liableness or ex-
posedness of Adam's posterity, in the Divine judg
ment, 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 suf
fering. " This imputation of the sin of Adam to his
posterity" — which he had explained and justified — he
says, " is what divines generally call, with some
latitude of expression, original sin, distinguishing it
from actual sin, i. e. from personal guilt." — Vide
Works, Baines's Edition, vol. v. p. 205.
No possible good can result from giving this generic
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 relative condition,
and his personal character. We think it more judi
cious 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

108 THE EFFECTS OF THE FALL
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 examination — very search
ing investigation — and very ample illustration. With
Divine assistance, all shall be given to them. We
consider —
I. The Effect of the Fall of Adam upon
our 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 neces
sary to illustrate it at some length, and to bring it
into comparison with the current phraseology re
garding 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 fulfil
ment of the terms of the charter prescribed by the
wisdom and goodness of God. It rendered us liable
to death in the two senses which stand in direct oppo
sition to those in which, as we have seen, he enjoyed
life — 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

ON OUR RELATIVE STATE.

109

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 specified condition, that offer has the
binding force of law : it lays a moral obligation upon
the individual to accept the blessing, by the perform
ance of the condition ; 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 benefits 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 invaluable 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 testi
mony 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

110 THE ADAMIC AND GOSPEL CHARTER COMPARED.
have been bound to accept its blessings by the per
formance of its condition. God's offered mercy can
never he 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, suspending the continued enjoyment of life by
himself, and the permanent possession of it by his
descendants, on the condition to which we have fre
quently 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 from 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 thereby 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

BOTH HAVE THE FORCE OF LAW. Ill
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 perform
ance 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 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 con
dition of the charter would not escape punishment.
I say punishment, because death to Adam would he,
and it actually was, strictly of the nature of punish
ment. It was the legal consequence, not merely of
the violation of law, but of his own violation of it;
and this alone, as we have seen, is punishment in the
strict sense of the term. Adam actually ate the for
bidden 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"
(i. 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 suffer punishment on account
of it. According to Dr. Johnson, the English term
guilt is of Saxon origin, and originally means, the fine
or mulct paid for an offence. Out of this meaning

112 CONSEQUENCES OF ITS VIOLATION
would naturally grow liability to the payment of this
fine. In a case where the offence is a crime, or sin,
the fine or mulct is properly the punishment of that
sin ; and liability to pay the fine is desert of that pun
ishment. Now Adam had both committed sin, and
he deserved to suffer the punishment due to it. He
had sinned as a man, and as a public head — had
broken the law, and broken the covenant ; 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
exposed, 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 had been given to him by sovereign
favour, and whose continuance was suspended on the
condition of abstinence from the forbidden fruit.
To the punishment attached to the breach of this
charter — if indeed, even in reference to Adam, we
may not rather regard it as loss than as punish
ment — the transgression of our first parent legally
and directly exposed us ; for, as the covenant itself
had both the force and the form of law, the conse
quences 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

TO ADAM AND TO US. 113
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 care
fully that our statement is not that guilt,1 in the
proper 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 punish
ment 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 blessings. 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 encumber this portion of the
great evangelical system, would have had no existence.
The whole of the ultra-Calvinistic, or rather Anti-
nomian, doctrine upon this subject, rests upon the
forgetfulness of the great facts that the Adamic
charter promised blessings to Adam and the race, to
which they had no claim — suspended their permanent
enjoyment upon a certain condition to be observed
by the beneficiary — and that this condition 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
1 Vide p. 94.
I

114 SOURCE OF THE MISTAKES
that any injustice or hardship has been inflicted
upon him by subjecting 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 dis
tinction between the personal and the federal charac
ter 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 state-

OF THE ULTRA-CALVINISTS. 115
ment given in previous pages, that, by virtue of the
dispensation established with Adam, we become
legally exposed to suffer the consequences of his
federal failure, there have been, and there are, those
who tell us that that failure was ours — literally and
strictly so ; that the guilt 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 Adam
himself ; that every believer 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 previous
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 Mr. 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, apparent to them,
was to identify Adam and the race — to declare the
sin of Adam to be theirs; and then no mystery is
1 Vide Haldane, on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. i. p. 440.
i 2

116 THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION
of course involved in the fact that they suffer its
consequences. They are, in that case, punished for
their own sins.
In the previous pages, we have seen that this is
the sense attached by some writers to the phrase,
" the imputation 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 now speaking, few
would think of resorting to the monstrous expedient
of identifying themselves and the race with Adam.
Yet, unaware of the solution we have suggested, or
rejecting it, they have resorted to the more modern
notion of imputation, which 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 imputed
to them, — this imputation being regarded as distinct
from their endurance of its consequences, and consti
tuting, 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 great doctrine of
imputation. I believe as firmly that the sin of Adam
is imputed to us, as that our sins were imputed to

CONSIDERED. 117
Christ, and that his righteousness is counted to us.
I should, on this point, 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 which does not belong to
him ; that we may, in short, impute sin to the sinner,
and righteousness to the righteous, — but not righte
ousness to the sinner, nor sin to the righteous." It
is probable that Mr. Stuart, in employing this phrase
ology, attaches a sense to the term imputation dif
ferent from that in which we use it ; so that there
may not be so radical a difference of opinibn between
him and ourselves, as his strong statements would
seem to indicate. If the verb to impute — which
means to count, to reckon, &c  be taken in the
simple sense, to regard or consider, then it is abun
dantly 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. But,
if the verb " to impute," — to impute sin, for instance,
to an individual, — be understood to mean, to act
towards him as if he were a sinner, then it is equally
manifest that sin maybe 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 may be 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

118 STATEMENTS OF
we were righteous. How would Mr. 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 without works?" Does righteousness
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. 26), " 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
consequences because that transgression is imputed
to them. The imputation being different from the
punishment, and preceding it. The feeling which

MESSRS. STUART AND HINTON. 119
prompted the statement seems to have been this.1
They could not justly be called to suffer the conse
quences 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

1 Thus writes Mr. Hinton : " Nor is it only suffering and death
which are thus entailed ; every man enters the world with a depraved
nature, &c." — " What account is to be given of these things 1 These
are of the nature of penal evil " (in a passage formerly 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 1" — " It is certain that they must be con
sidered as implicated parties " (implicated, 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 satisfactory to me. There were, on this hypothesis,
two steps in the process. Cod first considered the posterity of
Adam " implicated parties " (do these words mean more than that
the race were by Divine appointment to suffer with him 1 If so,
what more 1) ; and secondly visited them with penal evils (I would
ask Mr. Hinton, " If these evils are not laid upon us '¦penally,' but
mercifully, i. e. as moral medicines, where is the difficulty 1 What
is there to explain ?") ; and the first is pleaded as the justification
of the second. They are visited with " penal evils " 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 the main difficulty. It does not exhibit the justice of
considering them "implicated parties." It virtually justifies their
being treated as sinners by the allegation that they are considered
sinners. But why consider them sinners any more than treat them
as sinners when they had, as he says, "no share in the offence V —
Vide subsequent statements.

120 THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION
sin of Adam is legally counted to them, and hence it
becomes 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 imputation of
Adam's sin to the race is something different from
visiting the consequences of that sin upon the race ;
and, secondly, that this imputation — admitting the
difference contended for — lays a justifiable ground for
inflicting the punishment of that sin upon the race. If
either premiss 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 consequences 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 its
consequences, are different things ; yet, if the former
be not a justifiable ground of the latter, — if, on the
contrary, it needs itself to be justified, and so con
stitutes the very thing to be accounted for, — it is
evident that the statement involves the logical fallacy
of non causa pro causa ; or, in other words, that it
seeks to evince the equity of one transaction, 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 sub-

explained, 121
sequent reflection 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 individual judicially as a
sinful or a righteous man, — and is not, as I allow is
commonly imagined, a previous step merely to his
being so treated. To punish a man, or rather to lay
upon him what are really the penal results of trans
gression — though it may be not his own — is not
indeed literally, but it is practically, to make him a
wicked man ; i. e. 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 punish
ment 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 Hebrew verb, jrch, 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 condemnation or punishment.
To pass sentence upon any one is to make him
wicked. And hence this verb, in the Hiphil con
jugation, means, frequently at least, to condemn. 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

122 THE NATURE OF IMPUTATION
time ago,1 the following passage, which I crave leave
to quote, occurs in support of the important statement
that to impute sin or righteousness to an individual,
means to treat him as a sinful or a righteous man.
In Numbers xviii. 27, 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, following expression, " 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 uncircumcision keep the righte
ousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision
be counted for circumcision ?" (Rom. ii. 26.) 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 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 (imputed of him) strangers ?" i. e.
' Lectures on Sovereignty, &c. pp. 259, 260.

EXPLAINED. 123
not reckoned strangers, but treated as such; since
they immediately add, " for he hath 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, but making atonement, (2 Cor. v. 19.)
" Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not
impute sin ; " i. e. not inflict punishment on account
of it, (Rom. iv. 8.)
Further confirmation, also, of the same scriptural
usus loquendi, may be 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 literally rendered,
" thou shalt make it sin," (Numb. viii. 12.) Again,
from the case of Miriam, recorded in the 12th chapter
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 consequence of sin was putting 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 show
that, in scriptural phraseology, to impute sin or
righteousness 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

124 STATEMENTS OF FULLER.
sin-offering for us. He counts the Saviour's righteous
ness to us, by treating us as if we possessed it. There
are not two steps in this latter process — or, indeed,
in the former; there is one only. There is not, I
humbly conceive, the intermediate process conceived
and spoken of by many excellent writers,1 — the process
1 As by the late Mr. Fuller, for instance, who thus explains the
language of the Apostle : " He hath made him to be sin for us who
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 pas
sage to the sin-offering under the law, but not to its being made a
sacrifice. There were two things," he adds, " belonging to this 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 con
fessing over it their transgressions, and which is called putting them
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 to the
thing itself, just as our being made righteous, expresses what was
preparatory to God's bestowing upon us eternal life." — Vol. IV.
p. 88.
The fluctuation of Mr. Fuller's views, on this point, is somewhat
remarkable. At a later period, he expressed an opinion in perfect
agreement with the doctrine I have maintained. His words are
these : " In what sense, then, was our sin imputed to Christ, or how
was he made sin 1 Surely not by a participation of it, for he is ex
pressly said in the same passage to have known no sin. God did not
judge him to be the sinner, for his judgments are according to truth.
The whole seems to have been, that for wise and gracious ends he was
treated as though he had been the sinner, and the greatest sinner in
the world.
" 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

SOURCE OF ANTINOMIANISM. 125
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 were ours, in consequence of the
infinite complacency with which the Father of mercy
contemplates it, as furnishing an honourable basis for
the extension of pardon to the guilty. My conviction
is strong that this conceived intermediate process —
the offspring of systematic theology — is the fountain
to which are to be traced many of the mistakes, and
all the absurdities and abominations, of Antinomianism.
Let a man but conceive himself in possession, 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 recollect that the righteousness of the
surety remains in himself, — 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
holy excellence of Christ is so ours that we cease to be unworthy, and
are deserving of eternal life. The whole 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, worthy, or meritorious."
He subjoins to this statement — the influence of old views dis
turbing, in some measure, these newly-formed ones — " Since writing
the above, however, I have some doubts whether imputation consists
in treatment. Bather is it not the ground of treatment 1 " — as, he
adds, he had formerly represented it.

126 IMPUTATION OF SIN TO THE INNOCENT
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 harmonize with his character and state, — and
that the system of presumption and licentiousness, to
which we have alluded, 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
usus loquendi of scripture, that the imputation of
Adam's sin to the race is not otherwise to be regarded
than as the legal visitation upon the race of the con
sequences of that sin. God imputes 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 present 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 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 consequences of his trans
gression. Whether this legal counting of that sin to
the race would afford a sufficient vindication of the
punishment of the race, supposing the imputation

REQUIRES TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. 127
and the punishment were different things, remains to
be examined. It is manifest, however, that I, who
identify 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
premises by the aid of which many excellent writers
seek to explain the fact just referred to, let us now
direct our attention to the other. The consequences
of Adam's transgression 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 federal failure to them, its
consequences, it is thought, could not equitably have
overtaken them. The one is a necessary prerequisite
to the other : and not so merely ; it is a full justi
fication of the other. The Holy One of Israel could
not, they think, have righteously laid the punishment
of Adam's transgression — for they think of it as
punishment — upon the entire human family, unless
he had previously laid the transgression itself upon
them by imputation, — 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

128 IMPUTATION CANNOT JUSTIFY PUNISHMENT.
requiring explanation and even vindication in the
preceding statement. How is it that the writers
referred to do not perceive that the foregoing ex
planation of the matter only drives the difficulty 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 conse
quences 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 hypothesis, or
explanation, that God visits upon them the conse
quences of that sin because he had previously imputed
it to them. Now, conceding, for the sake of argu
ment — which, however, we have denied — that there
is a broad line of demarcation between the impu
tation of sin and the punishment of sin, I would
ask whether no difficulty is involved in the pre
ceding statement ? If it be contrary to equity to
punish 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 impos-
1 Thus writes Dr. Dick : — " They became guilty through his
guilt, which is imputed to them, so that they are treated as if they
had personally broken the covenant." " It is not satisfactory to
say, that they are treated as sinners, although they are not really

PROPER EXPLANATION OF THE FACTS. 129
sible for him to do either the one or the other. Now,
if both stand in the category of inadmissible sup
positions, it is obviously absurd to plead the one in
vindication of the other ; — to allege, that is, that God
may righteously visit the consequences of Adam's
transgression upon the race, because he imputes his
sin to the race. The argument, 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, notwithstanding this, He con
siders them (such is the hypothesis) as having done
it; he imputes 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

such, because the question naturally follows, ' How can they be
justly treated as sinners, if they are not guilty ? ' and the question
is unanswerable." — Theology, vol. ii. p. 393.
Perhaps so, I might say to this most respectable, but far too
systematic writer, yet it would be in harmony with facts of every
day occurrence. I would also request an answer to the following
question, " How can guilt be imputed to them if they have com
mitted no sin V Consistency requires Dr. Dick to adopt the
•Augustinian notion of union ; and then — the sin being their own —
guilt may of course be imputed, and punishment inflicted. But I
should fear this would be striking upon Scylla, in the effort to escape
Charybdis. K

130 OUR SINS IMPUTED TO CHRIST
consequences of Adam's sin, I confess my mind has
received a different constitution.1
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 con
clusion will be pressed upon me, that, if our sins
could be righteously placed to his account, the sin of
Adam may be righteously placed to ours, and so
bring down upon us the consequences to which that
sin exposed himself. Now, deferring for the present
the reply I am entitled to make, and which I cer
tainly shall shortly make, viz. that there is no dis
tinction, as I think it has been, proved between the

1 " And how are we helped, as to the real difficulties of the case
by the theory either of Edwards or of Turrettine 1 When a sin is
counted to be ours 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 fic
titious unity, which contradicts both consciousness and matter of
fact, reconcile us any better to the mystery of our native depravity t
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 substan
tial evil. Why not remain content with the simple declaration of the
apostle, that Adam's disobedience has been a cause of making his
posterity sinners, and leave the modus in quo by which this is
effected where he has left it, viz. without attempting to assign the
specific manner of operation, certainly without attempting to intro
duce a mere legal fiction, of which the sacred writers have given us
no example V — Stuart on the Romans, p. 589.

WITH HIS CONSENT. 131
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 other. Our blessed Lord
consented to have our sins imputed to him — whether
imputation mean here the taking upon himself of the
legal responsibility for our sins, not the culpa, or
blameworthiness, but the reatus, or legal answer-
ableness, according to systematic terminology — or
the punishment 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 sub
stitute 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 charter, suspending the permanent
enjoyment of certain sovereign 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 per
manent enjoyment by us, than if we had been
x2

132 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE IMPUTATION
required, as we must have been, to secure them by
personal obedience. But, if this important point be
lost sight of, — if we be not viewed merely as char
tered 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 failure),
and imputes it to us as a preparatory step to his
inflicting punishment upon us, and as the justi
fication of that punishment, — then, I say, I acknow
ledge that," in this supposed 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 per
petuate that opinion, in the present 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 Saviour, 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
offer 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

OF SIN AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 133
the infliction of punishment upon us, when we did
not consent to be thus responsible for his sin ? If
the question should appear to any to press too nearly
upon the border of that which is unhallowed 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 difference, in this
point of view, between the imputation of obedience,
and of transgression, 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 the part of those others,
appears to me necessary in the case of transgression,
but 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 manifes
tation 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 will, thinks it necessary to obtain
his friend's consent to leave him a handsome bequest.
But the case is different with regard to transgression.
Here there cannot be a transfer of the legal answer-
ableness of which we are now speaking, and of conse
quent punishment, — a transfer from A to B, without

134 HOW THE CONSEQUENCES OF ADAM's SIN
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 responsibility. Now, the eating
of the forbidden fruit was the act of Adam — 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 conduct,
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 impu
tation (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 sin to the race, and the visiting of its conse
quences upon the race, were totally distinct things, I
could not, for the reasons assigned, regard such impu
tation — for which no sufficient reason is alleged — as a
sufficient ground for the death and ruin of the race.
I believe, however, that they are not distinct things,
but the same thing, — that the infliction of death upon
the race — in both of the senses assigned to it — is the
imputation of Adam's sin to the race ; that the impu
tation of sin identifies itself with the punishment of sin

ATTACH TO US. 135
(using the term punishment in a somewhat 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 his federal failure ? The answer
has been repeatedly given, and its truth and import
ance will, it is hoped, after this lengthened inves
tigation, appear more manifest than ever. These
consequences are merely the loss of chartered bless
ings ; 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 punishment
to Adam, but it is not punishment to us. He was
responsible for the act which entailed this awful ruin
upon us ; we were not responsible. He was guilty in
committing 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 his
ingenuity. Every one would, in this case, feel that
the children lose, not what every blameless subject of

136 IMPUTATION IS DIRECT,
the commonwealth has a right to claim from the com
munity, but patent honours, which it reserves to itself,
and should reserve to itself, a right to bestow, or with
hold, 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, in the language of
systematic divines, " immediate and antecedent, and
not mediate and consequent." Before the time of the
great and the 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 belonged.
The controversy was in substance this, — " Whether
we 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 Remonstrants,

NOT MEDIATE, ETC. 137
and the Socinians, who joined in denying that we
"propter lapsum primorum parentum esse reos;"
and of them all he gives the opinion, that, retaining
the name of imputation, they destroy the thing;
" rem ipsam tollentes" are his own words. 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 bene
fits, I do not wonder that the notion of "mediate
and consequent imputation" 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 the
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 sen
tence which dooms them to suffer death. This
seems to have been the opinion of Dr. Dwight.1 It
1 It must, also, be acknowledged that this seems to have been the
opinion of Calvin. In his commentary on Eom. v. 17, he says,

138 STATEMENTS OF CALVIN.
was certainly the opinion of Dr. Hopkins. " By
Adam's sinning all men," he says, " were made sin
ners" — " by a Divine constitution, there is a certain
connexion between the first sin of Adam, and the
sinfulness of his posterity, so that, if he sinned and
fell under condemnation, they, in consequence 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
dangerous tendency. They leave the existence of
depravity itself unaccounted for (the radical defect
which seems to me to pervade most of the statements
of the New Light American School of Theology) ;
and so, indeed, must all statements 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
" There are two differences 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 Adas, non per solam impu-
tationem damnamur, acsi alieni peccali exigeretur a nobis poena ; sed
ideo poenam ejus sustinemus quia et cnLPjs sumus rei, quatenus
scilicet natura nostra in ipso vitiata, iniquitatis reatu obstringitur
apud Deum.'' In the sin of Adam we are condemned, not by impu
tation merely, as if punishment were exacted of us for another's sin ;
but we undergo the punishment because we are chargeable with its
criminality ; since our nature, being vitiated in him, stands charge
able before God with criminality.

JUDGMENT OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 139
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, speaking lies." Exposure to this
loss — the privative source of all original and all actual
sin — is the condemning judgment which the Apostle
Paul tells us has come upon all men ; and, it deserves
especial observation, that he represents this judgment,
not as falling upon them on account of inherent de
pravity, but as the consequence of the one offence of
the first man. " Through the offence of one, many,"
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
judgment expressed by the General Assembly of the
American Presbyterian Church, in the case of one
of their ministers, who seems to have adopted the
sentiments of Dr. Hopkins. " The transferring of
personal sin or righteousness," says that document,
" has never been held by Calvinistic divines, nor by
any person in our Church, as far as is known to us.
But, with regard to Mr. Balsh's doctrine of original
sin, it is to be observed, 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 already

140 JUDGMENT OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
¦possessed, 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.

LECTURE 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 en
joyed 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 personally,
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 the 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

142 THE EFFECT OF THE FALL
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 depravity, is not the cause, 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 consequences of Adam's
transgression. It might, then, seem proper, and,
indeed, would be so, to include the legal withholding
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 consider —
II. The Effects of the Fall upon the native
Character of Man.
In treating upon this most important and difficult
subject, 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 revela
tion, and with all just views of moral science, give a
repulsive aspect to the Divine character and admini
stration. Upon the whole, it may, perhaps, be most
expedient to attempt, in 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.

ON THE CHARACTER OF MAN. 143
We 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 denomi
nated, 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 influence, or power,
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 actual ex
tinction, — 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 threaten
ing may be thus paraphrased. " If you eat the for
bidden 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 depraved
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

144 SPIRITUAL death was not
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 nothing but wrong and
depraved feeling ? Now, is it possible 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. Pre
vious 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 melancholy 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, gave
place to darkness, enmity, terror, and despair ! Now,
I would ask if it can be conceived that this melan
choly 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 con
dition, 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

INFLICTED BY GOD. 145
by the Creator? — by the very being who had im
planted it? The supposition is equally self-contra
dictory 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 execution ; 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
L

146 SPIRITUAL DEATH
Spirit would penally withdraw from the soul of Adam,
in 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 abandonment of the
soul of Adam which would infallibly issue in it ; in
the penal withdrawment of the support of spiritual
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 influence of the Holy Spirit, — one of the
chartered blessings which, as we have seen,1 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 expressed opinion of
one of the most enlightened and able theologians of
the present day, my old and valued friend, the
Rev. 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
1 Vide p. 63.

¦ NOT INFLICTED BY GOD. 147
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 regards 'depravity of heart, is
not properly inflicted as the direct punishment of
sin. In the very act of sinning man became spiritually
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
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 distin
guished from sin itself, which is its cause." And
having defined spiritual death as consisting in the
privation of rectitude and enjoyment, 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
depravity, the effect of Divine infliction, God would
be the author of sin. Man sank into spiritual death
by his own delinquency, 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 authoritative injunction,
or by positive influence, would at once be absurd in
itself, and impious in its tendency, as implying a
charge against God."1
The following statements, also, by another writer,
inferior in authority to Dr. Russell, are still eminently
1 Russell on the Adamic Dispensation, pp. 180 — 182.
L 2

148 STATEMENTS OF HOPKINS.
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 threat
ened when God said, ' Thou shalt surely die.' This
is evident in that it cannot be the evil that sin de
serves, or the proper punishment of it." " Sin and
rebellion," he adds, " cannot be the .proper matter of
a threatening as a punishment of transgression, 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 apunishment, and not the punishment threatened.
The punishment of sin cannot be sin itself; for to
suppose this is to confound the crime and punish
ment, 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 moral evil, is natural
evil, or pain and suffering, and this alone can be the
proper matter of a threatening."1
It is, then, I think, sufficiently apparent that the
threatening 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 sinner — as the punishment of your sin ;"
for, as Dr. Hopkins very forcibly observes, " The
punishment of sin cannot be sin itself." To identify
the crime and its punishment is a monstrous anomaly.
The crime, against which the threatening was issued,
was taking the forbidden fruit.. In the act of taking
it, Adam died, i.e. spiritually; but he died, in this
1 Hopkins's System of Doctrines, vol. i. pp. 234, 235.

THE CHANGE IN THE MIND OF ADAM. 149
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 dis
tinct from this, — something which God inflicted upon
him, and not something which he brought upon him
self. It must have been the penal withdrawment of
the Holy Spirit, whose influences are the source of
all that is spiritually good in the mind of man ; — a
withdrawment involving a practical abandonment 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 terminated in the utter extinc
tion of all spiritual and holy feeling in the mind of
Adam. It may not be impossible to trace the pro
gress of deterioration, and a review of its successive
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 moment. But, when the thought
of disobedience had entered, — had been contem
plated,— and had produced the determination to dis
obey — as the external manifestation of which he took
and ate the fruit — that authority must have been
entirely subverted. Previous to this moment, there

150 PROCESS OF DETERIORATION
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 faithfully and efficiently. The rightful authority
of God over him, — his manifest and imperative obli
gation to obey all his commands, — the propriety and
mercifulness of the test to which his fidelity had been
subjected, had all been forgotten in the moment of
temptation; but the moment after, they were dis
tinctly remembered ' and powerfully 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 followed by shame, and shame by 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;"1 becoming each succeeding moment
1 The " cool" of the day, — literally the " wind" of the day, i. 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 arrival of
the Divine presence on the top of the mountain. Now, a voice
which strengthens, frequently does so — as on the present occasion —
on account of its approach. And a voice which approaches, may be,

IN THE MIND OF ADAM. 151
more audible, till, alarmed beyond endurance by a
sound which till this moment they had never heard
without exulting 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 under
standing, as well as open a fountain of depravity in
the heart. Finally, fear strengthened itself into despair,
and was followed 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 impenitence
and despair hardened it. Enmity 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
not unnaturally, said to walk. Thus the voice of God walked.
Every breeze brought a new and more audible token of the Divine
approach.

152 SPIRITUAL DEATH
upon the mind and character of Adam, till sin, being
finished, had brought forth death, that no step, in the
lapse from spiritual 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 extinguished, 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, can be conceived of as put forth to prompt
to disobedience. Adam chose to disobey. How
the wrong volition originated, in a perfectly holy
mind, has been the crux crucis of speculative theolo
gians 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 neces
sary consequences of disobedience. " 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 prevent their descent.

NOT INFLICTED UPON HIM. 153
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 interpo
sition of mercy, he would have remained an eternal
enemy against God, we shall find that there was not,
as some imagine, any infliction of 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 with
drew 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
question, "Was spiritual death inflicted, properly
speaking, upon Adam ?" we advance to that most
important inquiry which regards its nature. What
precise ideas are 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
nature, positive or privative f Did it consist in some
unholy substance infused into his mind, as the punish
ment 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

154 IS NATIVE DEPRAVITY
prolific spring of unholy feelings and actions? — or is
it to be sought for in his deprivation of those positive
holy principles 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,
i. e. conceive that the total depravity which is rightly
predicated of the mind of Adam, after his melancholy
lapse, is to be regarded as a positive principle of evil.
The supposition 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
consideration, would foster the tendency we observe
among men to think of sin in them as something
separate and different from themselves, — having opera
tions of its own, distinct from the operations of their
own minds; forgetting 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 perver
sion of the Apostle's language, casting the blame of
their evil deeds upon the sin that dwelleth in them.
It is, therefore, of great importance to remember

POSITIVE OR PRIVATIVE ? 155
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 ascendency
acquired and exercised by the inferior principles of
his nature (all good, let it be remembered, in them
selves ; and good or right in their exercise, when
controlled by love to God and man), in consequence
of the loss of superior principles, summarily compre
hended 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 perma
nently 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 with
drawn 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 was coeval with his existence
itself. The permanent possession of the Holy Spirit's
presence and influence was, however, rendered a con
ditional blessing. It was suspended on the perform
ance of the condition of the charter. With the
violation of that condition the blessing was with
drawn. The Spirit left the soul of man. The higher
principles of his nature fell, and became obliterated.

156 STATEMENTS OF EDWARDS
The inferior obtained the ascendency ; and, yielding
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 ungodliness to a privative cause, I pro
fess to lay before the reader the unanimous judgment
of the Church of God at large on this point. Many
writers avow opinions considerably 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
possessed 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

ON THIS POINT. 157
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, summarily compre
hended 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 ad
verted to by President Edwards. The late Dr.
Williams designates the inferior, as " those faculties
in man which constituted him a moral agent ;" and
the superior, as " that Divine benevolent sovereign
influence, which," as he says, " 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 im
portance. What I wish especially 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
change was not superinduced by the infusion of some
positive taint into his nature, — some actual principle
or spring of depravity, forming a source of depraved
moral feeling and action, of itself, and distinct alto-

158 POSITIVE EVIL MAY SPRING
gether from the general elements of his constitution.
He ascribes the whole of the mighty moral mischief
to the ascendency which the inferior principles could
not fail to obtain, and exercise, when left uncurbed,
and thoroughly uncontrolled, by the extinction of
the higher principles, which, while they existed, kept
them in check, guided their action, and only per
mitted their development, when such development
would secure any of the purposes intended to be
accomplished by their implantation in the mind.
" When the superior principles 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 prin
ciples ; having no superior principles to regulate or
control them, they became absolute masters of the
heart. The immediate consequence was a fatal
catastrophe, a turning of all things upside down,
and the succession of a state of the most odious and
dreadful confusion. Man immediately set up himself,
and the objects of his private affections and appetites,
as supreme, and so they took the place of God.
His love to his own 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

FROM A PRIVATIVE CAUSE. 159
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 immediately arises enmity in the
heart, now wholly under the power of self-love, and
nothing but war ensues in a constant course against
God."1 I have quoted this long and most memorable and
important 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 secondly, to obviate a diffi
culty which is fancied by some to embarrass the
opinion that actual, and active, and practical enmity
against God, and determined opposition to his au
thority, and government, can possibly spring from a
privative cause. Ex nihilo nihil fit 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 univer
sally apply; — that, when the commands of God are
directly and strongly opposed to all the native pro
pensities of the heart, though these propensities
should not be evil per se, they will certainly, without
a counteracting principle, kindle enmity against him,
1 Vide Edwards's Works, vol. ii. pp. 336, 337.

160 ORIGINAL SIN NOT POSITIVE,
even where no feeling of the kind had previously
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 cor
ruption 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 neces
sary 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
upright being, every depraved disposition of heart
might spring, and if it actually did spring, from a
privative cause, why should not such a cause be
thought sufficient to account 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 testimony, which
will afterwards be considered — is the entire and
universal corruption of man. No extraneous circum
stances, — no supposed influence of time, opportunity,
example, temptation, &c. will solve the phenomenon.
There must be allowed to be something in man
tending to corruption, or the fact, that in all ages, and
places, and circumstances, man has been a sinner,
will remain unaccounted for. But, when we have

BUT PRIVATE MERELY. 161
thus reached the conclusion that the cause is in man,
the important question 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 facul
ties, and leading to the sinful development of these
faculties ? Or does it flow from the natural and
certain operation of the inferior, and especially the
animal, properties of our 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 thus : 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 sup
port 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 sufficient 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
M

162 ORIGINAL SIN NOT A TAINT, ETC.
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 something to belong to the doctrine ob
jected against, as maintained by the divines whom
he (Dr. Taylor) is opposing, which does not belong
to it, nor follow from it. As, particularly, he sup
poses the doctrine of original sin to imply that
nature must be corrupted by some positive influence ;
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 dispositions of our souls ; that sin and evil
dispositions are implanted in the foetus in the womb.
Whereas, truly, our doctrine neither implies nor infers
any such thing. In order to account for a sinful
corruption 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 creature ; or of supposing that man is conceived
and born with a fountain of evil in his heart, such
as is anything properly positive. 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

STATEMENTS OF EDWARDS  HODGE. 163
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, without any positive influence at all ; and that
it was thus, in fact, that corruption of nature came on
Adam, immediately 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 " deprivation,2 and not depravation," I refer
to the following authorities. I borrow my first state
ment from Dr. Hodge, Professor of Biblical Litera
ture 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 call it death, which is the general name by
which any penal evil is expressed. It is not, how
ever, the doctrine of the Scriptures, nor of the
Reformed Churches, nor," he adds, " of our standards,
that the corruption of nature of which they speak,
1 Vol. ii. pp. 330, 331.
2 Vide Watson's Theological Lectures.
" Augustine, having once been a Manichsean, well understood
their error and guarded against it," says the translator of Wiggers,
" and even charges the Pelagians with running into it." " The
Manichseans," says he, " 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 substance, not an accident of substance."
M 2

164 STATEMENTS OF HODGE,
is any depravation of the soul, or an essential attri
bute, or the infusion of any positive evil. ' Original
sin,' as Bretschneider says, as the confessions of the
Reformers 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, and by that defect the ten
dency to sin, or corrupt disposition, or corruption of
nature, is occasioned. Though they speak of original
sin as being first negative, i. e. the loss of righteous
ness; and secondly, positive, or corruption of nature;
yet by the latter is to be understood, they state, not
the infusion of anything in itself sinful, but an actual
tendency or disposition to evil, resulting from the
loss of righteousness."1
Again : " 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 susceptibilities, dispositions, or ten
dencies to certain modes of acting, or to objects out
of itself, if destitute of the governing tendency or
disposition to holiness and God, it has, of course, a
tendency to self-gratificaton 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.
1 Hodge on Rom. pp. 229, 230, 8vo. edition.

TURRETTINE, BELLAMY. 165
The great Turrettine, treating of the creation of
the soul, says that, though it was created spotless,
it is yet destitute of original righteousness, as a punish-
of Adam's first sin. To illustrate this, he proceeds
to distinguish between what he calls " animam
puram," " impuram," " et non puram." " That may
be said to be pure" he adds, " which is adorned with
an habitual tendency towards holiness ; impure, which
has a contrary tendency towards injustice ; not pure,
which, although it has no actual good tendency, has
no bad tendency (i. e. of a positive 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." 2
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 own wills. For we, being born
devoid of the Divine image, ignorant of God, and
insensible of his infinite glory, do of our own 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 which is spiritually good, and inclined to all sin.
* Vide Questio 12 De Pr'opagatione Peccati, p. 708.

166 STATEMENTS OF HOWE,
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 which He himself had corrupted ? It is a great
wickedness 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 light; and that justly, because
Adam lost those gifts for himself and his posterity."
From approved and eminent writers of our own
country, I select the following statements. " The
whole nature of sin," says the great Howe, " consist
ing only in a defect, no other cause need be designed
of it than a defective ; that is, an understanding, will,
and inferior powers, however 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 positivum est vel pri-
mum, vel a primo, — all positive existence is either first,
or from the first. And that of Dionysius the Areo-
pagite is an ingenious one : he argues that no being can
be evil per 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

WILLIAMS, HARRIS. 167
might well enough be the cause of it ; i. e. the deficient
cause."1 " There is reason to fear," says the late Dr. Wil
liams, " that many besides Dr. Taylor have imbibed a
notion of original sin considerably different from what
is here asserted," — 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,
corruption, 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, discord, confusion, and the
like. We do not mean" adds Dr. Williams, " to con
demn the use of the former, or to recommend the latter,
to their exclusion ; but only design to caution against
a wrong inference from a frequent use of them."
Similar remarks are made by the late Dr. Harris of
Hoxton, now Highbury College. " Some persons,
seduced perhaps by false, or, at best, by inadequate
analogies, have entertained a notion, that natural and
hereditary 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
1 Man's Creation in a holy but mutable State. Works, p. 134.

168 STATEMENTS OF GILBERT,
no satisfactory solution, and many individuals have
been driven to scepticism in the very face of Divine
testimony. That human depravity will produce per
sonal transgression, whenever life continues till moral
agency commences, appears to be unquestionable;
but to conceive of original sin as including a positive
propensity to moral evil, seems unwarranted by the
Scriptures, unsupported by fact, and even a contra
diction in terms ; for a propensity to moral evil is
evidently a personal transgression, which, according to
such an hypothesis, is conceived of as committed by a
being personally innocent, and even as . yet incapable
of moral agency." l
I conclude this list of authorities by the statements
of two living writers, one of them a former Congrega
tional 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 qualifications of a moral agent ; or other
wise he sins without a capacity to sin. That there
is in infants that which renders it inevitably certain
that, as soon as they are capable of acting, they will
sin, I have already proved. What there is more than
this, I cannot conceive."2
1 Pamphlet on Infant Salvation.
2 Gilbert's Reply ;to Bennet, pp. 51 and 55.

AND OF RUSSELL.'

169

The language of Dr. Russell of Dundee is as follows :
— " As God dealt with Adam as a public head, so he
deals with his posterity as if they had sinned in him ;
and, therefore, 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 esta
blished 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 principles of their nature, and so becoming
wholly corrupt. Their faculties themselves are de
rived 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 produced in all cases when
life, continues till moral agency commences, and as
soon as it does so."1
In the preceding quotations it will be seen that
Dr. Russell speaks of the " corrupt bent" 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."
3 Russell on the Adamic Dispensation, pp. 56, 57.

170 STRICTURES ON THE PHRASEOLOGY
I scarcely think that either of those statements ex
presses the real facts of the case ; and I somewhat
fear that both — if they are to be understood 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 seem
to ascribe a positive nature to original sin, and at the
very moment, too, when he affirms that nature to be
privative ; for surely " an actual tendency or disposi
tion to evil," though it should result merely from the
loss of righteousness, is something positive. Dr. Rus
sell'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 development ; but what
can be meant by a 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, on 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 employed are not the best vehicle for
conveying this sentiment.
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

OF DR. RUSSELL.

171

bounties of Paradise. They were found in Adam
after the fall ; — not, as I think, and as it may after
wards 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 paradisaical state
of man ; there is nothing but reason and conscience,
both of them enfeebled by sin, to secure subjection 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 they continue to triumph till Divine grace
recreates that holy principle which originally held them
in subjection, and which is capable even now of bring
ing them under habitual control. The phraseology
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 inti
mate the simple fact that these principles do actually
lead men into sin, by inciting them to seek to gratify
them, when 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 some
what loosely and incorrectly, I think, a corrupt or
sinful tendency. But the fact that the inferior and
animal principles 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

172 THE PRINCIPLES OF OUR NATURE
that any change has taken place in the principles
themselves, — that there is any augmentation of their
power, any alteration of their tendency ; 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 tendency
to any principle implanted by himself. The tendency
of all the active or positive principles of our nature
— of even the inferior and animal ones — must be to
good, because they are the creation of God. Such
must have been their tendency originally ; such it is
now. There is no positive 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 inferior prin
ciples of our nature may, as we have seen, lead us into
sin ; they too frequently do this, but they were not
implanted for the purpose 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 appetite of hunger, for instance, to
lead us to take food, not to make gluttons of our
selves. Intemperate indulgence is the result of the
lack of higher principles, which would have confined
the action of appetite within the bounds of modera
tion. 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

IMPEL TO ACT, NOT TO SIN. 173
accurate. Properly speaking, there is no positive ten
dency 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
principles, to which Doctors Russell and Hodge refer,
are principles 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 principles
to control and regulate them.1
1 " There is no passion, properly so called, and considered in itself,
as belonging to man, which is absolutely sinful in the abstracted
nature of it ; all the works of God are good. But if passion be let
loose on an improper object; or in an improper time or degree, or for
too long a continuance, then it becomes criminal, and obtains some
times 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 with
the vices of the will, it becomes sinful also." — Watts's Works, Bar-
field's Edit. vol. ii. p. 603. Vide also vol. i. pp. 753, 754.
" The desires of men are not in themselves, and abstractedly con
sidered, sinful ; for they are deep laid in the 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 con
stitution of man makes it necessary that everything which makes an
agreeable impression on the senses should inevitably awaken corre
spondent desires. The poor man who sees himself surrounded with

174 NEED OF THE INFERIOR PRINCIPLES.
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 pas
sions, 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 treasures of another, feels a natural and involuntary desire to
possess them. The mere rising of this desire is no more punishable
in him than it was in Eve, when she saw the tree, and felt an impulse
to 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) when he
seeks occasions to awaken the desires after forbidden things, and to
entertain himself with them ; (d) when he gives audience and ap
probation to these desires, and justifies, seeks, and performs the sins
to which he is inclined. This is followed by the twofold injury, that
he not only sins for this once, but that he gives his appetites and
passions the power of soliciting him a second time more importunately,
of becoming more vehement and irresistible ; so that he becomes con
tinually more disposed to sin, acquires a fixed habit of sinning, and
at last becomes the slave of sin." — Knapp, p. 256.

NONE PROMPT TO SIN. 175
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 principle would
be in itself, in its own abstract nature, a bad and an
unholy principle, — a principle which could not, con
sequently, be implanted by God, and which yet
could not have sprung from any other cause ; — for
every positive principle, i.e. every thing that has real
existence, or entity, in the phraseology of our older
writers, must be from God. Hence Augustine him
self, how inconsistent soever the denial may have
been with some other of his statements, was com
pelled to deny that there is anything of a positive
nature in original sin.1 He had, at one time, been
a Manichasan, 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 advantage of his denial that it
proceeded from God, accused him of still leaning of
necessity to the views of Manes. Augustine replied
in the following manner : — " Julian speaks as if one
had said that some substance (aliquid substantias)
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
1 Vide Wiggers's Presentation, pp. 100 — 102.

176 STATEMENTS OF AUGUSTINE.
nature; and, by persuading, has corrupted it." He
elsewhere declares, " that original sin is not a sub
stance, 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 bodiLv 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 else
where, " 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 substance, not an accident of
substance." The remark of Augustine, that evil is not a sub
stance, 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 creature of God, its essential nature is privative,
not positive. It is not a thing, but the lack of a
thing. Innate depravity is the privation of original
righteousness. It is the state of a soul from which
the Spirit of God has penally withdrawn, which is

STRICTURES ON DR. HODGE. 177
destitute of spiritual life, and abandoned 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. There 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 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 be conveyed is at
once admitted, and will hereafter be established ; but
the words seem to imply more. Or, again, if it
N

178 NO POSITIVE PRINCIPLE
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 disposed 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 appetite
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 abandon
ment 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

DESIGNED TO LEAD TO SIN. 179
controlled 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 depravity, by so representing it as to
convey the notion that it is any thing positive in its
nature — " something," to adopt Jonathan Edwards's
words, " by some means or other, infused 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 dis
positions 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 prin
ciples, will certainly be followed by the total cor
ruption of the heart, without occasion for any positive
influence at all."
In the course of this somewhat extended investi
gation 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 pro
perly 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
prima 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
n 2

180 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW
onus probandi upon those who maintain the latter
notion. I am not obliged to disprove the assertion
that native depravity is a substance — some positive,
unholy tendency, or bias, or tincture, added to the
nature of man ; but my opponent is bound to prove
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. Russell, " express this
principle of inbred sin, with reference to its origin,
by words of a privative form. Such terms as ' un
holy,' ' ungodly,' and ' unrighteous,' 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 Testaments,
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 Rev. Richard Watson, a deprivation rather
than a depravation ; but a deprivation invariably
leading, unless the grace of God prevent, to a de
pravation, — 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 re
commended by the following considerations, to

OF ORIGINAL SIN. 181
which I would call the especial attention of the
reader. In the first place, it clearly shows that Jehovah is
not the author of sin. On the contrary, the hypo
thesis that native depravity is a real entity — a sub
stance, or thing, and not the absence of a thing,
involves all who maintain it in the greatest embar
rassment in regard to its origin. By God, in the
person of the Son, all things 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 positive nature, i.e. that it
is a substance or thing, how can it be truly denied
that its creator was God ? All the positive propensi
ties 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. Russell, in a statement which it is impossible
to improve, " originates 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 con
sidered the author of sin. It is one thing to infuse

182 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW
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 sup
posed to envelop the question concerning the trans
mission of sin from our fallen head to us.1 In the
whole circle of theological science, no question, it is
generally thought, more embarrassing 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 cor
ruption 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 con
clusion, because it resolves into principles of which
we are totally ignorant." " If we say, with some
sects of Christians, ' animam esse ex traduce '2 — that
1 The language of Pictet, in expressing his sense of the difficulty,
is somewhat amusing. " Difficillima sane qusestio est," he says, " in
quii enodanda sudarunt semper theologi, et sudabunt semper, nee
unquam sibi satisfacere poterunt ; et nemo est qui cum Augustino
discere non cogatur : ' Quid verum sit libentius disco, quam dico, ne
audeam discere quod nescio.' " — Picteti 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.
2 Augustine seems to have wavered somewhat on this point.
Against the opinion expressed by Pictet, " Nos non trahere animam

OF ORIGINAL SIN.

183

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
successively 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 commenced, 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 concerning the
transmission of depravity, they are questions con
cerning the manner of the fact, not concerning the
fact itself; and, therefore, if the Scriptures, if expe
rience 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 Scrip
tures," he adds, " from which we infer that a general
corruption pervades the posterity of Adam, intimate
that it is transmitted by natural generation ; but
a parentibus, sed a Deo, ut illud docet turn Scriptura, turn recta
ratio ;" Augustine argues thus, " Si anima ex traduce non est, sed
sola caro habet traducem peccati, sola ergo psenam meretur. Injus-
tum est enim, ut hodie nata anima non ex massa Adae tarn antiquum
peccatum portet alienum."

184 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW
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 de
veloped 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 uncontrolled by Divine grace — is itself
merely a privative cause, a want or defect, it is not
a little surprising that this 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 posterity
are destitute of them ? Having forfeited that Divine
influence which constitutes the actual support of all
positive 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 holi
ness 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,
1 Vide Hill's Theological Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 380-2.

OF ORIGINAL SIN. 185
and superadded to it, that gives to the question con
cerning its transmission all the difficulty in which it
appears to be involved. 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 successively created
at the proper period by God, and connected, according
to a general law, with an organized material frame,
how can we conceive that an actual or positive pro
pensity 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 idea is to me preposterous, blasphemous.
I could 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
Adam originally ; it did not exist in the Saviour. It
is, as every one admits, an acquired property ; it had
its origin with the fall. Now, acquired properties,
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 transmit his wrathfulness, because it depends on

186 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW
bodily or mental constitution ; but he does not pro
pagate his mastery over it : that is the result of prin
ciple and effort. Adam sank into depravity, when
he violated the condition of the covenant ; but his
depravity, being not a natural but an acquired pro
perty, was not transmissible by the laws of propa
gation. 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 de
pravity. God penally withdrew his Spirit from Adam
when he took the forbidden fruit ; he penally with
holds 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 understand;"
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 through a
family for many generations." But I imagine that
these facts afford him very little assistance, because
they may all be accounted for by differences of mate
rial organization — on which much of what we call
character, or disposition, depends ; whereas original
depravity cleaves to the soul.
Besides, what, after all, is meant by saying that the

OF ORIGINAL SIN. 187
soul is " ex traduce ?" If the expression be.intended
to intimate that one created being actually communi
cates 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 mate
rialism. 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 pro
perties 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
nature of original sin presents a clear and obvious
justification of the Divine conduct towards us, the
posterity of our chartered head. We lose certain

188 RECOMMENDATIONS OF THIS VIEW
invaluable blessings by his disobedience ; but they
were chartered blessings, — blessings to which we had
no claim, — of which God may leave us destitute
without doing us any wrong. We enter upon exist
ence 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 accounta
bility, so do we. We are not, as it appears to me,
regarded and treated by God as personally responsible
and liable to punishment on account of this desti
tution of righteousness ; but we are held responsible,
as Adam was, when he had lost his primeval rectitude,
for all our voluntary 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 condemnation, and that so
many of their number will perish for ever. The fall
of Adam can in no way bring final condemnation 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 developed by the want of original right-

OF ORIGINAL SIN. 189
eousness ; 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 chartered 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 punishment 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 misconduct, be directly exposed
to the loss of the benefits enjoyed 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 another, 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 government.

190 ITS PRIVATIVE NATURE.
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 sufficient 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.

LECTURE V.
EXAMINATION OP AUGTOSTINISM AND PELAGIANISM  OP THE HYPOTHESIS
OP DB. WOODS, ANDOVEE.
At the commencement of the preceding investigation
into the nature of native depravity, it was stated that
the views which were to be developed should be put
in the light of contrast with others. To this im
portant 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 subject. There can be no doubt
that the opinions, and contests, and writings of these
celebrated men, have exerted a more powerful influ
ence 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
" original 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

192 AUGUSTINISM AND PELAGIANISM.
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 inap
propriate, perhaps, in the case of Augustine, who
maintained (or imagined) the identity of Adam, and
the race ; though, as on that hypothesis the original
sin is the actual sin of the race, it was not strictly
correct to employ it with the view of drawing a line
of distinction between the two.
In our country, and at the present day, there are
none, I imagine, who fail to recognise the difference
between original and actual sin. Even those who
maintain that it has a positive essence or nature, —
that it is a thing, and not, as I have stated, the
absence of a thing, admit, as far as I know, with
one or two splendid exceptions, especially Dr. Woods,
of Andover, (whose views, at the proper time and
place, will be 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 sinful bias ; though
the term sinful, in this application of it, must bear a
somewhat different meaning from that which attaches
to it when we speak of a sinful action. It may be
further regarded, by the high Augustinians, and, indeed,
is so considered by them, as involving personal blame,
and, of course, as exposing its possessor to punishment,

augustinism; 193
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 ever
lasting torment as the punishment of such sinful bias.
I join my friend, and a former congregational lec
turer, the Rev. Joseph Gilbert, in thinking that " the
man who can really believe this must be wholly per
verted in judgment, and can have no symmetrical
connexion of moral ideas." 1 There is nothing, as it
appears to me, in Divine revelation, — nothing in the
scriptural doctrine of original sin, to sanction such
monstrous statements. And I am anxious that
evangelical truth should be divested of accompani
ments which mar its beauty and obstruct its progress.
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 dis
tinction be made by those who, in harmony with the
statements of these lectures, regard original sin as a
deprivation 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 that this destitution involves no
personal blame — cannot be a just ground of punish
ment, 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,
1 Vide Congregational Lecture, p. 418.
0

194 ORIGINAL SIN IS NOT
we are destined to undergo, — disadvantageous, I
mean, compared with that of Adam when he com
menced 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 repent
ance, 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 confound 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
of one, or, perhaps, both of them, is misconceived.
I am quite free to concede to the celebrated Pro
fessor Moses Stuart, that sin, in the proper sense of
the term, is the transgression of God's law. It is,
correctly speaking, a predicable of man, not of his
nature. There may be a degenerate, — perhaps, we
may add, a depraved nature ; but not a sinful nature.
The phrase, a sinful man, is easily understood, and .

THE BEST DESIGNATION. 195
perfectly correct ; but a sinful nature, is an anomaly
in thought, and a solecism in language. 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, uncontrolled
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 somewhat 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 merely to the best name by which to
designate something in respect to the existence of
which we are all agreed. I prefer the designation,
"native depravity," or, perhaps, "native degene
racy." 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
punishment. 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
o 2

196 PELAGIANISM AND AUGUSTINISM
when it has led into actual and voluntary transgres
sion — 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 any
thing which can be properly called sin, but any bias
or proneness 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 phe
nomena ;: that it is, in all cases, an irregular and for
bidden 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 not exist in
the mind of Adam before his fall. The Pelagians,
however, denied all proneness to sin; and were,
accordingly, constrained to ascribe all the present
wickedness of men to their tendency to imitation,
leaving the bad example,— as we may have further
occasion to observe — by which they suppose them to
1 Vide Mental and Moral Science, by the Author, -pp. 326, 327.

CONTRASTED. 197
have been corrupted, totally unaccounted for. Some
of them, at least, maintained that the sin of Adam in
no way affects us, — that it injured himself only, not
his posterity. And the entire body denied the phy
sical propagation of sin, — the imputation, in any
sense, of Adam's sin to us ; so that they were com
pelled to deny, at all events they did deny, that our
moral condition was at all affected by it, — to main
tain that we are born in the same state in which
Adam was created;2 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
propagation, 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 punishment of the sin ; the cor
ruption 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 consequences 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
' With the difference, at least, that his powers were in a mature
state, and ours not so.

198 CONCERNING
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 propagated among his posterity.
By the sin of Adam, we must understand here,
depravity, — that sin which, as he says, is the punish
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 propagated depravity. Now, if it were right
to speak of propagation 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 righteousness 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 suscepti-

THE PROPAGATION OF SIN. 199
hilities, — 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 he propar
gated 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 propagation of original
sin, or its descent to us by ordinary generation,
was ever permitted to come into use. Conceding
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 phraseo
logy 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 con
stitutional temperament, which rendered sensuality
his easily besetting sin, greatly modified, no doubt
unconsciously to himself, the whole of his modes of
thinking on this subject. Certain it is that he em
ploys language, in reference to the nature and pro
pagation of original sin, which 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

200 STATEMENTS OF AUGUSTINE
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 generation, bringing
original sin along with them ; since the vice propagates
the vice, though God creates nature (vitio propa-
gante 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 regene
ration, propagates by generation the bond of sin to
posterity, if they are not freed from that bond by
regeneration." Finally, he says, " Original sin pro
pagates 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 ob
served is, the tendency of Augustine's mind to con
sider and represent the sexual appetite as being per
se immoral. He calls it "lust," "sensual lust," —

ON THIS POINT. 201
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
punishment 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 dis
obedience to the dominion of the Spirit, and also the
punishment of sin, because it is in consequence of
the transgressions of him that was disobedient ; 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 pollution into the son.1
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 passage
in which he actually invests an appetite, a thing
created, with the power of creation. " God," he
says, " creates nature, though vice propagates the
vice." Nothing more is required to overturn the
absurd notion of Augustine, that this animal appe
tite is essentially an immoral one, than to remind
the reader that it was possessed and developed by
1 Vide on this subject, Wiggers's Presentation of Augustinism
and Pelagianism, pp. 89, 90.

202 NO APPETITE WRONG, PER SE.
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 in-
• tended by him to secure wise, and good, and, I will
add, holy purposes. The evil is not in the appetite,
nor in the mere indulgence of the appetite ; for God
said to Adam in paradise, " Be fruitful and multiply,"
&c. ; but in its illicit indulgence — an indulgence at
variance with the inspired directory. And the same
remarks, I will venture to observe, may be applied to
all our animal appetites, even assuming, which, how
ever, I do not, that they became greatly augmented,
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
predicated of any propensity on account of its abso
lute intensity, but its relative intensity, — its triumph
over reason, and conscience, and the law of God.
The moral evil lies in the wrong development 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 riot profess to be quite certain ; but, at all
events, it is indisputable that he regarded it as in
flicted upon the race as a part of the punishment
of Adam's transgression. In considering the trans-

IS ORIGINAL SIN A PUNISHMENT? 203
ference of Adam's sin to his descendants, " We must
distinguish," he says, " three things ; sin, the punish
ment 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 the words necessarily mean, of the sin of
Adam. I am aware that another part of his doc
trine, 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 business, happily for myself, to reconcile
Augustine with Augustine ; 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 accuracy of this statement, there is much of
substantial truth in it. I cannot believe, indeed, for
the reasons stated in a former Lecture, and to which
1 need not now recur,1 that a just and holy God can
inflict 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 punish
ment of his own sin, and far less of the sin of another.
God may indeed abandon a man to his sin and its

i p. 145.

204 IS ORIGINAL SIN THE CAUSE
consequences, 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 abandoning a man to his sin, and punishing
him with sin. It would be a serious mistake to
suppose that God has inflicted 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 consequences
of that withholding or withdrawment. On this point
I agree with Augustine and Turrettine, against Calvin.
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, some
how or another — 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 infliction of the consequences
of that sin upon us. Now this would, I acknowledge,
be a somewhat more plausible theory, if it could show
how the race became depraved ; but it does not, and
cannot do this. Messrs. Moses Stuart, and Barnes,
and others with whom Ihave had private conversa
tion on this point, do not even make the attempt.
" It was determined " — such is their general mode
of representing 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 character of the race
seems, in the view of these writers, to justify the

OR THE RESULT OF IMPUTATION. 205
imputation of Adam's sin to the race ; or (as they
dislike 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 depravity 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 consequence of
our own transgression. And if depravity be the
result of that failure, it must be the direct or proxi
mate 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 propagation will not, as we have seen, account
for it ;l 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 Rev. Henry Rogers
— seems to feel that it is unaccountable. For, having
laid down the hypothesis, which is in my view alto
gether the reverse of the state of the case, — " that
the moral state of the descendants of Adam is not
the consequence of the imputation of his sin, but
presupposed as the reason of such imputation, and
1 Vide p. 185.

206 STATEMENTS OF ROGERS
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 im
putation of Adam's sin at all ; the race are treated
as sinners just because they are sinners ?") — he adds,
" according to this doctrine, therefore, the real diffi
culty is not to reconcile the imputation of sin and
guilt where there is 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 another who is so, or by which the moral con
dition of one being is remotely determined by the
moral condition of another." x
This is, no doubt, to Mr. Rogers the real difficulty.
If we concede that the sin of Adam somehow made
the race sinners, the imputation of sin to them, i. e.
of sin to sinners, could involve no difficulty what
ever. But there are two questions which Mr. Rogers
has not attempted to deal with, — 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 are, 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
1 Rogers's Essay on Edwards's Works, Hickman's edition, p. 11.

ON THIS POINT EXAMINED. 207
failure of Adam ? It was not, on the hypothesis of
Mr. Rogers, as the legal result of that failure; at all
events, it did not attach to them as one of the conse
quences 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 presupposed as the
reason of it." I would then venture to ask this
most valuable writer, and all who agree with him, —
I would ask the whole of the new-school theo
logians 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 Turrettine, and unfolded in this and pre
ceding Lectures : it is one of the results to them
of the sin of Adam. It did not, as Mr. Rogers says,
precede the imputation of his sin, but followed it,
or rather is it. It is, as Augustine declares with sub
stantial truth, though in most objectionable phrase
ology, the punishment of his sin ; i. 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 was the sense in which they were
intended to be understood by Augustine himself —
it. was the loss to the race of the presence 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

208 SUMMARY OF PRECEDING STATEMENTS.
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 denominated the " punish
ment" of sin by sin. I do not undertake 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 slightestdoubt.
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 communicated from father to son ;
nor is it, in fact, capable of communication. The
son sustains loss, indeed, when his father 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 punishment to Adam ; just as
the deprivation of title, and honour, and fortune,
which accrues to the family of a nobleman implicated
in rebellion, is loss to them, though punishment 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

HYPOTHESIS OF DR. WOODS. 209
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 Adam 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, Andover.
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.1 I should feel self-condemned, were I not
1 1 find that Drl Spring and a few others unite with Dr. Woods.
The former gentleman is well-known to many in this country, and
justly esteemed, but, as an authority in reference to any theological
point, is inferior to Dr. Woods. The following is his opinion : —
" That every infant (just bom) is a moral and accountable being,
under a law, which he knowingly and voluntarily 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 upon
this sentiment, quoted in the Appendix to this volume. They appear
to me perfectly conclusive. — See Note D, at the end of the Volume.
P

210 DR. WOODS IDENTIFIES
to offer my humble tribute of respect for the talents,
and attainments, and great moral worth of this gen
tleman. He seems to have conciliated the affections,
and to have won the confidence, both of old and new-
light divines in a country where theology and com
merce 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 evan
gelical truth, I shall freely, though respectfully,
animadvert upon them.
Dr. Woods identifies original and actual sin ; and,
as the latter is by universal consent the transgression
of God's law in thought, or feeling, or action, he is
constrained to admit that there exist in the infant
mind, just ushered into being, before it has received
any impressions or information ab 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 which
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 capable, they will
certainly and uniformly sin, or that their moral affec
tions will all be wrong, unless they are regenerated

ACTUAL AND ORIGINAL SIN. 211
by the Holy Spirit." Let it be observed that he does
not say here, are all wrong, but will 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 in
capable of any moral affections, and of course in
capable of being, in any proper sense" (I beg the
reader to mark the language), " sinful or depraved."
In the opinion of this eminent man, then, no mind
can be morally depraved in which there do not exist
what he calls moral, but what we in this country
should denominate depraved, affections. He is con
sequently compelled to believe and to maintain that
such affections do exist in the infant mind; i.e. in
other words, — 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 charac-.
teristic 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 designed to
show that the arguments usually adduced against this
hypothesis are destitute of validity.
p2

212 CAUSES OF THIS IDENTIFICATION.
I am rather the more disposed than I might other
wise be, to devote a little time to the examination of
Professor Woods's views on this subject — views dis
carded by his countrymen 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 conceive
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 prin
ciple 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 enmity
against God, is, they imagine, enmity itself. They
reason back from actual, to original sin. As the
former consists in unholy affections, such, they
imagine, must be the case with the latter.
Dr. Woods may not have been influenced in the
adoption of his hypothesis by these reasons ; but his
views do most unquestionably harmonize with those
of the persons to whom I have just referred ; and
they are involved in the same difficulties. I fancy, at
least, I perceive the source of the opinion avowed by
Dr. Woods. It is, perhaps, more generally admitted
in America than in this country, — though few doubt
it here, to whose opinion much importance must be

CAUSES OF THIS IDENTIFICATION. 213
attached — that a mere infant, of a span long, without
any actual knowledge of God, or truth, or duty, or
sin, cannot be regarded as a moral agent. At what
period, indeed, personal responsibility commences,
none that I am aware of have ventured to state.
That point, it is felt, must be left to the decision of
Him who alone is able to determine it. Now, if a
child be not a moral agent, What is depravity in the
mind of a child ? The purely privative nature of
original sin brings relief from this difficulty ; but
those who do not adopt that view of its nature, must
feel it in all its pressure. What can they do other
wise than adopt the notion of physical depravity?
There can be nothing moral in the mind of one who
is not a moral agent. If, then, there be, in such
a mind, a tendency to sin, which is, as Jonathan
Edwards describes it, anything that is properly posi
tive, it must partake of the nature of our physical
propensities. A tendency to sin must be, in this
respect, something like a tendency to fear, or to love.
But, as all our physical propensities were implanted by
God — for, in fact, they are not distinct from the mind
itself (they denote the particular constitution, or
" make" of the mind) — the notion of physical depravity
involves, of necessity, the absurd and profane hy
pothesis that God is its author or creator.
It was, perhaps, for the double purpose of escaping
from this conclusion, and of fixing more definitely the
nature of original sin, that Dr. Woods was led to
identify original and actual sin. Native depravity
consists, in his view, of moral affections, i. e. of unholy

214 REASONS FOR OPPOSING IT.
affections — wrong thoughts, and feelings, and pur
poses ; — or, in the vocabulary of Dr. Thomas Brown,
of wrong states of mind. It remains to be seen
whether, in his attempt to escape difficulties on the
one hand, he has not fallen into more serious ones on
the other.
In discoursing upon the primeval holiness of Adam,
I ventured to deny that Adam was created thinking
and feeling, or that the holiness concreated with him
consisted in right thoughts and right feelings.1 I am
equally disposed to deny, that the depravity which is
native to man, consists in wrong thoughts and wrong
feelings. It is of essential importance to remember,
that we are inquiring concerning the essence of native
depravity. I make this remark, because Dr. Woods,
who ought to prove that moral emotions exist in the
mind contemporaneously with the existence of the
mind, sets himself to prove not this, but that they
may exist in the mind at a very early period of its
being. Now, suppose we were to admit this, the fact
would prove early depravity, instead of original sin.
If the moral affections, as he calls them, are kindled
after the existence of the mind, the depravity which
is contemporaneous with its existence, and which
alone can be original sin, does not consist in these
moral affections. Dr. Woods undoubtedly meant to
express the opinion that they exist in the infant mind
at a much earlier period than is commonly imagined.
But, to prove this, is to fall into the fallacy of igno-
rafio elenchi. The point he ought to have proved,
1 Vide pp. 15, 16.

REASONS FOR OPPOSING IT. 215
is, that the child has them at the first moment of its
existence. Illogical, however, as may be a part of the argu
ment of Dr. Woods, there is no doubt that he does
identify original and actual sin. I am confirmed in
this opinion, by finding that the same view is taken
by the Biblical Repertory, the organ of the old school
of theology. In a review of Dr. Woods's work, the
writer says, " The object of the inquiry," i. e. in the
eighth chapter of that work, " is to ascertain wherein
native depravity consists ; whether it is merely a
latent principle, a corrupt nature, an evil disposition,
which is the fountain from which the streams of
depravity will issue at a future period ; or whether
actual transgression commences from the time of our
nativity," i. e. whether native depravity is, • or is not,
actual sin. " Dr. Woods," adds the reviewer, " adopts
the latter opinion, and, with much modesty and cau
tion, endeavours to render it probable."2
Now I join with this able reviewer in most deeply
regretting that Dr. Woods has given the support of
his name and authority to such an hypothesis as this,
— an hypothesis which appears to me adapted to bring
the evangelical system into contempt. The infant
sins, in the opinion of this writer, as soon as he is
born-, or, actual sin exists in the infant mind at the
period of its nativity.3 But this assertion implies,
that actual sin may exist without any knowledge of
2 Vide Bib. Rep. vol. vii. p. 548.
3 Some say, in the foetus, even, and with just as much propriety
and truth.

216 EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY.
God, or the law of God ; L for surely no knowledge of
either can be predicated of an infant of a span long.
And if there may be sin without such knowledge —
a supposition directly contradicted by our Lord, and
indeed the whole current of. Divine revelation — why
may not a perfect idiot be a sinner ? Nay, why may
not a brute animal be a sinner ? Should Dr. Woods,
or any one who thinks with him, reply, that the mind
is naturally capable of perceptions and emotions, and
must gain both, immediately after it comes into existence^
we admit the assertion, but answer, that it is irrelevant
on many accounts. These perceptions and emotions
are subsequent to the existence of the mind ; so that,
if they could be proved to possess a moral character,
they could not possibly constitute native depravity, —
that which exists, as we have said, contemporane
ously with the mind itself. But who in the present
day would venture to ascribe to perceptions, and
emotions, arising out of the physical constitution of
the mind, (for on this hypothesis there is no depraved
moral nature existing previously to them, and out of
which they can grow ; they are themselves the de
praved moral nature ; original sin is actual sin,) a
moral character ? They are necessary affections, not
voluntary ; and voluntariness is essential to impart
a moral character to any state of mind, or • any
1 See, for confirmation of this, Mr. Stuart's remarks upon Dr.
Spring's statements, at the end of the volume, referred to in page
209. Mr. Stuart proves conclusively, that the Scriptures deny their
possession of such knowledge. The reader should carefully consider
the passages adduced by him.

EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY. 217
action.2 If Dr. Woods should venture to represent them
as contemporaneous with the existence of the mind; I
2 The rising desires which our first parents felt to eat the fruit,
were founded in their nature, and were not imputed to them as sin.
Nor is the springing up of involuntary desire in the heart of man
ever considered in Scripture as sin ; but merely the entertaining,
cherishing, and accomplishing of this desire. Vide James i. 14.
" Nothing," says Dr. Reid, " in which the will is not concerned,
can justly be accounted either virtuous or immoral. The practice,"
he adds, "of all criminal courts, and all enlightened nations, is founded
upon this ;" and he adds, " if any judicature in any nation should
find a man guilty, and the object of punishment, for what they allow
to be altogether involuntary, all the world would condemn them as
men who knew nothing of the first and most fundamental rules of
justice." Dr. Chalmers has applied this important principle to our affec
tions, emotions, &c. He complains, most justly, of Dr. Thomas
Brown's division of the emotions, viz. into those which do involve a
moral feeling, and those which do not ; since, as he says, " There is
no moral designation applicable to any of the emotions, viewed
nakedly and by themselves. They are our volitions, and our voli
tions only, which admit of being thus characterized ; and emotions
are no further virtuous, or vicious, than as volitions are blended with
them, and blended with them so far, as to have given them either
their direction, or their birth." — Works, vol. v. pp. 172 — 176.
Vide this subject further illustrated in Elements of Mental and
Moral Science, by the Author, pp. 402—404, 408, 409 ; 2d Edit.
There can be little doubt, I imagine, that a deeply rooted convic
tion, that nothing which is not voluntary can possess a moral
character, has had some influence — in connexion with another cause
— in leading a few American divines to adopt the opinion that native
depravity is the voluntary transgression of God's law. If it be not
originated by volition, nor accompanied by volition, how can it be
worthy, as they concede it is, of eternal death 1
I cannot think that the language of my friend, Dr. Russell, is per
fectly accurate on this point : " As soon as Adam existed, he existed
in knowledge," (p. 62.) This does not, perhaps, necessarily imply the
possession of innate ideas, or that knowledge was connate, or con-

218 EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY ^
would respectfully ask him, " How came they into the
mind ?" " What was their origin ?" If they did not
arise out of the action of the faculties of the mind, (in
which case they would be subsequent to its existence,)
what can be their source, but a Divine source?
Must not God have produced them by direct power,
as he created the mind itself and its faculties ? Does
not this hypothesis, then, directly charge God with
being the author of sin ?
It was stated, a short time ^go, that these views
of native depravity are rejected by the old-school
theologians as well as the new. In confirmation of
this assertion, I beg to quote a passage or two from
the Biblical Repertory, — the organ, it will be recol
lected, of the old-light divines ; and, as that work is
not, I believe, generally known in this country, they
will, I doubt not, be acceptable. " Dr. Woods main
tains that man, as soon as he is born, puts forth
moral acts. Of course, then," adds the reviewer,
" the new-born infant is a moral agent, and possesses
every constituent of moral agency. We cannot but
regret that this view of the subject has been intro
duced into this valuable work." In reply to the
statement of Dr. Woods, that infants may be the
subjects of moral affections though they are not
apparent, the reviewer says, among other things,
created, with his mind. But what can we make of the following
statements 1 — " And as this (knowledge) proceeded from the Author of
his being, it must have been holy like himself." — " Not only did he
derive from God the constituent principles of his mind, but also all
his first perceptions and ideas." — Pp. 62, 63.

EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY. 219
" We respectfully ask whether the same thing might
not be said of brutes ? We know not what passes
within them, and how can we be certain (i. e. accord
ing to the reasoning of Dr. Woods) that they are not
moral agents? But a case more in point will be
that of the adult idiot. Suppose it be inquired
whether he is a moral agent : the common opinion
of men has been, that such a one is no moral
agent, because he has no exercise of reason. But,
according to the remarks made about infants, we
cannot be certain that he has not moral affections,
although he can give no evidence of their existence.
There is just as much reason for supposing that the
idiot is a moral agent, as that the new-born infant is ;
for although the infant will, by the development of
its faculties, come to the exercise of reason, yet we
think that, when first born, it has less exercise of
reason, and less knowledge, than any idiot that we
have ever seen."
" Again," the reviewer says, " Dr. Woods some
times reasons as if the question were, whether infants
are the subjects , of feelings or emotions; and he
proceeds, as if proving that they did experience these,
proved that their exercises were of a moral nature.
' A child,' he says, ' gives early and frequent indi
cations of strong emotions, and strives to utter them,
long before he is able to do it in the usual way, &c.
All this," adds the reviewer, " we fully agree to, and
believe that such emotions or sensations may reason-
' ably be supposed to exist, not only from the moment
of birth, but from the first existence of the soul. It

220 EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY.
is no part of our theory to deny the activity of the
soul, or that it is the subject of strong emotion from
its birth at least. But this is not the question at
issue. The question is, ' Are these feelings of a
moral nature ?' Their existence needs no proof — it
is equally held by both sides ; but in these exercises
of early infancy, is the young child a moral agent ?
If so, we see not why brutes may not all be moral
agents. We are acquainted with no exercises of new
born infants which appear to have any more the
character of moral acts, than what is observed in the
young of animals ; and we do not believe that the
emotions or feelings of the one are any more moral
than those of the other." — Pp. 552, 553.

LECTURE VI.
EXAMINATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF DR. KNAPP  OF PROFESSOR
STUART, AND OF MR. BALLANTYNE.
We have endeavoured to show, in preceding Lec
tures, that natural native depravity, or degeneracy, is
privative in its nature ; that it is not a thing, but the
lack of a, thing, — entire destitution of those higher
principles which are never found in man, but in con
nexion with the indwelling and special influence of
the Holy Spirit. The necessary result of this depri
vation is depravation, — the certain influence and
ascendency of the inferior principles, so that man
becomes positively depraved, cherishing feelings, and
performing actions, which are forbidden by the law
of God.
In the last Lecture, this view of the nature of
original sin was placed in the light of contrast with
that of the greatly and justly esteemed Dr. Woods of
Andover, who virtually maintains its positive nature,
by exhibiting it as consisting in moral, i.e. depraved,
affections, — all of which have actual or positive
existence. I commence this Lecture by placing it in
the light of contrast with the opinion of those who
seem to regard it as consisting in the inordinateness

222 THEORY OF DR. KNAPP EXAMINED.
of what we call bodily appetites and passions. This
is the opinion of the celebrated Dr. Knapp, whose
" Christian Theology" has been recently translated,
with great advantage to the mere English student, by
Dr. Woods, jun., of Andover. I am not sure that
Dr. Knapp does not regard animal appetites and
desires, in whatever degree they might exist, as being,
per se, morally evil. At all events, he considers them
in this light in the. degree of strength in which they
are now found . in man ; and, further, that their
inordinateness constitutes the natural depravity of
man. The strength of animal appetites and desires,
renders man a depraved being. Now, as all actual
passions and desires are positive principles, the essence
of original sin, on Dr. Knapp 's principles, cannot be,
as we have maintained, merely privative in its nature.
To support this view of native depravity, he endea
vours to show that it is in harmony with the doctrines
of pagan philosophers, who regarded matter, and the
human body as consisting of matter — as the seat
and source of evil. He tells us, that most of the
early Christian fathers were of the same mind; and
that the doctrine was carried to a great length,
and very much abused, by some heretics who sprang
up in the Christian Church. It led, indeed, to the
notion, as well it might, that the body is to us not a
blessing, but a curse.
In confirmation of the hypothesis, he dwells, how
ever, principally upon the scriptural phraseology
employed to designate the native character of man,
and which, " taken in its first etymological sense,

THEORY OF DR. KNAPP EXAMINED. 223
seems to indicate that the body is the ultimate cause
and principal seat of human depravity." The Apostle
Paul, he tells us, places aap% in opposition to vovs,
or wevfia. Now, aapl; means originally the body ;
and, therefore, the hindrances which the <rap% opposes
to the Trvevfia, must be the provocations to self-
indulgence — in opposition to the restraint of the
Divine law — presented by the strength of animal
appetite and passion. Dr. Woods very justly observes,
" that the argument of Dr. Knapp, derived from the
use of the scriptural terms, "tyZ, and <rap%, and their
synonymes, is very plausible ; and that, when Paul
calls the vofios Trjs crapicos, also a vopuos \v toIs fieKeo-i,
the question might seem to be decided." It may be
well, therefore, to examine this hypothesis with some
degree of care. I shall, probably, avail myself shortly
of some at least of the able statements of Dr. Woods,
who has written on this point with singular acuteness
and perspicuity ; but, in the meantime, I rather
choose to follow my own course.
I inquire, then, in the first place, into the meaning
of the phrases, " bodily appetites and passions," and
that " such appetites," &c, " have their seat in the
body." Those of my readers who are acquainted
with the philosophy of the human mind, will of
course understand them more correctly ; but they are
obviously and powerfully adapted to mislead. When
Dr. Brown denominates a certain class of mental
affections, " external affections of the mind," the
phraseology is in danger of originating the notion
that some mental affections are, if I may so speak,

224 THEORY OF DR. KNAPP EXAMINED.
out of the mind; that they exist in the organs of
sense, or in some part of the material frame : and,
consequently, we, who use this phraseology, are most
careful to guard against this misconception. Now, is
not the phrase " bodily affections and desires" one of
the same order, and equally liable with it to be mis
understood ? Are there not some, indeed, who con
ceive — it may be somewhat darkly — that a bodily
affection or desire is in the body ; that it so has its
seat in the body as to be there : in other words, that
it is the body that desires. I do not, indeed, intend
to affirm that any intelligent persons would acknow
ledge this, were a pointed inquiry put to them ; but
words and phrases are apt to insinuate conceptions,
of which the mind itself into which they enter is
scarcely aware. Let it not be forgotten, then, that
there is no appetite or desire, which is, in this sense
of the words, a bodily affection. All appetites, and
all desires, are mental affections. They have their
exclusive seat in the mind. They may, indeed, have
for their proximate cause some affection of some
portion of the material fabric ; but they are them
selves not in the body. The appetite of hunger, for
instance — whether we regard the pain which forms
one of its elements, or the accompanying desire of
relief which constitutes the Other- — is not in the
stomach, but in the mind. The proximate cause of
the first element, — the pain, — is indeed in the stomach;
it is the action of the gastric juice upon the coats of
that organ: but the proximate cause even of the
other element,— the desire,— is not. in the stomach ; it

WHAT ARE ANIMAL APPETITES? 225
itself is in the mind. It is the pain produced by
the action of the gastric juice ; and that pain, together
with the desire of relief to which it gives birth, is in
the mind, and cannot possibly exist anywhere else.
What, then, can be meant when it is said that the
animal appetites, &c. have their seat in the body?
All that can at any time exist in the body, is the
proximate cause of such appetites ; and sometimes, as
we have seen in the case of the desire which consti
tutes one of the elements of the appetite of hunger,
not even that. I have no strong desire to discard
such phraseology, but it is a point of great import
ance to have it distinctly explained, and clearly
understood* We shall now be better able to appreciate the
correctness of the hypothesis which places the de
pravity of our nature in the inordinateness of such
appetites and desires. What is meant by the word
inordinateness here ? Is it intended to designate
the positive strength of these appetites and desires,
contemplated abstractly, or in themselves merely ?
I should, in that case, maintain that they do not, and
cannot, gain a moral character from their absolute
intensity merely ; they are not sinful on that account.
There may be intense hatred in the mind, and that
hatred may be morally right ; for it may be intense
hatred of sin. In like manner, there might be intense
desire in the mind; and, if the general power of
feeling with which God has endowed the mind were
greatly augmented, there would be habitually more
intense desire, than exists now — and yet there might
Q

226 SIN DOES NOT LIE IN THEIR STRENGTH.
be no sin. The moral evil does not consist in the
strength of a desire, but in yielding to it. Eve
looked at the forbidden fruit, and she desired it ; but
she did not sin in desiring it. That feeling was the
result of the constitution of mind with which her
Maker had endowed her. She began to sin when
she began to cherish the desire ; and the sin was
finished, when desire had produced the determination
to take the fruit. Then lust, that is, animal appetite,
" brought forth sin, and sin, when it was finished,
brought forth death." Animal appetites, even when
they cannot be gratified without sin — if they arise
spontaneously, without any intention and effort on
our part to excite them ; if they are not cherished,
and, a fortiori, if there be a determination not to give
them indulgence — are powerful temptations to sin,
but they are not sinful themselves. r" The moral evil,"
if I may venture to quote myself, " only commences,
when they gain^ over the will to the side of indul
gence ; and, growing as they do out of constitutional
tendencies, the more powerfully they are developed,
the greater may be the virtue of the man who sternly
refuses to listen to their pleadings."1 I cannot but
think, that, if this plain and all but self-evident prin
ciple in moral science had been duly considered by
Augustine, we should have been spared many state
ments which can scarcely fail to prove most distasteful
to every delicate mind.
I presume, however, that the term " inordinateness"
1 Vide Elements of Mental and Moral Science, pp. 402 — 405.
Also pp. 174, 175, of this Volume.

THE REASON OF THEIR INORDINATENESS. 227
here is intended to denote not the positive, but the
relative strength of bodily appetites and desires ; the
ascendency they habitually obtain over reason and
conscience in the case of unconverted men. If this
presumption be correct, the argument of Dr. Woods,
jun., may be employed, and employed, as I think,
with resistless power. " The fact alleged, viz. that
there is a visible preponderance of sense or of bodily
appetite over reason, is readily conceded; but can
we conclude from this fact that this disorder is to
be attributed to the body, and the affections having
their seat in it ? Would not the just balance, between
the higher and lower principles of our nature, be
equally disturbed by altering the weight in either
scale?" Would not the loss of original righteous
ness, according to the phraseology we have adopted,
i. e. of those principles which depend for their sup
port upon the presence and influence of the Spirit
of God, be sufficient to disturb this balance without
any alteration in the other scale ? Or, to adopt the
phraseology of Dr. Woods, " If, in the original con
stitution of our nature, the lower principles of the
animal life, on one side, were balanced, on the other,
by the higher principles of our intellectual life — not
by themselves," adds Dr. Woods, " but in* connexion
with a communicated divine life of which they are the
organ (as we shall attempt to show), then the mere
loss or withdrawment " (there is no need, I would add,
for this word 'f withdrawment ") " of this divine life
would be followed, of course, by a loss of this original
equipoise, and the undue preponderance of the lower
a2

228 DR. KNAPP'S STATEMENTS
principles. Thus it can be conceived that the inor
dinateness of the bodily appetites, in which human
depravity might seem at first view to consist, so far
from constituting its real essence, may be only the
necessary result of an ulterior cause, — the defect of
the higher principles. Indeed," he adds, very justly,
" considering the nature of these higher principles*
and their rightful supremacy, how can their being
drawn away and enslaved, by principles so inferior
and subordinate, be accounted for except from some
defect in the spiritual part, to say nothing of posi
tively evil inclinations seated there ? "
Dr. Knapp might possibly reply that, without sup
posing a loss of the higher principles, or even a
material reduction of their controlling power, they
might become enslaved by the lower principles re
ceiving a great accession of strength. This is, in
fact, the opinion of this writer. He does not suppose
that the positive strength of animal propensities in
man before the fall, was by any means equal to what
it has been since that event. The higher principles
might then easily restrain them; the task, even in
the case of the regenerated, is more difficult now ;
and he traces that difference to the necessary physical
influence of the forbidden fruit upon Adam himself,
— an influence which, as he imagines, descends to all
his posterity.
In the opinion, then, of Dr. Knapp, the tree of
knowledge of good and of evil was "a poisonous
tree, and in its own nature destructive to man."
This opinion is made to rest upon the fact that it

OF THE CAUSE. 229
was set ovef against the tree of life, which, as it is
assumed on no very stable ground, was endowed
with the power of sustaining the life of Adam. ; As
the one — such is the argument of Dr. Knapp — was a
life-supporting tree, the other must have been a life-
destroying tree. God warned inexperienced man, by
issuing the interdict, " as a father cautions his child
not to taste of a pleasant poison which may lie in
its way."
To the taking of this pleasant poison, Dr. Knapp
ascribes, as its natural consequences, both the death
of the race, and the present inordinateness of animal
propensities. I will give the reader his own words :
" Tasting of the fruit of this tree introduced disorder
into the human body, which, from that time forward,
was subject to disease and death. In this way," he
adds, " is God justified, as every one can see, from
the charge of being the author of human misery;
just as a father is acquitted from blame, in the mis
fortune of his children, if, he had before cautioned
them against the poison. In this way, too, every
one can understand why God should require obe
dience from man. The father requires obedience of
his children, because he knows better than they do
what is best for them." He adds that this explanation
" is not new. It was mentioned by Chrysostom,
though rejected by him."
Again, the preponderance of sensual appetite is
ascribed to the influence of this poison ; for the
balance of man's powers — or the supremacy of the
higher principles — was, he says," according to the

230 OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY.
account of Moses, the principal advantage of the state
of innocence." That the destruction of this balance
was the consequence of the first transgression is
clearly taught, he thinks, by the words " and they
knew that they were naked ;" — " words," he adds,
" which may be euphemistically expressed as follows :
They felt the motions of sense uncommonly strong,
which they were no longer able to control as formerly;1
but by which they were now governed, whence the
feeling of shame arose in their minds. It is possible,"
he adds, "that this may be considered as also the
effect of the harmful fruit which had been eaten by
them, by which their nerves were strongly excited ;
for there are many poisonous plants by which violent
excitement is imparted to the nerves, and by which
great disorder is produced both in soul and body —
spasmodic affections, stupefaction, and delirium ; such
as belladonna, opium, thorn-apple, and hemlock.
This supposition will at least serve to render the
subject more intelligible, and to explain how this
effect may have been propagated from Adam to his
posterity, although it is by no means necessary
to understand this effect as a physical one ; and, at
all events, this should not be brought into popular
instruction, as it is merely conjectural."2
Now, as Dr. Knapp's book is likely to be exten
sively read among us, especially by ministers and
1 But, if really unable to control them, as Dr. Knapp seems to
imagine, or rather to assert, how could they be responsible for
becoming subject to their influence 1
1 Knapp's Theology, pp. 239, 240.

OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY. 231
students, and thoughtful and inquiring Christians in
general, I beg the attention of the reader to the
following remarks upon the whole of the preceding
statements. In the^rs^ place, upon the extreme rashness of
basing all his views, in reference to the native de
pravity of man, upon what he himself freely and
frankly confesses is only a conjecture.
The preponderance of animal propensities, in the
case of men now, is an injury, Dr. Knapp thinks,
inherited by them from the father of mankind. He
himself sustained it by taking poison ; that poison
was the fruit of a certain tree ; but that the tree was
of a poisonous nature there is no foundation but
conjecture. And, as the only proof produced by
Dr. Knapp — or capable of being produced — that
Adam was poisoned, is that he • took poisonous fruit,
the whole system of our author is baseless. The
only shadow of a reason for the conjecture, is that
the tree was set over against the tree of life ; so that,
if this sustained, that must have had power to destroy
life. But is not this building one conjecture upon
another ; for what proof have we that the tree of
life possessed especial virtue to sustain life ? It is
possible, perhaps probable, that this may have been
the case ; but is it certain — so certain as to warrant
the inference Dr. Knapp draws from it ? Besides, if
it were certain that the tree of life possessed sustain
ing properties, that circumstance would not warrant
the conjecture that the other tree had injurious and
destroying ones. Our conjecture concerning the

232 OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY.
former tree — if we do conjecture— is founded on the
name of the tree ; it is called, the tree of life. If
the other tree had received the designation of the
tree of death, there would have been more reason
for Dr. Knapp's conjecture concerning it. The mere
eircumstance of its position furnishes, we think, no
reason at all.
In the second place, assuming the conjecture to
be better founded than it is, I would call attention
to the inadequacy of the cause to account for the
effects ascribed to it. Those effects are the death of
the entire family of man, and the preponderance of
animal propensities in the case of every man. The
cause assigned for these extraordinary and melan
choly results, is the eating of poisonous fruit. Now,
I might argue, and do argue, that, on this view of
the. case, the consequences of Adam's transgression
do not at all attach to the race in the way of judicial
infliction, — though the Apostle tells us that "judg
ment came upon all men to condemnation " by the
one offence,' — but as the necessary and natural con
sequence of the act of Adam. Adam, in fact, and
to use plain terms, not unwarranted I imagine in
respect to an opinion of this extraordinary nature,
poisoned himself, and the poison will circulate in the
veins of his posterity — bringing upon them disease
and death, exciting their nerves, inflaming their
passions, weakening their reason, causing appetite
to triumph over conscience-— till the very end of
the world ! Without, however, dwelling at further
length upon the argument just hinted at, I ask if

OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY. 233
the cause assigned can be supposed to be adequate
to the production of this long train of melancholy
results ? The destructive fruit might, we admit, have
done its deadly work upon Adam, and done it almost
instantaneously. Or, if it had not destroyed life in
a moment, it might have emaciated his frame, and
caused him to drag out a miserable and dying ex
istence, till death put an end to his sufferings. But,
allowing that he would not have remained entirely
childless in such circumstances, must the effects of
the poison upon him have been transmitted in full
measure to his immediate descendants ? Or, even
allowing that they had, are we to suppose that the
virus would not wear itself out — but that the very
last of the children. of Adam would be as thoroughly
impregnated with the poison as was his progenitor,
who lived thousands of years before him ? Do well
established facts, as to the effects of poison' upon an
individual, and its influence upon his descendants to
very remote periods, justify any such supposition ?
Other questions, however, remain behind, even if
the preceding ones could be thought to admit of a
reply favourable to the strange hypothesis of Dr.
Knapp. For, even if it were admitted that the
eating of the poisonous fruit might enfeeble the
whole race of man, how could it possibly give vigour
and energy to his animal propensities ? Is not this
supposition at direct variance with the well ascer
tained nature of its influence ? Poison exerts a
direct influence upon the body alone. It cannot
affect the soul, or immaterial part, but through the

234 OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY.
medium of the material ; and surely its influence
upon the latter is to destroy or impair the energy
of its action. Who ever heard of poison making a
man hungry ? — i. e. augmenting the energetic action
of the gastric juice upon the coats of the stomach.
Had the hypothesis been, that the virus transmitted,
as it is alleged, by Adam to the last of his race, has
enfeebled the bodily appetites, as they are called, it
might have presented a prima, facie appearance of
probability ; but that it should impart to them more
vigour, seems to me at variance with its very nature.
The correctness of the last statement will become
more apparent when we recollect our preceding
doctrine, — that all bodily propensities are in the
mind ; for no malignant virus introduced into the
bodily system can augment or diminish the strength
and energy of any mental capacity or propensity.
I admit that it might affect the development of such
propensity, by a direct action upon the organ, or
that part of the material frame, which, when it is
put into the required state, elicits the mental feeling
— the appetite or desire ; but its action upon the
organ is an enfeebling, not a stimulating action ; and,
therefore, the hypothesis of Dr. Knapp is left without
a basis. In the third place, I observe, with Dr. Woods,
that to teach, as Dr. Knapp does, " that the forbidden
tree was one of physical poison ; that on this account
mainly, and not for the purpose of testing their obe
dience, our first parents were warned' against it,"
deprives the passage of all doctrinal interest to us.

OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY. 235
Unless it be regarded as " exhibiting the trial of man
as to obedience to the Divine will, and the unhappy
issue of the trial," I do not see, indeed, what im
portant instruction of any kind we can derive from
it. The entire amount of what it teaches us would
be, that if persons will take poison, in spite of the
interdict of their parents, or of God, they must suffer
the consequences. Whether it be reasonable to
suppose that, at the very commencement of the
inspired volume, we should find a narrative designed to
convey this amount of meaning merely, I am willing
to leave to the decision of any unprejudiced man.
" Is it not to empty it," to borrow again the language
of Dr. Woods, " of its high interest as the account
of the birth of sin, and to reduce it to a common
place story, unworthy of its place, at the head of the
history of man ? It was well said by Theophilus of
Antioch, long ago, ' that it was not the tree, but the
disobedience, which had death in itself. Luther, too,
who in general followed the literal interpretation
(a too rigid adherence to which probably misled Dr.
Knapp), says with regard to this passage : '. Adam
indeed stuck his teeth into the apple ; but he set
them, too, upon a thorn, which was the law of God,
and disobedience against him ; and this was the
proper cause of his misery.'" 1
In the fourth place, as Dr. Knapp's conceptions,
that the forbidden fruit was of a poisonous nature,
are partly induced by the sense he attaches to the
term <rap%, of such frequent occurrence in the New
1 Knapp's Theology, p. 241.

236 OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY.
Testament, it may be well to investigate here the
meaning of this word, and its synonymes. The train
of thought, in Dr. Knapp's mind, seems to have been
as follows : — The term o-apt; signifies the human body ;
the depraved condition of man is frequently described
by that term: consequently depravity must have its
seat in the body ; it must be the ascendency of animal
propensities over the higher principles of the mind.
There is, however, I think, a reason for this use of
the term, which invalidates the conclusion drawn from
it. Animal appetites and desires, though not, as we
have seen, sinful in themselves, are, it must be allowed,
among the most frequent and powerful temptations
to sin, — the mind having lost the holy guard of divine
principles by the withdrawment, or rather loss, of the
presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, as the animal
propensities are thus the most frequent occasions of
sin, it is not unnatural — not at variance with the
common or popular use of language, to exhibit
depravity as the habitual triumph of those pro
pensities, though depravity really consists in the
absence of higher and controlling principles.
Further, it is to be remembered, on the hypothesis
of Dr. Knapp — that native depravity consists in
animal appetites, or in the habitual ascendency of
such appetites — that no feeling could be indicated by
the term o-apg, which does not belong to this class of
our affections. Yet, in enumerating the works of the
flesh, (Tap%, the apostle mentions not only "adultery,"
" fornication," " uncleanness," &c, but " hatred,"
" emulations," " wrath ;" which have in no sense

OBJECTIONS AGAINST THIS THEORY. 237
their seat in our animal nature, but which might
exist, and actually do exist, in pure disembodied
spirits. It is evident, then, that the term <rap% has
a more generic sense than the phrase " animal pro
pensities," — that it denotes a larger class of feelings,
in which the animal propensities are comprehended,
and of which they may, indeed, constitute the greater
part, — that it may be, and that it is, generically
applied to all those principles and feelings of our
nature, which, now that Divine controlling principles
have been withdrawn, may lead, and which actually
do lead, into sin against God. And where is the
principle to be found in unrenewed man — whether it
be a purely mental propensity, or an animal passion — :
which, operating alone, may not thus lead into sin ?
I might have added, must not lead to moral action
which fails to fulfil the requirements of moral law ?
since that law requires that all the inferior principles
of our nature shall act under the guidance and influ
ence of those higher principles which, as Jonathan
Edwards rightly states, may be comprehended in
supreme love to God. When supreme love to
perfect, moral excellence, or to the great Being in
whom that perfection is embodied, is wanting, every
thing must be morally wrong in the mind and
conduct of an individual. Hence our Lord declares:
" that which is born of the flesh," or proceeds from a
nature devoid of all spiritual and holy principles, " is
flesh," — has the principles of the human nature, but
not that Divine life which constituted a chartered
benefit to Adam, and was lost by his apostacy.

238 PROFESSOR STUART'S
Dr. Woods has expressed the same sentiment in the
following admirable manner. " The term o-dpl; must
indicate that state of man in which he is destitute of
this higher life, either having lost it (as in the case
of Adam immediately after his fall) — or never at
tained to the possession of it — in which the prin
ciples of humanity, both the higher and lower, are
left to themselves ; in short, the state in which man
is without the Spirit of God, — a state," he adds,
" which, from this its privative character, might be
appropriately denominated unregeneracy or ungodli
ness. And the aapiuicos is one who not merely has
inordinate bodily appetites, and obeys the ' dictamen
sensuum,' but one who does not receive and enjoy the
presence of the Spirit of God. And so Calvin, in
his Commentary on John iii. 6, explains a-ap^ to
mean the whole natural man considered as without the
new birth, or the divine life; and he well remarks,
' Insulse theologastri ad partem quam vocant sen-
sualem restringunt.1 " Other remarks, in confirmation
of this view of the meaning of the term <rap\-, may be
needed when we proceed to state the proof of the doc
trine of original sin, or native depravity : for the pur
pose I have now in view those already made will suffice.
Examination of Professor Moses Stuart's Hypothesis.
In regard to the nature of original depravity, the
views of this distinguished writer appear to harmonize
very much with those of Dr. Knapp. The main
difference between these celebrated men respects
rather the origin than the essence of native depravity.

HYPOTHESIS EXPLAINED. 239
That I may not do injustice to Mr. Stuart, whose
views, in the opinion of others besides myself, are
not exhibited with his usual perspicuity — at least in
the Biblical Repository — I shall present his opinion
in his own words, quoted either from that work, or
from his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,
Tegg's edition. It may, however, aid us in deter
mining more precisely the opinions which Mr. Stuart
really holds, to glance for a moment at those which
he rejects.
The first statement of the doctrine which, in the
latter work, he sets himself to oppose, contains,
among others, the following assertions ; viz. " that
original sin consists, first, in the want of original
righteousness.; secondly, in the positive and entire
corruption of Our nature ;" i. e. he says, " in the
existence of forbidden lusts and desires connate with
us," (this, if I am not mistaken, is substantially the
opinion of Dr. Woods, sen.) — " which are not only the
punishment of Adam's sin imputed to us, but which
also are positively evil in themselves, and deserving
of damnation."
The first of these assertions is frankly and fully
admitted by Mr. Stuart. " All" (men), he says,
"are sufferers on his" (Adam's) " account. The original
state of man is lost.1 A new one has come in, in
consequence of his sin, which is fraught with danger
and sorrow. It is certain now that all that come to
sufficient maturity to sin, will sin.. This certainly,"
he adds, " has been occasioned by the fall." Mr.
1 Commentary on the Romans, p. 575.

240 professor stuart's
Stuart, then, agrees with his brethren of the " old-
light school" in tracing the loss of original righteous
ness to the federal failure of Adam. The question
that separates them is the " quo modo"-— the manner in
which that failure deprives us of original righteous
ness. On this question Mr. Stuart, so far as I know,
and (as I formerly observed) the whole of the
new-light school, have given no opinion.1 He cannot,
indeed, he tells us, regard the quo modo as important,
excepting that the opinion held in reference to it
should not be anti-scriptural. He is sure, however,
that it is not by the imputation of Adam's sin to us.
" The fictitious process of accounting for it on the
ground of imputed sin, which in this way becomes
our own, is not," he says, " what the Bible asserts,
or seems to maintain." " There is not, in all the
Scriptures," he further maintains, " an instance in
which one man's sin or righteousness is said to be
imputed to another." Were not, I ask, the wrong
and debt of Onesimus imputed or put to the account
of PauL and by the request, of the latter ? Mr.
Stuart would not deny this. It is evident, therefore,
that he differs from modern Calvinists in this part of
the world, more in words than in modes of thought.
If, indeed, there be any, either in this country or
America, who can possibly persuade themselves that
by any process whatever the sin of Adam can be
1 " The reason why God made such a constitution of human
nature, which would suffer in all its branches by reason of an act of
sin of our first parents, he has not given." " We are concerned only
with facts," &c. — Stuart's Romans, p. 587.

HYPOTHESIS EXPLAINED. 241
made to become literally our sin, and that imputation
consists in thus making it ours, we should reject this
doctrine of imputation as decidedly as Mr. Stuart
does. Or, if any one should maintain that the
phrase, " God imputes the sin of Adam to his pos
terity," necessarily implies that he considers them as
having really committed it, I should not wonder that
this view of the case should be repudiated. God
judges of persons and things as they are, and not as
they are not. It is, perhaps, partly at least, on
account of having attached some such conception as
this to the term imputation, that the excellent
Dr. Woods, senior, who belongs, I suppose we may
say, to the old school of theology, speaks of it, in his
answer to Dr. Ware, in the following manner : —
" The word ' imputation ' has, in my view, been im
properly used in relation to this subject, and has
occasioned unnecessary perplexity. In Scripture, the
word ' impute,' when used in its proper sense, cer
tainly in relation to sin, uniformly signifies charging,
or reckoning, to a man that which is his own attri
bute or act. Every attempt which has been made to
prove that God ever imputes to man any sinful dis
position or act which is not strictly his own, has
failed of success." And again : " The imputation of
Adam's sin to his posterity, in any sense which these
words naturally and properly convey, is a doctrine
which we" (i. e. the orthodox in New England) " do
not believe." Neither, I add, do we, the modern Cal
vinists of this country, if by the words we are to
understand that God literally transfers the sin of
R

242 DIFFICULTY IN WHICH HE
Adam to us, or regards us as having actually com
mitted it. We abandon all such impiety and non
sense to high systematic antinomian divines. But
do not both Dr. Woods, and Mr. Stuart, believe that
the consequences of Adam's sin (i. e. on the principles
unfolded in preceding Lectures, the loss of chartered
benefits,) reach to us as if we had committed it?
Both of them admit this. " All are sufferers," says
Mr. Stuart, " on Adam's account." Now this is
what we mean by the imputation of his sin to us.
Whether our exposure to the loss of chartered bless
ings, through the federal failure of Adam, be expressed
in the best possible way by the term " imputation,"
might be admitted to be doubtful. But that question,
were it to become a question, would be a mere
logomachy. On the substantial facts of the case all
parties are agreed.
It is to me, however, somewhat remarkable, that,
while the minds of Dr. Woods and Professor Stuart
revolt against the statement — doubtless from attach
ing more meaning to the words than we do1 — that
Adam's sin is imputed to us, they seem to feel no
difficulty in the conception that Adam's fallen cha
racter is, by sovereign Divine appointment, and, as. it
would appear, by a direct exertion of Divine power,
indelibly fixed upon us ! It is impossible, they think,
that we can be justly punished for Adam's sin ; but
we may, they imagine, be justly made sinners (i.e.
depraved) by it, and then punished for our own sin.
Now, our statement is not that we are punished for
1 Vide -p. 117.

AND DR. WOODS ARE INVOLVED. 243
Adam's sin, but that we suffer the loss of chartered
benefits on that account. Or, if the term punishment
be ever employed to designate this loss, the reference
is to Adam, not to us. It is thought of as proper
punishment to him, but as mere loss to us. Shrink
ing, however, as they do, from the thought that the
punishment of Adam's sin is inflicted upon us without
personal blame on our part, I ask them how they can
admit the notion, consistently, that the depraved
character of Adam is fixed upon us, without any such
personal blame ? for, on their system, personal blame
does not attach to us till we have actually sinned.
If difficulty be involved in the conception that we
become sufferers as the direct result of the conduct of
another, must not at least equal difficulty be involved
in the conception that we become sinners by the con
duct of another ? ' Is it not, in fact, a greater evil to
be made depraved, than to be made miserable ? And
yet, in the conceptions of these two eminent writers,
the statement that we are made sinners (i. e. depraved)
by the sin of Adam, seems to involve no difficulty
whatever. Now to me, I acknowledge, the great
puzzle is, or has been, " How the transgression of
Adam should fix and determine the character of the
race. The law of propagation,2 as we formerly saw,
will not account for it, except on the absurd and
profane hypothesis that the soul is generated together
with the body ; nor, as I think, even then. The
only explanation apparent to me is the one largely
unfolded in former Lectures ; viz. that the presence
2 Fwfepp. 185,186.
r2

244 how far we agree
of the Spirit of God with the soul of man was a
sovereign gift, — vested by charter in Adam, — held
conditionally by him, and lost by him, by disregarding
the condition; so that the depravity of the race is
the result of imputation : in other words, it is the
race suffering the consequences of his breach of
covenant. It is, however, more especially against the second
statement, in what he calls the usual theory of
original sin, that Mr. Stuart objects; viz. that it
consists in the positive and entire corruption of our
nature ; or, as he explains the term positive, " in the
existence of forbidden lusts and desires connate with us,
which are not only the punishment of Adam's sin,
as imputed to us, but which also are positively evil
in themselves, and deserving of damnation." Main
taining, as I have done in preceding Lectures, the
privative nature of original sin — that it is not a thing,
but the lack of a thing — I am constrained to unite
with Mr. Stuart in his disapprobation of much of the
preceding statement. I do not believe, for instance,
in the existence of forbidden lusts and desires connate
with us ; that is, if the terms " lusts" and " desires" are
understood to denote, not propensities, or suscep
tibilities, or "propensions" of mind, but these in a
state of excitement. The term " desire," used by Mr.
Stuart, is ambiguous. Like the word " sensation," it
denotes both a mental capacity, and a mental feeling,
— the power 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

WITH MR. STUART. 245
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 — developing the existence of mental capacities
or susceptibilities — 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 designating unholy
developments of the capacity of desiring. Mr. Stuart
obviously uses both terms, " lusts" and "passions," 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 destitution
of original righteousness ; the state of a soul that is

246 WHAT HE OUGHT TO ADMIT.
without the Spirit of God. Now, lamentable soever
as such a state may be, and no doubt is, it involves
no personal blame — awakens no remorse ; and there
fore cannot of itself, and separate from its effects, in
actual disobedience, in which, without controlling
grace, it always issues, be regarded as laying an
equitable ground for the infliction of punishment,
and, a fortiori, the punishment 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 depravity in our natural and penal desti
tution of those higher principles which Adam pos
sessed before the fall. I have found one passage in
which he appears to do this. " In one way, 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 now have such a nature,
and that such is the result in respect to our passions
and appetites, the Scripture testifies, and the expe
rience of all ages and nations testifies." i
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,)
1 Comm. p. 59.

STATEMENT OF HIS VIEWS. 247
have all the inferior principles of which President
Edwards speaks, for they are the necessary endow
ments of human nature. All unconverted men ares
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 pos
session 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 principles 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 expected
to triumph in the case of men in general, from whom
this control is entirely removed.
The following statements, taken from his Com
mentary 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
human nature, that man should possess a suscepti
bility of excitement2 by sinful and alluring objects."
Without delaying, for the present, to inquire into
the exact meaning of the term " susceptibility" used
2 Even the word " excitement ' needs explanation

248 STATEMENT OF
by Mr. Stuart in this passage, or to notice the phrase
ology, " sinful and alluring objects," the great fact
apparently asserted must be conceded. There must
exist in the mind of every moral agent such suscep
tibility, or how could he be subjected to a moral
trial ? It, accordingly, existed in Adam while inno
cent ; it was found in the mind of Christ. Such
susceptibility cannot, therefore, be morally wrong per
se; nor can any mind be considered a depraved
mind in consequence of its possession. It is essen
tial, 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 ? Cer
tainly it does not consist in the fact, that Adam and
Eve could not at all feel the power of- sinful entice
ment, and we can and do feel it. To say this would
be to say that our first parents sinned without any
enticement to sin ;l 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 temp
tation in some respect or other to sin, in regard to
all the moral acts of the unregenerate ; the second,
that we are placed in a world where temptation is
immeasurably increased beyond what it was in para
dise."— P. 599.
To feel the power of " sinful enticement " (why does Mr. Stuart
call it sinful enticement when, as he says, Eve felt it without sin 1)
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. 249
In the " Biblical Repository " his sentiments are
more fully expressed, if not with greater perspicuity.
" Whatever 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 unma
tured 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 sus
ceptibility of impression from sinful and enticing
objects, belongs to the tout ensemble of our nature ;
not to the body exclusively, nor to the soul exclu
sively, but from their essential and intimate con
nexion 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 develop 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 ten
dency of his propensities was just the reverse of what
it now is."— P. 48.
In this latter passage, Mr. Stuart must be under
stood 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

250 STATEMENT OF
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 per
suading 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, — at least
according to the present statement, — the essence of
native depravity. He does not allow that this
altered state of the susceptibility, can, with any pro
priety, 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
intelligible and consistent. "Adam," as he adds in
further illustration of his meaning, " had two degrees
of this susceptibility ; all his descendants possess ten ;
and native 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 intelligible, to give a totally different account of
the essence of native depravity. In the passages
quoted, it is represented 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
predominant tendency in the susceptibility. Now,
whatever Mr. Stuart may understand by the latter
phrase, I cannot well conceive that he can regard

me. stuart's views. • 251
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 some
what minutely ; but, as at least some of my intended
remarks upon the views of Mr. Stuart are applicable
to the theory of the Rev. J. Ballantyne, as developed
in his original and valuable work entitled " Examina
tion of the Human Mind," it may be expedient, pre
vious to the doing of this, to present 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 under
stood to intimate that my late friend fully approved
of the sentiments of Mr. Ballantyne : 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.

252 HYPOTHESIS OF MR. BALLANTYNE.
It will be impossible for me fully to unfold the
hypothesis of this writer in the limited space which
only I can command; but, perhaps, his main prin
ciples may be thus stated : — God, as a sovereign,
may, consistently with perfect 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 prin
ciples," 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'7 (i. e. as I imagine 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. 466.
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, in consequence of the fall of Adam,
the Almighty, without injustice, might appoint all his
descendants — even although they were supposed to be
perfectly innocent — to receive such dispositions, affec
tions, and passions, &c, and to be placed in such

MR. BALLANTYNE's THEORY. 253
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
inducement 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, without 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 Redeemer, is more calculated 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

254 MR. BALLANTYNE'S THEORY.
meant that altogether new elements have been in
fused into the mental constitution, — or whether some
of the essential elements — bodily appetites and pas
sions, for instance — have received additional intensity,
rendering their existence and influence pregnant with
increased 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 conception 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, acquired 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, somehow 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 impu
tation 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

REMARKS UPON BOTH. 255
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 first place, I am somewhat sur
prised 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 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

256 REMARKS UPON
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 man " suscep
tibilities of being enticed by sin ; " " susceptibilities
of impression from objects of sinful excitement;"
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 excep
tion of the last, are true, in one sense ; but it is
somewhat difficult to ascertain in what sense they
were used by Mr. Stuart. Expressions occur which
might induce the suspicion, that, by susceptibilities of
impression from sinful objects, he understands some
thing 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
susceptibilities. But, as the existence of virtuous,
implies the possible existence of vicious, suscepti
bilities, we desiderate a distinct explanation of those
susceptibilities of being enticed to sin, which he
attributes to man in his fallen state. Are they dis
tinct 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

MR. STUART'S THEORY. 257
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 difference between fallen and innocent
man to consist in this, viz. that, in the former, the sus
ceptibility 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 susceptibility instead of two. Sus
ceptibilities are not, then, new elements of mind, but
old elements — such as existed in the mind of Adam —
possessing, however, greatly increased intensity.
Further, then, I cannot but desire a more distinct
account of the nature and source, or cause, of this
increased intensity in this susceptibility of impression
from sinful objects. He is speaking of a suscepti
bility, let it be carefully observed, which is native to
the mind ; and, comparing 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 metaphy
sicians in this part of the world, a susceptibility of
mind is riot to be regarded as anything 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 property, to

258 REMARKS UPON
which no moral character can possibly attach. 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 intensely
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
augmented 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 ? Rather, would it not ennoble the mind ?
A being, whose power of loving is greatly increased,
is elevated in rank by this increase, — 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

MR. STUART S STATEMENTS.

259

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 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 those higher and controlling
principles which would have prevented this wrong
development. Mr. Stuart may possibly allege, that, by this in
creased " susceptibility of being enticed," he does not
mean augmented 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 constitution
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
s2

260 REMARKS UPON
those virtuous susceptibilities which, as he thinks,
existed in Adam, but were lost by the fall. I have
sometimes suspected 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 confidence in him,
his desire to promote his glory, &c. All these feelings
were, no doubt, extinguished by his transgression. 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 refine
ment involving np practical consequences. I am
convinced, on the contrary, that it is impossible to
arrive at just conclusions on certain points, both
in ethical and theological science, without keeping it
perpetually in view. A mental susceptibility denotes
a certain constitution or " make" of the mind : no
moral character 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

MR. STUART'S STATEMENTS. 261
the loss of " susceptibilities" correctly so called ;
I should, in that case, inquire what were 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 altera
tion 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
represented ' 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 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." Now, I am at a
loss to conceive what is meant by the " bent " of a
propensity. I have been accustomed to suppose that
a propensity of mind is itself, to borrow Mr. Stuart's
phraseology, a " bent " of mind, — a turning or in
clination towards some object. I cannot conceive
what the bent ofabent can be. A propensity, that
is, a bent, towards any action, or any object — a pro
pensity to anger, to the gratification of animal appe-
Vide p. 251,

262 REMARKS UPON
tites, for instance — may be resisted, controlled, 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, notwithstanding such propensity, both may be
displayed through 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
propensities, or," he adds, " to speak more accurately,
the predominant tendency of every susceptibility to re
ceive impressions adapted to excite him to action of any
kind, was altogether in favour of the good." No doubt
the predominant tendency of Adam's mind was towards
that which 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 appetites, 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

MR. STUART'S statements. 263
praeterea 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
impressions, I can form no conception. Mr. Stuart .
obviously conceives of some difference in the sus
ceptibilities of innocent and fallen man ; and ascribes
the actual sin of the latter to the change in them
which the fall has superinduced; 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 attri
buted to a difference in the physical constitution of
our minds and his. We sin, not because we have
other susceptibilities of being tempted than he had ;
nor because, with the same susceptibilities, ours are
possessed of augmented intensity ;] but because we
are destitute of the love of God. He, on the con
trary, possessed and exercised this holy principle; and,
being essentially a controlling principle, it imposed a
restraint upon susceptibilities and propensities which,
without this restraint, would as certainly have carried
1 The reader must carefully remember that I am speaking here of
susceptibilities in their native state — as the creation of God. No
doubt, propensities 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, — how far it differs from
that of Adam at his creation.

264 REMARKS UPON
him into actual sin as his posterity. The great dif
ference between the hypothesis of Mr. Stuart, and the
doctrine of the preceding Lectures., is this: that, in
our view, original depravity is entirely privative, — in
his, positive, in its nature. The augmented sus
ceptibility to temptation which he ascribes to fallen
man, is not, as the reader must carefully observe, a
mere comparative increase of strength in the inferior
principles of our nature, resulting from the loss of
the higher principles, summarily comprehended, 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
augmentation of the strength of the inferior prin
ciples, involving an alteration, as it has been before
stated, in the physical constitution of the mind. We
have been accustomed to suppose that the change
produced in Adam himself by taking the forbidden
fruit was a moral change, and a moral change exclu
sively, — 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 sus
ceptibility of impression from sinful objects. By
whom, then, could this physical change be effected
but by God ? Who but He could create these addi
tional eight degrees of susceptibility ? And if native
depravity, or degeneracy, consist, not in the destitution
of the higher principles, but in a great positive acces
sion of strength to the lower, we are constrained to

MR. STUART'S statements. 265
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, requiring phy
sical 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.1 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. "Adam's posterity," he says,
" were doomed to partake of a nature, in one very
important respect, the reverse of what his nature
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 sanc
tified by the Spirit of God." In a pamphlet, pub
lished2 by the present writer about five years ago,
containing remarks upon Mr. Stuart's papers in the
1 Vide Note E, at the end of the volume.
' By Dinnis, Paternoster Row.

266 OBJECTIONS AGAINST
American Biblical Repository, an argument of con
siderable 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 I 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.1 Mr. Ballan
tyne does not attempt to deny this. He says ex
pressly, " This great calamity was inflicted upon the
race for one sin of one man, and to display the
Almighty's hatred of sin."
Thejt>n?wfl/aCT6?objectionagainstthistheory(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
constitutions, and to be placed in such circumstances,
as would 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,
1 I have dwelt at greater length, in the preceding observations,
upon Mr. Stuart's views, than some of my readers, who are not fond
of argument, may think necessary. I have been influenced, however,
by the recollection that the Congregational Lectures ought not to be
altogether of a popular character ; by my impression of the high
importance of forming distinct conceptions 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 con
sidered 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. , 267
though difficulties in the performance 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, arid passions of men, are the
great sources of temptation to neglect duty ; the
power to resist it lies in the faculties of reason, con
science, 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, necessary to account
ability and criminality. If God give ability to dis
charge 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 discharg
ing duty has been, in the case of man, greatly
increased by the fall, it has not been 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 indefi
nitely 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 discharge duty
may be entirely lost, while the obligation to discharge

268 OBJECTIONS AGAINST
it remains in full force ; for ability, in this sense, is
disposition rather than power : and, when our rela
tions to man are considered, who is there that sup
poses that the mere want of disposition to obey lawful
commands, supplies a valid excuse for their trans
gression ?
And, indeed, we find- that difficulties in the way of
obedience 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 ;" i. e. the 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.
Ballantyne 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 acknowledges it to be — " of
creating or strengthening dispositions, affections, and

MR. BALLANTYNE'S THEORY. 269
passions, which form powerful inducements to sin ;"
and that this fearful increase in the propensity to
sin might constitute the very essence of native de
pravity. 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 the first place, I am not able to see a sufficient
foundation 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 threatening, by
which the forbidden tree was* guarded, contain the
slightest intimation that such a calamity 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 indu
bitably certain ? Again, do the words of the Judge,
when he ascended the tribunal 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

270 OBJECTIONS AGAINST
hypothesis. 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 influence of that blessed Spirit,
would afford, is there not reason to think, a suffi
ciently powerful display of God's hatred against sin ;
would render the difficulties in the way 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
temptation to sin, might not increase difficulty beyond
ability, yet might there not be some danger of
awakening the suspicion 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 Mr. 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 occasioned 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, " received dispositions, affec
tions, and passions, which prove so powerful an
inducement to sin, as to render it indubitably
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

MR. BALLANTYNE S THEORY.

271

irrespective of that sin : i. e. the result to the
race, of Adam's sin, was an entire change in the
frame and texture of the mind of the race. Now
this is to me, I acknowledge, a most improbable
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 propensities, which had
been before held in check, the entire ascendency, is
quite conceivable, and perfectly natural; but that it
should give existence, or even additional intensity, to
dispositions, &c. which are, by Mr. Ballantyne's own
confessions, physical principles, I find it impossible to
imagine. Mr. Ballantyne may say that these dispo
sitions 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 with
draw from Adam in righteous displeasure at his
rebellion, — that this rebellion should be followed by
the infliction of positive punishment, 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.

272 OBJECTIONS AGAINST
In the fourth and last place, I observe, that Mr.
Ballantyne'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 renewal. 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 controlled all the principles of his
nature, — and if this loss, transmitted to the race,
constitute the native depravity of the race, then we
see at once what regeneration must be, — that it can
be nothing more nor less than the re-enthronement
of the love of God in the heart of man.
But, if native depravity be the possession of dis
positions, affections, and passions — not originally
implanted in man — which form so powerful a temp
tation to sin as to render the certainty of sin indu
bitable, then ought not regeneration 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 regeneration 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

MR. BALLANTYNE'S THEORY. 273
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, what
ever regeneration may be, the Scriptures ascribe it,
not to physical agency, but to the instrumentality
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 word
of God which liveth and abideth for ever." (1 Peter
i. 23.) The result to which we are led, by this long dis
cussion, is the following; viz. that original sin, or
native depravity, does not consist in the addition of
eight degrees to the susceptibility of receiving im
pressions from objects of sinful excitement, as stated
by Mr. Stuart ; nor, as thought by Mr. Ballantyne,
in the communication to the race of such .constitu
tions, and in the placing of the race in such circum
stances, as would expose them to very powerful
inducements 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 re
sulted in Adam from the union of the Spirit of God
with his soul ; and which is never found, in any
human being, without the presence and influence of
that Divine agent.

LECTURE VII.
PROOF OF ORIGINAL SIN  THE DOUBLE SOURCE OF PROOF  HISTORY,
AND REVELATION.
We have seen that, by many excellent writers, the
phrase " original 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 culpa — blameworthiness ; but realus — 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 char
tered 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,

PROOF OF ORIGINAL GUILT.

275

—that he violated the conditions of the charter, and
thus forfeited life for himself and his family ; i. e. we
have proved original sin in the sense of original
guilt. In harmony with these statements, the Scrip
tures assure us, that " in Adam all die," — that " death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that
had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's trans
gression," — that " through the offence of one, many
are dead," — that " the judgment was by one to con
demnation," — that " by the offence of one, judgment
came upon all men to condemnation," — that " by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners;" — the
amount of which assertions obviously appears, as
I cannot but think, to be this : that the penalty of
the breach of charter extends to all who are either
immediately or remotely connected with the bene
ficiary himself.
As our space is of necessity contracted, recapitula
tion, on this point, would be inexpedient, and, indeed,
improper. The only remaining thing to be done, is
to enter upon the proof of original sin, in the sense of
native depravity, — the sense so fully unfolded in the
immediately previous Lectures.
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 positive holy principles, in consequence
of the covenant loss of that divine and gracious
influence which is necessary to their support (a desti
tution, however, which is invariably followed, unless
t 2

276 THE POINT TO BE PROVED.
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 state
ments we may adduce in proof, to this particular
theory concerning the nature of original depravity.
The effects of that depravity 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 propensity — not intending by these words to
intimate either that it is a thing (to borrow our
former phraseology) or the lack of a thing — a pro
pensity to evil, which, unless counteracted by Divine
grace, invariably carries forwards its possessor into
actual sin against God. This position is to be main
tained 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 ten
dency, 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 maintaining so prepos
terous a position.
In support of our position, we have two sources of
evidence; we have the proof supplied by the cha
racter and conduct of men, — and by the testimony of
the word of God.

PROOF SUPPLIED BY CHARACTER. 277
I. We derive evidence in support of the doctrine
of native 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
beyond contradiction its validity. It is quite needless
to do more, on this point, than to present the sub
stance of their argument ; no writer can hope to
improve upon it. " There must be, and there is,"
says Dr. Beecher, " in man, something 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, and thinking and feeling rightly, it was
yet contended that he must have entered the scene of

278 STATEMENTS OF BEECHER,
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 powers ; or
what ground of certainty could have existed that he
would exercise 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 with 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 stupendous concurrence of perverted action,
in all the adult millions 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 obliquity of the human will
to the simple ability of choosing wrong, is to ascribe
the moral obliquity of a lost world to nothing."1
" 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
principle in natural science. Even the law of gravita
tion cannot be proved more certainly than the law of
sin in man. If the law of gravitation is proved by
1 Views on Theology, pp. 164, 165.

WOODS, AND CHALMERS.

279

the fact that all bodies, when left without resistance,
show a tendency to move towards the centre of the
earth ; the moral depravity of man is proved by the
fact, that, when left to himself in circumstances which
lead to a development of his moral character, he
always shows a propensity to sin."2
" Even though," adds Dr. Chalmers, in a still more
luminous and conclusive manner, " we had outward
exhibition alone, we often have enough to infer and
ascertain the inward 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 communications, to the
hearts of the inferior animals ; and yet we can pro
nounce 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, — ascrib
ing to each a prior tendency of nature, from which
there emanates the style of action that stands visibly
forth in their outward histories. It is thus," he adds,
" that we verify the doctrine of original sin by ex
perience. Should it be found true of every man
that he is actually a sinner — should this hold uni
versally 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,
2 Essay on Native Depravity, p. 26.

280 STATEMENTS OF
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 deviations
from the rule of right — then, he 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 dispo
sition of man to 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 exempli
fication 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 circumstances, 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
warrantable as to affirm the most certain laws, or
the soundest classifications in natural history."1
1 Works, vol. xxii. pp. 367—370.

CHALMERS AND EDWARDS. 281
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 indi
vidual who is now born into the world ") which might
seem to indicate the opinion that native depravity
has a positive essence. It is not certain 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.
No man, however, has exhibited this point in a
more luminous manner than the great Jonathan
Edwards. The substance of his arguments, some
what generalized, is as follows. The uniformity of
an event proves the existence somewhere of a ten
dency to that event. For what is meant by tendency,
but a prevailing liableness or exposedness 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, probability of the action of a
cause to secure its occurrence. Tendency to a cer
tain disease implies the probability of an attack of
that disease, through the existence and action of
certain elements in the constitution which may give

282 STATEMENT OF EDWARDS.
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 pos
sesses 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 Tiring 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 illustrations, somewhat altered to
adapt it to our purpose, should invariably bear, in
all climates and soils, at a certain period of its
growth, for one year bad fruit ; would not that cir
cumstance 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

DEFECT IN HIS STATEMENT.

283

excellence ? It cannot surely be doubted. The pro
duction 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 con
viction 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 which
is evil. At all events, I do not see how he could
repel a conclusion , to this effect drawn by an oppo
nent from his own arguments. " Even admitting,"
he says, " that men do good," — i. e. irrespectively of
the influence 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 without fail comes to pass."
This is ' a valid conclusion. But is it possible to
grant this without admitting the converse? If dis
obedience, to the extent to which men actually
disobey, 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-con
tradictory tendencies in the same mind, and at the
same time. This is neither the time nor the place

284 PROOF OF NATIVE DEPRAVITY DEPENDS
to repel the admission that good fruit is ever pro
duced, without special Divine influence, by the tree
of human nature. I cannot but regard its admission
by Edwards, even for the sake of argument, fatal to
the doctrine of the entire depravity of man by
nature.1 Sufficient, we conceive, has been said in justifica
tion of our conclusion, that the invariableness with
which 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 com
mission 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.2 The argu
ment is as follows : — all men, in every age, in every
part of the globe, under every variety of circum
stances, in spite of every conceivable moral induce
ment to avoid it, — all men have sinned. " They sin,
therefore," to adopt the emphatic language of Dr.
Chalmers, " not solely because of the peculiar ex
citements to evil that have crossed their path ; they
have sinned not only because of the noxious
atmosphere they have breathed, or the vitiating
example that is on every side of them; but they
See the admission repelled, in the reply to the last objection
against the doctrine of native depravity, at the close of this Volume.
See this point further argued, in reply to the first objection
against the doctrine.

ON THE INVARIABLENESS OF SIN. 285
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 that tendency to
sin — the result of federal failure — of which we have
so largely spoken, and which, unless restrained by
Divine and sovereign grace, invariably impels its
subjects into actual rebellion against God.
The amount, or degree, or virulence of this ten
dency, taking for our guide the light of fact and
experience merely, is to be estimated by the mag
nitude and turpitude of the sins to which it leads.
If all men are sinners, 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 devoid
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.

286 PROOF THAT ALL MEN ARE SINNERS.
We assert, then, in the first place, the strict uni
versality 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 obe
dience 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 demand.
He should not forget that it requires, not habitual
obedience merely, but perfect obedience — perfect
obedience during 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 be 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 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 par
ticular 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

OBJECTION OF TAYLOR CONSIDERED.

287

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 con
stitute 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 rela
tion in which a man stands to the Divine law — as
acquitted or condemned— depends upon the cha
racter 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 argu
ment, which deduces the doctrine of original sin from
the general wickedness of man, is invalid. We reply
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 jurisprudence prac
tically avows. Does the law of our country 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 a person a thief; one intentional and
malicious act of shedding innocent blood, constitutes

288 ONE SIN INCURS DEATH.
a murderer, and requires 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 neigh
bour^ 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 un
known,) ambiguous. It does not justify any con
clusion 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
corrupt, 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 position is, that all men have thus sinned, and
exposed themselves to this death.

PROOF OF DEPRAVITY.

289

Were any proof of this position necessary, we
might appeal to the evidence of consciousness. It is
common enough for men to attempt to extenuate the
sins the commission 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 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 con
demns 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 testi
mony of consciousness becomes distinct and decided
in proportion to the attainments 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 par
tially 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

290 PROOF OF UNIVERSAL DEPRAVITY.
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 venture 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 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 additional paragraph in man's his
tory serves but to furnish evidence of his folly and
depravity. " The more perfect," says the venerable
Dr. Woods, " is our acquaintance with the 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 ac
quaintance with the symptoms of the disease excites
fears which are allayed by a more perfect acquaint
ance. 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,

PROOF OF UNIVERSAL DEPRAVITY. 291
leaving us in doubt whether there is any serious
disorder, or what the disorder is ; but our continued
observation of the symptoms gradually increases our
apprehensions, and finally makes it a certainty, that
the patient has a disorder of a most alarming cha
racter, and incapable of being cured, except by the
speedy application 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 re
peated 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 con
tend with him, he cannot answer him one of a
thousand." (Job ix. 1 — 3.) " Hear my prayer, O
Lord," said David, " give ear to my supplications,"
&c. " And enter not into judgment with thy ser
vant ; for in thy sight shall no man living be jus
tified." (Psalm cxliii. 1, 2.) All men living must,
then, have sinned, or they might have had boldness
before him in judgment. Referring probably to these
words of David, the Apostle Paul says, " Now we
u2

292 PROOF OF ITS INVETERACY.
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 eternal 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
connexion 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 multiplication of the race. As the family
enlarged, its depraved propensities were more gene-

PROOF OF ITS INVETERACY. 293
rally and offensively developed. Monsters of iniquity
were every where to be seen. The righteous perished
from the earth. The holy seed became all but ex
tinct. 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
corrupted his way upon the earth. He saw that the
wickedness of man was great upon the earth ; and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually."
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 preservation 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 universal; corruption of manners total and
extreme. Nor was this the case merely with Gentiles,
destitute of Divine revelation. The prevailing cha
racter, from age to age, of the Jews, God's own
people, was wickedness. " Ye stiff-necked and un-
circumcised in heart," said one whose judgment
cannot be questioned, " ye do always resist the Holy
Ghost." " The Lord looked down from heaven," is

294 PROOF OF ITS INVETERACY.
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 alto
gether become filthy, 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 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 riiore specific and detailed
account of the nature and extent of that wickedness,
says, " They were filled with all unrighteousness,
fornication, wickedness, covetousness, full of envy,
murders, deceits, malignity, whisperers, backbiters,
haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors
of evil things, disobedient to parents, without under
standing, 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

PROOF OF ITS INVETERACY. 295
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. 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
rewards : 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 defiled 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.

296 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY.
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 years together 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 providence, 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 unsearch
able and boundless wisdom of God, — medicines pro
cured with infinite expense, exhibited with a vast
apparatus, a marvellous succession of dispensations,
introduced one after another, displaying an incompre
hensible length and breadth, depth and height, of
Divine wisdom, love and power, and every perfection
of the Godhead — to the eternal admiration of princi
palities and powers in heavenly places."
We assert, in the second place, that the members of

PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 297
the human family begin to sin as soon as they become
capable of moral agency. This fact, if it can be esta
blished, proves that they sin under the influence of a
tendency which is native, not acquired. Were it the
case that human beings continued obedient for a con
siderable 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 tendencies are not
developed till many years of existence have passed
away. But, tendencies developed somewhat late,
may be acquired ones ; those which display them
selves 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 cannot 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 responsibility can be supposed to com
mence, to become convinced of their immoral cha
racter. I readily concede, indeed, to the late Dr.
Harris, of Highbury College,1 that "much caution
1 Vide Infant Salvation, p. 49.

298 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY.
and discrimination are requisite to distinguish," 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
unfrequently 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 emo
tions, which were considered 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 which 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 cheerfully 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 depraved
nature in children are often discoverable to an ex
tent very painful and alarming t 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 rebellion of the animal,
against the rational, nature, — the refusal of the will

PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 299
of the little moral agent to submit to wa authority
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 nature 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 phi
losophers ; and the fact is so obvious and so con
formed 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 to innocence, holiness, and moral purity. A
perpetual conflict was seen to exist in man, from his
youth up, between 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 enjoying 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 accordingly. That this
is not so, experience sufficiently teaches.
Philosophy, however, could give no explanation of
1 Vide Moras, p. 100, s. 3.

300 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY-
the fact it was constrained to confess, — that man has
a defective 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. Reyelation explains
the whole. The Spirit of God is withheld from the
race, as an expression of God's abhorrence 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, speaking
lies." 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 Scripture.
I consider the argument of Jonathan Edwards, on
this point, to be sound and conclusive. " By the
deeds of the law," says the Apostle, " there shall no
flesh be justified in his sight ; for by the law is the
knowledge of sin :" i. e. the work or office of the
law — in consequence of human apostacy — is not to

PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 301
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 sinful
act ; suppose, on the contrary, it were in full con
formity 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 immediately after
this first act of obedience — and we know that mul
titudes 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 requires, " and thou shalt
live."' Men die because they disobey the law, or
reject the Gospel, which, indeed, is virtual disobe
dience, and the most aggravated species of dis
obedience. I do not see the necessity of putting the case, as
President Edwards does, of the death of these in
fantile moral agents. Adam and Eve were just, by
law, as long as they abstained from taking the for
bidden fruit. Must not, then, a whole race of human

302 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY.
beings, whose first moral act is, by hypothesis, an
act of obedience, be in a state of justification ? — 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 ultimately 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 great day, be justified by
works, but that no human being is, at any moment
of his existence, capable of justification on this
ground ; for the words are, " no flesh shall be justi
fied 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 sin,— to seek forgiveness
through the blood of Christ,— and to pray that- God
would " forgive their trespasses, as they forgive those
that trespass against them." Now, as repentance
and forgiveness imply transgression, there are multi
tudes of human beings, at this moment, and there
have been countless myriads of human beings in
former days — in fact the whole race — who, at one
period of their existence, could not exercise repent
ance, and did not need forgiveness, unless the first

PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 303
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 state
ments of Scripture which represent sin as, at all
events, commencing 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 former only.
The state of the argument does not now require
more. In support of the precise point I am now attempt
ing to establish, viz. that the first moral actions of
men are sinful 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 though) " 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, denoting no
more than that most men" (why does this writer say
most men, when God says, the imagination of man's
heart, i.e. the heart of the entire race?) "become

304 PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY.
depraved 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 — i.e.
without conceding the doctrine of original sin ?
Psalm lviii. 3. — " The wicked are estranged from
the womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born,
speaking lies." These words are still more con
clusive than those of the previous passage. It might
possibly be said that the 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 estranged
from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are
born. 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
celebrated Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, seems to wish to
have it understood that these words of David express
great depravity, but not early depravity. Quoting
the words, he adds, " that is, my unjust persecutors,
in Saul's court, are exceedingly wicked, corrupt, and

PROOF OF EARLY DEPRAVITY. 305
false, addicting themselves to lies, and calumnies, and
other vicioUs courses." This is the more remarkable,
since he states, in immediate connexion with the
words I have read, that similar passages, in relation
to virtue, intimate not the greatness, but the duration,
or early commencement, 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, ' For,
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 the womb, 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
exposition 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 occurring in
Psalm lviii. 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, from all criticism of the Doctor's ex
planation of this passage. It is sufficient to state
that, according to him, the words quoted are a peri-

306 DIRECT PROOF OF
phrasis of his being a sinner from the womb ; i. e. as
we have seen, from the commencement of his moral
life. Other passages might be adduced, but the pre
ceding 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 statements 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 experience 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
Scriptures, may be subdivided, with advantage, in the
following manner:— We find, first, certain passages
in which the doctrine of native depravity is, we

NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 307
think, distinctly affirmed. We have, secondly, cer
tain statements and doctrines from which it may with
confidence be inferred.
1st. We proceed to enumerate and, so far as it
may be 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
principle of selection, — to appeal, not to every passage
which might be adduced in proof of the native cor
ruption of the race, but to consider those which are
most commonly referred 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,
contains 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"
indicates 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
x2

308 DIRECT PROOF OF

his image." It is observable that he omits the word
Adam in his translation,1 probably to veil the ab
surdity 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 likeness," the word " his" must necessarily refer
to Adam.2
What, then, was that likeness? I cannot doubt
that, in these words of the historian, there is a
designed opposition between the image in which
Adam was created, and Seth born. The two pas:
sages, 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 image."
Adam was created in the image 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, conseT
1 " The words," he says, " stand thus in the original : ' and he
begat in his likeness, in his image.'" — P. 178, 2d edit.
2 I have said "necessarily" in the text, for so all the laws of just
interpretation 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 have begotten a son in his own likeness.
There is about as much 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 DEPRAVITY. 309
quently, be transmitted 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 re>-
frain from commenting upon now; it will be exposed
with greater advantage when we consider the subse
quent 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 atten
tion, 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, with the obvious design of evincing the
universal and absolute necessity of that 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." 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."

310 DIRECT PROOF OF
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 : — " A natural birth pro-
duceth a mere natural man ; that which is born 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, explained 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 of these
senses can be overthrown, the latter will stand as the
undoubted meaning of this inspired declaration.
In opposition, then, to Dr. Taylor's explanation,
I observe —
First, That it is difficult 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 expressing the idea he
intended to convey. He might have done it in a
much shorter way. He might, for instance, have
said, for such is evidently his meaning, " the offspring
of a human being, is a human being ! " And, now, we

NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 311
ask, who ever doubted this? Who can 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 Nico-
demus, 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 like 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

312 DIRECT PROOF OF
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 himself, 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 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 ac->
knowledgment that human nature, when it enters the
world, is not what it should be. Such an acknowledg
ment 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,
admitted 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, "produceth a mere natural man."
Again, " The natural birth produceth the mere parts
and powers of a man : the spiritual birth produceth
a man sanctified into the right use and application of
those powers in a life of true holiness." A natural.

NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 313
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 holi
ness. 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 ; i. e. he is bound to
admit the doctrine, or, at least, a doctrine, 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 contradis
tinguished from that of angels, or of brutes ; but the
moral state of man now, before 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 degenerate
state. A careful examination of the manner in which
the term is used in the 7th and 8th chapters of the
Epistle to the Romans, 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. When we were " in the
flesh ;" i. 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

314 DIRECT PROOF OF
was "in the flesh" at the very moment of writing
this epistle ; i. 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 controlling principles which
adorned the mind of Adam in his primeval state.
Again, at the 18th verse, he says, " The law is
spiritual; but Lam carnal, ^fleshly, sold under sin."
His meaning here cannot surely be, I am " a man,
consisting of body and soul, and having the powers of
a man." Who can doubt that the words are designed
to convey the meaning that, in the sense just ex
plained, 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 flesh, 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 refer to the
depraved condition of his natural powers ? — to his
penal destitution of those higher principles which
alone are invariably holy in their exercise, and lead
to a holy exercise of the inferior principles of our
nature ? Destitute of the love of God, there is " no
good thing"— nothing holy in the mind of man. His
powers, as a man, have no moral character ; their
exercise, no moral excellence. And when, at the
close of the chapter, he adds, " With my flesh I
serve the law of sin," he cannot surely intend that,
with his constitutional powers as a man, he served

NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 315
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 corrupt 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,1 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 Spirit of God dwelt in them, they
were not in the flesh ; that is, according to Dr.
Taylor's explanation, they were not men. Few
things can be more manifest than that the term
" flesh" here is synonymous with a state of degeneracy.
It refers to the nature of man certainly, but to that
1 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.

3 16 DIRECT PROOF OF
nature as having undergone a fearful change since
it came from the hands of its Maker ; as having
suffered, as the penal result of Adam's transgression,
the loss of those high and holy principles without
which the inferior principles invariably lead into
rebellion. In his Epistle to the Galatians, chapter v. 1 6, 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 committed 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 affections and lusts;" that is, according
to the explanation of Dr. Taylor, they have destroyed
the human nature, with all the powers that belonged
to it.1
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 Jonathan Edwards :—" All these things con
firm what we have supposed to be Christ's meaning
1 To " crucify the flesh" is not to destroy the human nature, but
to resist the cravings of the animal, and the inferior propensities
generally, to be gratified, when God's law forbids the indulgence.
A continued course of such resistance will, with God's blessing, .not
only bring 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. 317
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 himself, 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,
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
doctrine is Job xiv. 4, taken in connexion with chap
ter 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 senti
ment with the words of the Saviour; viz. that a
depraved being — depraved by the destitution of all
positively holy principles — can only give birth to a
being in a similar state of degeneracy ; since the loss

318 DIRECT PROOF OF
of such principles is the certain result of the penal
withdrawment of the Holy Spirit from the race.
It must be observed, here, that the lack of " clean
ness" 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
man, that he should be clean ? and he which is born of
a woman, that he should be righteous?" The senti
ment is, also, further confirmed by chapter xxv. 4, to
which the reader is requested to refer.1
What, then, is the uncleanness 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. Referring 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 NDK), is ever used in
the sense of natural frailty, it cannot be understood
so here. The words translated " clean "¦ must be sup
posed to have the same meaning, in the three chapters
1 " How then can man be justified with God ? or how can he be
clean that is born of a woman?" The opposition between the two
terms, "justified" and " clean," fixes the meaning of the latter. The
cleanness denied, is moral cleanness. Man cannot have it, because
born of a woman.

NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 3i9
to which we have referred. Now, supposing the
signification of the term2 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 former 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 mistake con
ceived 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," &c. The spirit of
Bildad's reply, in the 25th chapter, appears to be
this : — " You have mistaken your character. You are
not righteous or perfect, as you imagine. You are a
sinner. How, indeed, can he who is born of a woman
be otherwise ? "
The preceding statements furnish a sufficient
2 I have not, as I might have done, built my argument upon the
mere terms, but upon the context. The terms are noe, chapter xiv.
4 ; and roj, chapters xv. 14, and xxv. 4. Both are significant of
moral pollution. Perhaps one of them may denote physical defile
ment ; but I have not met with an instance in which either signifies
natural frailty.

320 DIRECT^ PROOF OF
answer to Dr. Taylor's assertion, that " the reason
why man cannot be clean is not his natural de
pravity, 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 lviii. 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 might reasonably be expected from this
naturally depraved condition 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 interpretation 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 the first of these passages,
Dr. Taylor says, " The word MilWin signifies, to bring

1 What does. Dr. Taylor mean by "pure" in the last sentence?
I suspect he has unconsciously, perhaps, yielded the point in con
troversy, namely, that the purity denied of man is moral purity;
for how should the being subject to "infirmities" (what is the
meaning of that word again ?) tend to give natural frailty, or im
purity to man ? Do not " infirmities " constitute natural frailty ?

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 321
forth, or to bear," appealing for the proof of this
assertion to Isaiah li. 2, "Look... unto Sarah that
bare you ;" and to Proverbs viii. 24, " When there
were no depths, I was brought forth ;" verse 25, " Be
fore the hills was I brought forth." I acquiesce in
this translation, imagining, with some eminent critics,
that to justify< our English version, " / was shapen"
the verb, in the original, should have been rrra'D.
The remaining verb "O^arr, he renders " warmed me,"
i. e. " cherished or nursed me ;" and translates 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 rendered,
as it is with us, — " in sin did my mother conceive me."
Probably he is right in his argument. The verb is
from D1T, incaluit, in Piel ; and is translated by Pro
fessor 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 version should be
proved to be the correct one, it is not absolutely
certain that the sin in which his mother conceived
him attached to the being conceived, or the being
conceiving, — to the mother, or the child:2 and,
further, because the great stress of the argument
rests upon the former clause. It is well and justly
2 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 supposed uncertainty which
attaches to it. Y

322 DIRECT PROOF OF
observed by President Edwards, that " if it be con
ceded 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
immediately 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 commen
tators, and apply it to the first as well as the second
clause — that not David, but his mother, is here
charged with sin ; since that conjecture, if it could
be sustained, would put this most important wit
ness in support of our views — as so perspicacious
a mind could not fail to see — out of court en
tirely. To sustain the doctrine of original sin, or
native depravity, 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, however,
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 im
pression from sinful objects, which, just as soon as

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 323
there is growth, and maturity enough for development,
will develop itself in persuading or influencing men
— all men — to sin.1 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 any
thing in his mind which can, strictly speaking, be
called sin ; but, as we have stated in previous Lectures,
with a propensity to sin.
Dr. Taylor, however, does not admit even this.
He 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 formation 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 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 state
ment. Had it been the intention of the Psalmist to
hyperbolize the duration of his sin, — or to acknow
ledge that he had contracted habits of sin at a very
early period of life, he might very naturally have
done this, I admit, by saying that he was born in sin ;
but to hyperbolize the atrocity of his sin, we should
1 Biblical Repository, Second Series, vol. ii. p. 48.
Y2

324 DIRECT PROOF OF
have expected the use of different language alto
gether. 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 phrase
ology 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
flood, God saw " that the wickedness of man was
great upon the earth ;" and that " every imagination

Original depravity. 325
of the thought of his heart was only evil continually :"
and, after the flood, we find this testimony con
cerning the state of man repeated. It is repeated,
indeed, in very striking terms ; in terms which indi
cate that moral pollution is not a thing grafted upon
the human character, but natural to it. The divine
testimony, concerning the state of man before the
deluge, left this to be inferred. From the universal
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
imagination 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" sig
nifies the whole of the former part of the age of man,
which commences from the beginning of life. The
Vvord, in its derivation, has reference to the birth or
beginning of existence. It comes from TM, 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

326 DIRECT PROOF OF
With reference to the efforts they make to accomplish
this, I observe —
First, That they are obviously unavailing. " The
language must," they allege, " be considered figu
rative, denoting 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 renders to the doctrine
in question (for, if there be no tendency in men's
nature to sin, how is it that they become depraved at
so early a period of life ?) why, I ask, must the lan
guage we are considering be held to be figurative ?
Why must it not be literally understood ? What
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 figurative,
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 early government of depraved appetites and
passions, and the very early practice of sin. Now,

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 327
on this fact, as we have formerly proved, and just
now hinted again, we may erect substantial proof of
the doctrine of innate depravity.1
Thirdly, I observe that, if the language of the
historian, standing alone, left it in any measure
doubtful, whether his intention was 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
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 was to intimate, or,
that his words necessarily imply, that there is a
tendency in his nature to that ungodliness which
becomes so speedily visible in his conduct ?
To the passages already mentioned might be added
Prov. xxii. 15 : " Foolishness 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
1 How should there be this early prevalence of depraved appetites
and passions — in other words, how should the imagination of man's
heart  heart, let the reader remember — be evil from his youth,
unless there be something wrong in the state of the heart ?

328 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
of those passages which may be considered as directly
asserting the depraved moral state of man by nature.
2d. We proceed to examine those general state
ments and doctrines which clearly imply that tliere
exists in man a natural tendency to sin against
God. I need not illustrate at any length the nature
of the evidence gathered from the source to which
I now refer. Every one knows that a distinct asser
tion 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
conclusiveness, inasmuch as their truth depends, in
some cases perhaps proximately, 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 doctrine.
First, those Scripture declarations which represent
wickedness as a property of the species. For, if it be
a fact that it characterizes the race, except in those
cases in which Divine grace may have modified — we
believe 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

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 329
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 drawing this inference, in relation to
man, until our opponents, on whom the " onus pro-
bandi" 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 will ye turn my glory
into shame. How 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 lvii. 4. Again, " Do ye indeed speak
righteousness, O congregation ? Do ye judge uprightly,
O ye sons of men ? Yea, in your heart ye work wicked
ness," &c. Psalm lviii. 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
explanation of that fact to allege, as Dr. Taylor does, —
whether truly so or not, is not of the slightest conse
quence 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 wicked
ness, and if wickedness be its invariable result, the

330 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
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
froward, but as for the pure, his work is right." Why
should " man" and the "pure" be thus placed in con
trast with each other, if frowardness were 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" Jer. 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 sons 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 be 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 triumph
ant appeal to his opponent, which I cannot refuse my

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 331
reader the satisfaction of seeing, " what account can
be given of these things, on Dr. Taylor's scheme 1
How strange it is that we should have such descrip
tions, all over the Bible, of man, and the sons of men !
Why should man be continually 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, and
moral purity the exception ? And how, again, we
inquire further, could wickedness become the rule,
without a natural tendency to it ?
In another class of passages, referred to also by
President 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 own eyes,
and according to their own desires. How can
it be doubted that these representations teach that
the native character of man is depraved ? When
our Lord would represent falsehood as the cha
racter, and the very nature, of the devil, he ex
presses it thus, " When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh
of his own ; for he is a liar, and the father of it,"
John viii. 44.
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

332 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
our Lord to Nicodemus already considered, " That
which is born of the flesh, is flesh." This momentous
declaration, and the passages to which reference has
now 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.
Secondly. We place, in this class of proofs of the
doctrine, all those passages which deny the possibility
of justification by deeds of law.
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 personal 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 render 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 act
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 state
ments of the Bible, concerning justification, render
support to the doctrine of original sin. They prove
it by proving universal depravity ; and universal
depravity proves, as we have seen, original sin.
On this point, I cannot but think that some of the
arguments of President Edwards are inconclusive.

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 333
" If the Scriptures," he says, " represent all mankind
as wicked in their first state, before they are made
partakers of the benefits of Christ's redemption, then
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 benefits 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 wickedness, from which the
redemption of Christ delivers men, as their first state,
the President has surely taken for granted the very
point in controversy. It is possible for persons to
admit that all who are redeemed by Christ were
previously 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 conducting
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 identical things. This mistake Presi
dent 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,

334 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
in the third chapter of the Romans, 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, determinately 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 distinctly 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. must have become sinners ; 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

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 335
who are just entering upon a course of moral
responsibility. The Apostle's language, as we have
seen, includes all such persons. It necessarily im
plies, 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 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 we 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
phraseology here is by no means to be commended)
" to. be wicked as soon as possible — if there be any
difference between these ; and either of them will
prove men to be born exceedingly depraved."
Thirdly. We place in this class of proofs of the
doctrine 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
pre-supposes the sinful state of man ; for redemption
is deliverance from sin, and the punishment of sin.

336 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
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 re
demption 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 responsibility must be sinners, since personal
interest in the salvation 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 argu
ment, in all men, a native propensity to sin.
It might possibly be objected here that, on the
supposition of our legal connexion with Adam — a
connexion assumed and maintained in previous Lec
tures — the affirmed necessity of redemption by Christ
would 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 separation in the consequences of Adam's
breach of charter, as that one of them should over
take us, while we escape the rest. The constitution
established with Adam ordained that all the penal
results of his federal failure should reach to every one
of his descendants, in every generation of men. In
this point of view, these results are analogous to
those of federal obedience, which are linked together

NATIVE DEPRAVITY. 337
in indissoluble connexion. " The blessings of the
Gospel," says one of the most admirable of modern
writers, " are like chain-shot ; one cannot enter the
mind without bringing all the others along with it."
Hence, in Christian experience, pardon and personal
holiness are found in invariable 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 them. Legal exposure to suffering
is invariably accompanied by proneness to sin : and
native depravity is always associated with original
guilt.1 Were it the case, then, that those inspired
declarations which 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 objector to fix in his mind the precise sense of
the term "guilt," in its application to man by nature.
We have seen that it signifies not " culpa," but
" reatus" — legal liability 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 per
petual, 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
1 Vide p. 142.
z

338 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
by the Christian atonement, had been made. Did
there, then, exist any need to admit that the affirmed
necessity of personal interest in the redemption of
Christ affords direct proof of original guilt merely,
still, as original guilt is exposure 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
contemplated man as depraved, as well as guilty;
and, consequently, 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 sal
vation 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.
Fourthly. We place in this class of proofs of the
doctrine, 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

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 339
see the kingdom 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 pur
pose, to enter at large upon a statement of the
nature of the new birth, — to show that it intends a
spiritual purification, or spiritual renewal. The fol
lowing 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, 10.
" 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 right
eousness 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 inevitable 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 observable, that our argument
resolves itself into the proof which the universality of
sin affords in support of the doctrine of universal
depravity. An opponent might concede the uni-
z2

340 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
versal 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.
I cannot but" feel that, on this point as well as a
previous one, President Edwards carries his conclu
sions 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 regene
ration." This is the point from which he sets out in
his argument. And how does he conduct it? He
proceeds immediately — very properly, considering the
opponent he had to deal with — to vindicate those
views of the nature of regeneration which are enter
tained 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. And, from the whole
statement, he deduces 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 rege
neration does not directly show that this depravity

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 341
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 description 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 appears to me im
portant to observe, as it was stated a short time ago,
that our argument, derived from the universal neces
sity 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, made exclusively
with reference to those who have lived long enough
in the world to be corrupted by the contagious influx
ence 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
existence. He may argue, perhaps, that the uni
versal terms of Scripture must at times be under
stood with certain limitations. It is asserted, he
will perhaps say, in as unlimited terms, that " he
that believeth 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 con
clusion, that since infants are not included under the

342 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
former general proposition, they may not, for any
thing we 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 plausi
bility, that I feel disposed to examine it with some
degree of care.
First, then, I observe there is a very material
difference in the two cases to which the objector
refers, but which has been overlooked by him.
Infants are incapable of faith ; they are physically
unable to understand the Gospel, and consequently
to believe it. It is, as we contend, 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 volume. NoWj to suppose
that faith is required of infants, would involve a
contradiction of those parts of the word of God
which lay it down as an incontrovertible principle, in
moral and theological science, that natural or phy
sical power to do what is required of us is essential
to accountability. I should never attempt to esta
blish this principle by reasoning. It is amoral axiom
which may give support to other propositions, but
which itself requires none.
On the other hand, infants are not incapable of

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY. 343
regeneration; for regeneration, in one sense of the
term, — the only sense in which an infant can undergo
it, — is an operation 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.1
Infants must, then, be included in our Lord's general
declaration concerning the necessity of the new birth.
Secondly, I observe, that the very terms by which
that spiritual purification of which we are speaking,
as well as the defilement from which it delivers, are
described, sufficiently intimate, that the latter is
natural to the mind, — that the malady, of which
regeneration is the only effectual remedy, is one
which we bring into the world with us ; and that it
consequently cleaves to children as well as to persons
of mature age. Why else are those unhallowed
affections and desires, which 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
1 " In the full sense of regeneration — the sense in which it is used
in reference to an adult, comprehending the whole of that moral
change which has been described (viz. of views, feelings, &c.) — infants
do not need, and are indeed incapable of, regeneration. In infants,
there are no mistaken apprehensions of divine things to be corrected j
no actual unholy affections towards them to. be removed : for in the
mind of an infant, there are, in reference to these things, no appre
hensions and wo affections 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
perceptions and affections." — Vide Divine Sovereignty, 2d Edition,
p. 355.

344 COLLATERAL PROOF OF
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.
And why, again, is regeneration denominated the
new or the second birth ? I see no sufficient reason
for representing this all-important change as a being
born again, unless it be to intimate that the first of
natural biith 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 language of our Lord most
unequivocally teaches) was to show that the state
of moral pollution, from which regenerating grace
rescues men, is their natural state. Flesh only can

ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY.

345

spring from flesh : to become the subjects of holy
principles, and holy feelings, we need a higher birth ;
we must be born again, born of the Spirit; for that
" 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 are included in those declara
tions which affirm the necessity of regeneration, the
doctrine of original 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 Nicodemus, is used
comprehensively of all men) — to say nothing of chil
dren 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 account for this
fact without admitting the doctrine of original 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.

LECTURE VIII.
OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE DOCTKINE CONSIDERED — TWO 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 de
pravity. 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 important and
difficult, and going into a more thorough examination
of them, than by that comparatively cursory investi
gation to which I should of necessity be confined,
were I to grapple with every trifling difficulty which
may have been supposed to embarrass this portion of
evangelical truth.
Now, before proceeding to state and encounter
these objections, it may be well for us to remember,
that the great practical question we have to decide is

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 347
; — 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 which side does the
scale preponderate ?" It were extreme 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 ratiocina
tion, that the opponent in a controversy often obtains
a temporary triumph over the defendant. The objec
tions of the former are apparently 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 objec
tions may be urged 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 objections lie against
the proposition that there is no God.1
1 " There are objections,'' said Dr. Johnson, against a plenum, and
objections against a vacuum ; but one of them must be true." — Vide
Whately's Logic : Fallacy of Objections.

348 MEN MAY SIN
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 we proceed in our examination.
The whole of the objections, which it is my inten
tion to consider, may be arranged in two classes ; the
first, comprehending those which are urged to show
that the hypothesis 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 DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN, OR NATIVE DEPRAVITY,
IS UNNECESSARY. This class of objections comprehends such as
assume that the moral phenomenon — the universal
prevalence of sin — may be accounted for, without
supposing the existence 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 depravity. Still the entire
array of inspired testimony in support of it, would
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
preceding 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

WITHOUT A SINFUL NATURE. 349,
authority is incomparably superior to all other, we
are bound to believe in the degenerate condition of
man by nature.
The first argument, in this class, is one of a very
general complexion, and hence I place it first ; it is,
that men may sin without a sinful nature; — or, in
other and more unexceptionable 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 inva
riable sine qua non 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 incompatible with a state of moral trial.
I cannot but think that Dr. Taylor,1 and, in more
recent times, Mr. Moses Stuart, have taken very
unnecessary pains to prove the position affirmed
above, by referring us to the case of the angels who
kept not their first estate, and to that of Adam, who
took and ate the forbidden fruit. In both these

1 " If sinful actions infer a nature originally corrupt, then (whereas
Adam committed" — "the most heinous sin that ever was committed
in the world) it will follow, that his nature was originally corrupt,
that he was made with evil inclinations," &c. &c. " But, if we
cannot infer from Adam's transgression, that his nature was origi
nally corrupt ; if, notwithstanding his sinning beyond any offences
mankind have since committed, it may be true that he' was made in
innocence ;" — " neither can we infer from the transgressions of all, or
of any part of mankind, that their nature is originally corrupt," &c.
—Taylor on Original Sin, 2d Part, p. 53.

350 THE REAL QUESTION STATED.
cases, sill was committed by beings in whom there
existed no native tendency to sin. The irresistible
conclusion is, therefore, that which has been just
stated ; viz. that the possession of a depraved nature
is not a sine qua non of transgression.
But the question is not, I submit to Mr. Stuart,
" Cannot a moral agent sin without a native ten
dency to sin?" Nor is it, " Does the commission of
one sin, by such an agent, certainly prove the exist
ence of such a tendency?" The question is this:
" Can it be admitted to be a fact, that innumerable
myriads of moral agents, existing by successive gene
rations, 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 progeny of such coloured animals
were white, the fact would force upon us the conclu
sion 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 con
sidered, 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 would
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 class,— to each one, I will add,

THE OBJECTION ANSWERED. 351
considered separately — may be obviously and outrage
ously 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 manner, though
there may not exist a special tendency in the human
machine thus to cease its operations ; therefore all men,
of diverse constitutions, in every possible variety of
circumstances, may expire at the same time, and in the
same manner, while yet the machine may be devoid
of any tendency 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 sup
posed, might be the effect of accident, the similar
death of the race could only be attributed to ordina
tion and tendency.1
Professor Stuart has been, in my judgment, suffi
ciently answered, as if by anticipation, by his. illus-
1 Vide Whately's Logic, § 11, Fallacy of Division and Composi
tion. 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 con
currence of circumstances, draws the conclusion that all may have
been so.
Now it is manifest, that, though he should be able to show, of
each miracle separately, that it might be so, he could not draw the
same conclusion concerning 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 gunning?"

352 REPLY OF
trious 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. Without 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, 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 particular kind of
effect. But who ever argues a fixed propensity 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?"1 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
1 Vide Works, vol. i. p. 150, note ; also 9th section.

TAYLOR AND TURNBULL. 353
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 per
fectly 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 themselves, surpasses their crimes
in number; that it is the rarity of crimes, in com
parison of innocent or good actions, which engages
our attention to them, and makes them to be recorded
in history ; while honest, generous, domestic actions,
are overlooked only because they are so common ?"
" Let a man make a fair estimate of human life," he
continues, " and set over against the shocking, the
astonishing instances of barbarity and wickedness,
that have been perpetrated in every age, not only the
exceeding generous and brave actions with which
history 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
A A

354 THE ANSWER OF EDWARDS
vastly corrupt, and that there is hardly any such
thing as virtue in the world."1
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 under^
standing from Bedlam, nor of our morals from a
gaol."2 The gist of the argument of both writers,
and of others of the same class, appears to be this, —
¦ that since good as well as bad fruit appears on the
tree of human nature, we are not constrained to
admit the existence of a native tendency to the pro
duction of the latter.
President Edwards rests his main reply to these
statements upon the invariableness of the production
of the latter kind of fruit. " The objection," he
says, " is invalid, because the inquiry is not concern
ing 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 entitled to say to Presi
dent Edwards, " If the invariable production of bad
1 Vide Moral Philosophy, pp. 289, 290.
2 Vide Original Sin, pp. 77, 78.

THE PROPER ANSWER. 355
fruit (which is your position) proves a tendency to
that result, then it follows that the invariable pro
duction of good fruit (which 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 — whatever 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. e. in other words, we must show that
none of the native produce of the tree of human
nature is good fruit ; or, in other words 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 principles of ethical science, and with
the testimony of Divine revelation. The twelfth
Article of that Church affirms, that good works are
the fruits of faith, and follow after justification. The
thirteenth states, that " works 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 they
A A 2

356 NO GOOD WORKS
are not done as God hath willed 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, indeed, 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 interpretation which no
honest man can put upon them. And the Articles,
understood in their natural sense, are in harmony,
as I have said, with all just views of moral science.
It is an established doctrine in ethics, that the prin
ciple 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 sustained by the agent (for there is a clear
distinction between the rectitude of an action, and
the virtue of the agent1), 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 quota
tions, 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 ;
1 Vide Dr. Chalmers on the Emotions.

PREVIOUS TO REGENERATION. 357
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, designate 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 disap
pear, 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 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 lamb — 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 thus act under a sense of duty to man, he

358 . WHAT IS ESSENTIAL
may not be a virtuous man, because God, and his
rightful authority over him, have not been recognised
and regarded. True morality 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 immoral 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 immorality,— of the grossest,
the highest species of immorality ; for, " since God
is the first and greatest being in the universe,
obedience to him is the first of duties — a duty
paramount to all others, and which — if obligation
to creatures and to God could ever come into con
flict — must be discharged, even if it involve the
sacrifice of all others." Now, the authority of God
has been interposed on behalf of relative 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 feeble sense of duty to man, will
accompany a feeble sense 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

TO MORALITY. 359
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 con
troversy) must confess the truth of the great principle
in ethical science thus briefly expounded. It may be
expedient to observe, however, that it is confirmed
by the " manner in which relative 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 chil
dren in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;
.servants to obey their masters in singleness of heart,
as unto Christ ; and masters to be just and kind unto
their servants, as having an eye to their Master in
heaven ; while the inspired writer adds, ' And what
soever ye do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not
unto men.'1 Thus our obligations to men are to be

1 The injunction, " Do it heartily as unto the Lord, and not unto
men" cannot mean that we are to have no respect to the claims of
men upon us ; for true morality pays practical regard to the claims
of all beings upon us. The words imply that, in the discharge of
relative and social duties, we are not to respect the claims of men
merely, but the claims of God also : in other words, that social and

360 WHAT IS MORALITY.
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 obey
God, who has commanded both the one and the
other."1 Now, let not merely the innocent and kind actions
of " criminals," which we are told, in a preceding page,
" surpass their crimes in number," but the honest and
kind actions of what he would call the " good" (unre-
generate) " man," be weighed in this high ethical and
Scriptural balance, and their levity and moral worth-
lessness at once appear. Many of them are prompted
by the fear of punishment, or the hope of advantage ;
some, it may be, by constitutional temperament ; how
few flow from a sense of duty ! And of these few,
are there any that indicate the existence of a sense of
duty to God ? If the rights of men, in some solitary
instances, are perceived and practically acknowledged,
the rights of God are forgotten or disregarded..
Supposing — if it be possible to do so — " the constitu
tion of the mind, and the structure and tendencies of
society," to remain what they now are, and God to
cease to exist, the actions so highly applauded might
continue, and, we think, would continue to be per
formed, for they are not originated by regard to his
authority. How, then, can they be virtuous actions ?
.relative duties must be discharged as an act of obedience to God,
"who has interposed his authority by commanding us to observe
them. 1 Vide Elements of Mental and Moral Science, pp. 416, 417.

SECOND OBJECTION. 361
These principles, which, on the admission of the
Divine existence, are really great and radical prin
ciples in ethical science, are in complete harmony
with inspired statements. Of the wicked — and the
Bible recognises only two classes of men, — the
righteous and the wicked, the converted and the
unconverted, believers and unbelievers — the Scrip
tures declare that they are destitute both of the fear
and the love of God. " There is no fear of God
before their eyes." " The carnal mind," we are told,
" is enmity, against God." " They that are in the
flesh cannot please God." The very " ploughing of
the wicked is sin." " The sacrifices of the wicked
are an abomination to the Lord." The contrast
between these inspired dicta, and the assertion of
Dr. Turnbull, that the good actions of even criminals
exceed their crimes in number, would be somewhat
amusing, were not the subject too grave to excite
a smile. It is impossible to doubt that the spirit and
meaning of the inspired and very solemn declarations,
just quoted, are embodied in the Xlllth Article
of the Church of England : " Works done before the
grace of God, and the inspiration of his Spirit,
are not pleasing to God," — " yea, have the nature of
sin."2 The second objection of this class is the following :
Admitting, says an opponent, the truth of your state
ments concerning the lamentable prevalence of sin in
2 May I be allowed to refer, for further elucidation of this impor
tant subject, to the whole of Part II. in the Elements of Moral
Science.

362 UNIVERSAL SIN CANNOT
the world, that fact does not prove an innate tendency
to sin, since it may be fairly accounted for by the
contagious influence of bad example.
This objection has been sufficiently refuted by the
reasoning of preceding Lectures.1 The tree of human
nature invariably produces bad fruit : especially is
it to be noticed, that its first produce is of this
character. Reasoning, then, on the principles which
guide our decisions in analogous cases, we infer the
existence of a tendency in the tree to the production
of this kind of fruit; — in other words, that the
universal prevalence of sin is the result, not of bad
example, but of a degenerate nature.
This general reply must, I think, be held to be
sufficient ; yet, as it is readily conceded that man is
an imitative animal, and as many of his habits, &c.
are doubtless the result of this instinctive propensity,
it may be well to meet the objection by replies of a
somewhat more specific character. The objection is,
then, I imagine, invalid on the following accounts.
In the first place, it assigns the thing itself — to
borrow the argument of Jonathan Edwards, some
what differently stated — for the cause of the thing.
It accounts for the depravity of man, by the depravity
of man. What is bad example but wickedness ? To
ascribe the general depravity of man to bad example,
is, in effect, to say, man is a depraved being because
he is depraved.
In the second place, — to put what is, perhaps, the
same substantial argument in a somewhat different
1 Vide p. 297.

BE ASCRIBED TO EXAMPLE. 363
point of view, — it fails most obviously to show how
the contagion of bad example came to exist in the
world. An example must of course be set before it
can be imitated. The question then, is, How came
bad example to be set? And as, by the present
hypothesis, it is the cause, or at least the occasion, of
all the sin that exists in the world ; the question is
again, "How came bad example to be universal?"2
The reader must not forget that the latter question is
identical with the inquiry, " What is the cause of
universal depravity ?" And, recollecting this, he must
be strongly impressed with the absurdity of ascribing
— as the present theory does — the universal wicked
ness of man to bad example.
Not dwelling further, however, upon this logical
fallacy of non causa pro causa, I return to my former
question, which has been designedly put in the most
familiar Way, " How came this corrupting bad ex
ample to be set to the world ?" Suppose the objector
to allege, that the present generation of men, springing
up in the midst of a depraved race, have become
morally corrupt through the influence of their in
stinctive tendency to imitate what they saw and
heard around them; it would become necessary to
inquire how that race became depraved ; and so of
more and more remote generations, until at length
we should travel backwards to the first race of men,
who must have been corrupt originally, or have
2 The reader will observe that bad example must be universal, if
sin — the hypothesis on which both parties are now reasoning — be so,
and if bad example be its cause.

364 UNIVERSAL SIN CANNOT
become corrupt without the contagious influence
of example.
The latter part of this dilemma is directly at
variance with the present hypothesis, and cannot of
course be held in connexion with it. The former
part of the dilemma is not less directly in conflict
with Divine revelation. The first human pair were
created in the image of God; and, though they
probably speedily fell into sin and dishonour, they
were, perhaps, as speedily " renewed in the spirit of
their minds" by the Spirit of God,1 and so presented
a holy example to their descendants. It was, then,
manifestly not by the contagion of bad example that
their children became corrupt, and that all flesh,
in a comparatively short period of time, became so
thoroughly depraved, as to render it necessary to
sweep the moral pestilence from the face of the earth
by the waters of the deluge. Nothing will account
for this early and universal depravity, but that view
of the natural state of man which has been presented
in preceding Lectures. That is not, however, the
point I have now to establish. All that devolves
upon me at present, is to remind the reader, that the
theory we are now controverting — the theory, that
general depravity is the result of bad example
* Our history is short, so that we ought not to expect to find any
specific account of the conversion of our first parents. The probable
supposition, perhaps, is, that the revelation of mercy through the
seed of the woman recovered their alienated hearts to God. The
manner in which Eve recognised the hand of God, in the birth of
her first children, seems evidently to evince the spirit of piety. — Vide
Gen. iv. 1, and 25.

BE ASCRIBED TO EXAMPLE. 365
— is altogether at variance with the early history
of man.
Thirdly, supposing the difficulty of accounting for
the existence of bad example to be surmounted, this
suggested explanation of the universal prevalence of
sin is incompetent, since it fails to explain how bad
example came to be invariably followed. If there be,
as we affirm, a native tendency in the human mind
to sin, that tendency will obviously give efficiency to
the seductive influence of bad example, and secure
the general prevalence of iniquity. But, if there be
no such tendency, how comes it to pass that the
propensity to imitate — feeble and inert as it is in
many cases — should, in the case of bad example,
invariably do its work ? The practical influence of
example is always proportioned to natural tendency,
or propensity. When example operates in harmony
with such tendency, its power is great ; but when in
opposition to it, its influence is inconsiderable ; nay,
there are cases where it propels in the opposite
direction. We admit that evil example is imitated — generally
imitated ; but that, we contend, is the phenomenon
to be solved. Why is it imitated, is the question.
To state that men become depraved because, bad
example is before them, is simply to state a fact;
when the thing we require is the solution of the
fact. On the very fact itself we build our conclusion,,
that the mind must have a tendency to imitate such
example ; for it must not be forgotten that the phe
nomenon to be solved is not barely the imitation of

366 UNIVERSAL SIN CANNOT
example.1 Instinctive tendency to imitate might be
supposed to be sufficient to account for that, whether
the example be good or bad. It is the imitation of
bad example that is to be explained. There is good
as well as bad example in the world. Why is not
good example imitated, or as generally imitated, as
bad ? How can it be thought that the bare instinc
tive tendency to imitate, sufficiently explains the
general imitation of bad example, while good example
remains practically inoperative ? The whole pheno-
, mena of the case are in harmony with the doctrine
of these Lectures, that, as the result of the fall, there
exists in every mind a native tendency to sin, — which
tendency neutralizes, or partially neutralizes, the
influence of good example, and gives practical effi
ciency to example of an opposite character.
Besides, when we speak of the universal depravity
of men, we refer not to their actions merely, but to
the state of their hearts. We mean that the inner,
as well as the outer, man is defiled ; for " from
within, out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries, &c." Now we need not, I
imagine, hesitate to affirm that the influence of
1 This mode of accounting for universal sin, by ascribing it to the
general tendency to imitate, is somewhat analogous to the method
adopted by Mr. Dugald Stewart to explain the existence of a voli
tion in the mind. It must, as we say, and he admits, have a cause.
What is that cause ? The mind, he replies, causes it. Now, if the
question were merely, " How came volition to exist there?" the answer
might be less wide of the mark. But the question is, " How came
that particular volition, and not another, to exist? And to this
question the reply of Mr. Stewart is obviously no answer at all.

BE ASCRIBED TO EXAMPLE. 367
example reaches, for the most part, to that which is
exterior merely. Being instinctively imitative ani
mals, we readily contract the habits of those around
us ; but those habits regard some peculiarity of
action, or of conduct. We walk like them ; talk like
them : our general manners, and our modes of con
ducting business, may be like theirs. With a certain
looseness of phraseology, we may perhaps be said to
fall into the habit of thinking like them, — but not of
feeling. Example does not form and govern the
tendencies and emotions of the heart. The influence
of example cannot originate a propensity to sin,
though it may develop such propensity, and does,
in innumerable cases, account for the particular
course in which the general stream of depravity flows.
Were there no native tendency in the mind to that
which is wrong, example could not originate a ten
dency. It might lead to the doing of that which is
wrong ; but it could not account for, because it could
not produce, that unholy gust with which uncon
verted men practise iniquity. Carefully, however,
is it to be remembered that such men are not only
evil doers,. but that they have pleasure in their evil
deeds. I may add, they have pleasure in nothing else.
It is impossible to resolve the existence of this
pleasure into the mere influence of example; it is
both the result and proof of an original tendency to
that which is evil.
Fourthly, it may be observed, that the theory
which affirms bad example to be the cause of the
entire sin in the world, is irreconcilable with the esta-

368 UNIVERSAL SIN CANNOT
Wished fact, that all human beings begin to sin as soon
as moral agency develops itself.
For the proof of this fact, I must refer the reader
to the reasonings of a former Lecture ; ! its bearing
upon the theory we are now examining is the ex
clusive point to be considered at present.
" General depravity," says the objector, " may be
the result of bad example; it fails, therefore, to
prove the doctrine of original sin." Now, there
might be some apparent reason for the former part of
this assertion, if the fruit of the tree of human nature,
during its first years of existence, were good fruit.
In that case, more ground would exist for attributing
its subsequent deterioration to unfriendliness of soil,
or climate. But, when the original produce is bad,
the case is different. It is impossible to ascribe that
produce to anything but the native depravity of the
tree itself.
Fifthly, the theory which ascribes the wickedness
of the world to the influence of bad example, fails to
account for the existence of depravity in the chil
dren of godly parents;2 and, indeed, in all cases
where the prevailing example set before an individual
is good example.
1 Vide pp. 296, 297.
2 There were ungodly children in the families of Adam, Eli,
David, <fec. There are such in the case of parents, eminently devoted
to God, in the present day. Doubtless there are frailties in all
Christian parents which may operate injuriously ; but, without
supposing a special tendency in the mind to imitate what is wrong,
— that is, without admitting the doctrine of native depravity — it
will be found impossible to explain facts which constantly meet our

BE ASCRIBED TO EXAMPLE. 369
There are, however, innumerable instances in which
persons, in the younger part of their days, are most
carefully preserved from the contagion of bad example.
Every thing they see and hear is adapted to elicit
latent propensities towards moral excellence, — if such
propensities had existed. The tree has every advan^-
tage of climate, soil, and culture ; yet, frequently at
least, it brings forth obviously bad fruit, — sometimes
far worse than another in a less favourable situation.
Can any one, then, doubt that its nature must be
corrupt ?
And now let us, before we proceed to encounter
another objection, inquire for a moment, whether
the mode of accounting for universal depravity which
we are now considering, would deliver us from the
pressure of any moral difficulty whatever. What
was its probable source ? It was, perhaps, conceived
by certain individuals that the notion of original sin,
as the source of all actual sin (the former being con
sidered as a positive taint or fountain of evil infused
into the soul by God), is at variance with the bene^
volence and holiness of God. It may have been
regarded by them as a relief from the pressure of this
supposed difficulty, to ascribe actual sin to bad
example, rather than to any such depraved tendency.
Before adopting this view of the source or cause of
actual sin, they ought, however, to have inquired
whether it can be made to harmonize with the
language of our Lord, — " for from within, out of the
heart of man, proceed evil thoughts," &c: I dwell
not, however, upon this ; but I must call them to
B B

370 THE DIFFICULTY WOULD REMAIN.
consider whether the introduction of moral agents
upon their course of responsibility, in such unfavour
able circumstances — exposed to temptation from bad
example, so powerful that they cannot be expected
to resist it, and, in point of fact, invariably fall before
it, — whether this be not a fact surrounded by as
many difficulties as any which, as they imagine,
encumber the doctrine of original sin, especially as
represented in our preceding Lectures. If it cannot
be right, as they allege, that moral agents should be
born destitute of those holy principles which expe
rience proves to be the only principles that lead to
obedience, must it not be wrong to expose them,
immediately after their birth, to such powerful tempta
tions, arising out of the falsehood, and profanity, and
licentiousness of all around them, that no hope of the
preservation of their integrity can be cherished ?
and to expose them, let it be especially observed, to
this extreme moral danger, without any fault of their
own, and not as an expression of displeasure against
the sin of any " one else f> If it be said that such
exposure to temptation is not at variance with the
Divine perfections, I answer that the same reply
substantially is valid to repel any objection which
may be brought against the doctrine of original sin ;
for, whatever man lost by the fall, he did not lose the
power, in any legitimate sense of the term, to obey
the law of God. He lost the presence of the Divine
Spirit ; but he did not lose his powers and faculties
as a man : and it is as men — not as spiritual men, or
as having the Spirit — that we are responsible to God.

THIRD OBJECTION. 371
Hence the supreme Governor has continued ever
since the fall to command, though the human family
lost by that event the disposition to obey.
The third objection of this class may be stated as
follows. To account for the whole of the actual sin
in the world, there is no need to recur to the hypo
thesis of original sin, since, to whatever extent actual
sin exists, it may be attributed to the ascendency
which the inferior, and especially the animal, pro
pensities obtain over the understanding, in conse
quence of the necessarily slow and tardy growth of
this superior power.
" In the earlier years of his life," says an excellent
writer, " man having not yet attained the full use
and the maturity of his rational faculties, has no
taste for the more pure and spiritual joys which
are above sense, and which are attendant only on
the knowledge of the truth, and holiness of heart
and life. When now, after a long time, and by
slow degrees, man has attained to the full use and
the maturity of his rational faculties, he has, for a
long time, been habituated, even from his youth,
to will and act according to his feelings, and the
impulses of sense, without duly consulting reason,
and carefully weighing every thing by his under
standing. This long practice has produced in him
a habit, and it is hard for him now to break this
habit, and to acquire, in place of it, the habit of
rational consideration before action."1
The same substantial statement is given, though
i Knapp, p. 235.
BB2

372 SIN THE RESULT OF THE TARDY
more tersely, by another writer. " Sensitive objects
first affect us ; and, inasmuch as reason is a prin
ciple which, in the nature of things, must be advanced
to strength and vigour by gradual cultivation, and
those objects are constantly assailing and soliciting
us ; so, unless a very happy education prevails, our
sensitive appetites must have become very strong
before reason can have force enough to call them
to account, and to assume authority over them."1
The above is, I believe, the method most fre
quently adopted by non-evangelical writers to explain
the stubborn fact of the general prevalence of sin.
Sense should be obedient to the understanding.
Sense is, however, vigorous at the commencement
of life ; the understanding feeble. The former, more
over, by exercise and habit, gathers practical effi
ciency much more rapidly than the latter, and thus
brings it into bondage.
Now, I have no doubt that there is much of sub
stantial truth in the foregoing statements, — no doubt,
indeed, that all actual sin is the triumph of the
' Dr. Turnbull's Mor. Phil. p. 279. Quoted by Edwards, p. 171.
Surely, then, there must be something wrong in man himself, if
such an education be necessary to prevent the commission of actual
sin. That " something wrong " is original sin, that is, the destitu
tion of original righteousness, so that the inferior principles' become
the governing ones.
It is useless to tell us that this " something wrong" is to be found
in the circumstances, rather than the constitution, of man ; for, as
Jonathan Edwards has justly observed, " that constitution or nature
which works irregularly and improperly in the circumstances in
which it is placed, is a wrong constitution." A delicate fragile plant
would be a wrongly constituted plant for the wilds of Siberia.

GROWTH OF THE SUPERIOR POWERS. 373
inferior principles of our nature over the superior,
given to command, but brought into bondage. It is
the victory obtained by them, especially the animal
propensities, over reason and conscience, and all the
motives and injunctions by which moral agents are
Urged to love and obey God.
It is, also, I further admit, a fact that these pro
pensities grow more rapidly than reason, and thus
the more easily obtain a triumph over it. But is
this fact to be regarded as an ultimate fact, for which
it is vain to seek or expect a reason ? Are we not
to ask, " How it comes to pass that man should be
so constituted "—as Dr. Turnbull affirms he is — " as
to secure to appetite and passion an invariable
triumph over reason ?" It would seem as if those
writers, who adopt these views, have not thought it
necessary to put this inquiry. The entire amount
of what they say is, " Man has been constituted as
he is, and there is an end of the whole matter."
Now, as on their principles, original sin, either
positive or privative, does not exist ; and, since man
receives a constitution from God different in no
respect from what it would have been had the fall
of man not taken place, we may ask them,
First, whether this, their explanation of the general
prevalence of sin, rescues from any difficulty which
might be supposed to embarrass the evangelical
solution of that fact, viz. that the actual sin of men
is to be ascribed to temptation acquiring influence
and ascendency on account of the existence of native
tendency to sin ? As soon as moral agency com.

374 REPLY TO THIS OBJECTION.
mences, i. e. as soon as a child gains ideas of right
and wrong, the animal propensities have, on their
scheme, gained "a degree of strength which reason
has not power to oppose." l This dominancy of such
propensities must, then, either be the direct result
of creating energy, or necessarily acquired by early
instinctive indulgence ; in either of which cases, it
amounts to a natural tendency to sin, i. e. to gratify
the propensities when they ought to be restrained.
For, even in the latter case, " it is a tendency," to
borrow the language of Jonathan Edwards, " brought
on the person who is the subject of it, when he has
no power to oppose it ;" and must, therefore, " be
as much from the hand of God, and as much without
the hand of the person himself, as if he were first
brought into being with such a propensity." What
peculiar difficulties are, then, avoided by the substi
tution of this scheme, to account for the universal
wickedness of man, in place of the common doctrine
of original sin, or native depravity ? Such is • the
substance of the reply of the President, and it must
1 " Which reason has not power to oppose J" And yet the very
men who talk and write in this way, declaim against the doctrine of
original sin, because, say they, if admitted, it renders actual trans
gression necessary ; i. e. reason cannot have power to oppose its
influence and tendency ! Now, we do not say that there are not
forces enough in the mind of man to resist the promptings of native
depravity, if they were brought into action. We should prove our
selves to be very incompetent Christian philosophers were we to say
this. But do not our opponents say what is, at least, very similar
to it ? The " animal propensities," they tell us, by the time a child
becomes a moral agent, " have acquired a degree of strength which
reason has not power to oppose." I am unable to discern the con
sistency of their statements.

REPLY. TO THIS OBJECTION. 375
be admitted, as it appears to me, to be perfectly
conclusive ; since it can never be permitted to a
disputant to attempt a solution of difficulties, by
any new method, however ingenious, which leaves
them equally unaccounted for with the old. It may,
however, be doubted, perhaps, whether our author
has so completely shattered and dissipated the objec
tion as he might have done ; for I would ask them,
Secondly, whether this supposed constitution of
nature, in consequence of which the passions obtain
the ascendency over the understanding, before the
period in which moral agency and accountability
commence, be not a species of original sin, or original
depravity ? If, indeed, original sin were " a fountain
of evil in the heart, such as is in any way properly
positive " — a position denied by Edwards — the sup
posed constitution just referred to would, indeed, be
something radically different from it. But, if original
sin be considered as a privation or deprivation of
human nature — not, as Edwards contends, by the
infusion of any positively bad moral taint, but by
the penal departure of the Spirit of God from the
race, and the consequent extinction of those holy
principles, summarily comprehended in love to God,
which are never found in any mind in which the
Divine Spirit does not dwell — there is not so radical
a difference between Edwards and his opponent —
when we consider simply the state of the infant
mind — as the latter would seem to imagine. Whe
ther we shall designate such a constitution by the
name original sin, or native depravity, or give to it

376 REPLY TO THIS OBJECTION.
some other appellation, is a question of nomenclature.
It is most unquestionably — and by the confession
of Dr. Turnbull himself (who is quoted here as a
type of this class of opponents) — a crooked and
perverse constitution,— a constitution which leads
habitually to sin, since its affirmed existence is
brought forward to account for universal wickedness.
The great defect, in the scheme of writers of this
class, is that it does not account for the existence
of this perverse and crooked constitution in the race.
In the theory of the great American divine, every
thing is, on the contrary, explained. The presence
of the Holy Spirit in the soul of Adam, was the gift
of sovereignty. The continued enjoyment of that
gift, by Adam and the race, was suspended on his
conduct. He disobeyed, and the Spirit left his mind,
as an impressive and solemn and practical testimony,
to all accountable beings, of his deep displeasure
against sin. As the result of this withdrawment,
Adam himself became flesh, in the manner described
in preceding Lectures ; and, since " that which is
born of the flesh is flesh," the whole of his posterity
become the subjects of native depravity.
But how is it on the scheme of Dr. Turnbull, and
writers of that class ? The crooked and perverse
constitution, predicated of man, is the creature of
God, and originated by a purely arbitrary act on the
part of God! Whether this theory is entitled to
supplant the evangelical doctrine of original sin,
explained as it has been cautiously in preceding
Lectures, the reader may be safely left to judge.

SECOND CLASS OF OBJECTIONS. 377
II. Objections which are supposed to prove
THAT THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SlN IS INADMIS
SIBLE. The first objection of this class which I notice is
this, "that the hypothesis of original sin is income
patible 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 neces
sarily implies volition ; for an involuntary 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 corruption
existed, it could not be sin ; it might be the misfor*
tune, 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 quality 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 dispo
sitions of our souls, absolutely independent of our
selves, and not from the will of God; — that this

378 FIRST OBJECTION STATED
taint runs like a stream from generation to genera
tion, 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 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 parents 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 every
human being is a wrong 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 cannot but think that the difference between him

AND REPLIED TO. 379
and the great body of intelligent evangelical divines
of this country — startling, as at first 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 phraseology 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 subject, understands the term sin,
in the two cases, in precisely the same sense. It has
long appeared to me, at any rate, that actual trans
gression is that which can alone, with strict pro
priety, 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
attempts, 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 consider
ation, is therefore, at any rate, partly built upon a
petitio 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

380 EXPLANATIONS,
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 objection
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 indiscri-
minating men who identify original and actual sin, or
appear to imagine 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 ten
dency to sin ; but personal blame — 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 ten
dency to sin, which must be resolved, as we have
seen, into the necessarily active nature of the inferior

SOURCE OF THE OBJECTION. 381
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 instincts 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

382 SECOND OBJECTION STATED.
lead to 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 deter
mination 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, uncontrolled by higher principles, though the
ultimate spring of all actual sin, may not have, nay,
cannot have, any moral character per se. An uncon
verted man is blameable, not because he has prin
ciples 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
gratify them, though reason, and conscience, and
revelation forbid. And that is his own act. When we
say that the principle which prompts an action deter
mines 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 phy
sical in its nature."

SECOND OBJECTION STATED. 383
No objection against the doctrine of original sin
has been more frequently and strongly urged across
the Atlantic 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 con
fessedly physical properties. Now, suppose we were
to admit this, what results would follow ? The ob
jector would tell us, perhaps, that, in this case, the
propensity to sin could not with more justice be
thought to be a sinful propensity, than an affection,
or desire, essential to man, when considered per se.
After our recent admissions, this conclusion would
not, of course, give us much concern. I have con
ceded that the tendency to sin, which these Lectures
predicate of man by nature, has not a moral cha
racter. It is a most noxious and injurious tendency,
but not a criminal one, i. e. a tendency involving
personal blame, and exposing, per se, to condemnation
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,:

384 EXAMINATION OF
growing out of the constitution of his mind. It is, in
those circumstances, independent of volition ; it is
neither produced by volition, nor can it be directly
extinguished by volition. Yet that desire, unless it
originate volition to remove himself from the circum
stances which occasion the pain — supposing removal
possible — would not carry him away from them.
Desire, as stated above, is never in immediate 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 physical in its nature ; suppose it were a posi
tive 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, 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 re
moving from them. There must intervene a deter
mination, 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 thaty
on this hypothesis, we should be responsible, I
admit that, on the principles of the objector, we
should not be responsible for the propensity to

AND REPLY TO THE OBJECTION. 385
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 desire, would be necessary
feelings growing out of the make of the mind ; but
they ought to be controlled by reason and con
science ; and, if an individual should suffer himself 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.1
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 care
fully. Previously to. doing this, however, I embrace
the opportunity, supplied by what has been said, of
repelling here, rather than in a separate form, the
objection of our opponents that the doctrine of ori
ginal sin represents sin as unavoidable. Thus writes

1 " The Scripture account-of the fatal and important consequences
of the -first transgression, shows how superficial . are the usual apo
logies made by wretched mortals in excuse of their vices and follies.
One crime is the effect of thoughtlessness ; they did not, forsooth,
consider how bad such an action was. Another is a natural action.
Drunkenness is only an immoderate indulgence of a natural appetite.
Have such excuses as these been thought sufficient in the case before
us ? The eating of the forbidden fruit, was only indulging a natural
appetite directly contrary to the Divine command ; and it is likely
that our first parents did not duly attend to all the probable conse
quences of their transgression. But neither of these apologies, nor
the inexperience of the offenders, nor their being overcome by'
temptation, was sufficient to avert the Divine displeasure, the marks
of which we and our world bear to this hour." — Burgh's Dignity of
Human Nature, p. 345; also Grinfield's Connexion, pp. 386, 387 .j
C C

386 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO
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, because in the forms of religious instruc
tion they have imbibed 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, con
cerning a native tendency to sin, afford . for. the
charge that, if they are correct, " men must neces
sarily be vicious," — " that sin is altogether unavoid
able," — 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
entitled 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 conscience, God has given to him suf
ficient power to resist and control animal appetites,
as well as all natural propensities. If he fail to exert
that power, the blame rests upon himself, and upon
himself exclusively. Brutes are destitute of reason
and conscience. They must, therefore, act under the.

THE SECOND OBJECTION. 3S7
impulse of natural propensities. It is the high dig
nity of man to be raised above this necessity.1
I confess that statements occur in the works of
Augustine which I can think of no otherwise than as
highly objectionable. 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 accounta
bility 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 indis
position to do good : an indisposition, I grant, which
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 blameless for refraining to do what duty
requires.^ But, to return from this short though not unim
portant digression, let us inquire whether the de
pravity 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
1 Vide note, p. 374.
C c2

388 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO
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 with any propriety
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 independent
of it."1 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 them
selves, or in some increased strength and impetuosity
which they may have derived from the fall, it would
then be physical depravity. I imagine that the
metaphysics of this gentleman are very incorrect.
Only in a loose, and popular, and grossly unphilo-
sophical 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
optic 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.2 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
1 Biblical Repertory, vol. iii. p. 324.
2. Vide Elements of Mental and Moral Science, by the Author,
pp. 56, 57.

THE SECOND OBJECTION. 389
be material. Everything that has being possesses
physical existence. The mind is a physical sub
stance, though not a material one. All its properties
are physical properties, — its powers of thinking and
feeling 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 hypothesis involved any serious
difficulty. I cannot but think, however, that a dis
tinction 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 propensities and principles. But then
it should be remembered that such propensities are,
correctly speaking, and as implanted by God, prin
ciples of action and not of evil action. The desire of
property — if it be an original desire — 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 becomes,

390 THE THIRD OBJECTION STATED.
indeed, in too many cases, a principle of evil action,
through the feebleness of reason and conscience, in
consequence of the penal absence of the Spirit of
God from the mind ; but the wise and merciful inten
tion 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 speaking, 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 in 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 de
pravity, 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, principles of action be
come 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 mis
chief and destruction.

THE THIRD OBJECTION STATED. 391
The third objection of the class we are now con
sidering is, that the doctrine of original sin is con
trary to the justice 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 dam
nation, on account of its existence there.
Our statement has been, that, as an expression of
his abhorrence of sin — a sin so peculiarly atrocious
as was the transgression of Adam — the great and
blessed God withdrew the sovereign gift of his Spirit
from man (the exclusive 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 in
creased), 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 absolute masters Of the heart;

392 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO
principles of action merely become 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. mind, with all his enlighten
ing, and sanctifying, and sustaining influences?
Then how could Adam have transgressed ? Is the
same Divine Agent bound to unite himself 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 respon
sibility, 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

THE THIRD OBJECTION. ; 393
appetites might have prompted him to go beyond the
prescribed bounds within which they might be gra^
tified, he had reason and conscience to hold them in
check, to warn him of the danger of transgression;
and he ought to have been obedient to their voice;
Hence, when by his federal failure he lost the in
dwelling and influence of the Spirit,— when the higher
endowments of his mind— his love to God and right
eousness—became extinct, and the inferior principles,
gaining the ascendency, became the controlling and
guiding principles, — his responsibility remained ; and,
in his degraded 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 con
cerning the posterity of Adam. They are responsible,
not as possessing the indwelling presence and in
fluence of the Holy Spirit, (though, when 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, conscience, freedom
to act as they choose, &c. ; as having the knowledge
of what God requires, and sufficient natural power to"
render to him the full obedience which he demands.
Hence, though pfevious to conversion to God all
men are destitute of disposition to do what God
requires, 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 ?"

394 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO
And on what ground can it be pretended that the
doctrine 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 the
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 speaking lies," had consecrated the
first-fruits and the full harvest of their moral powers
to God ; — suppose it should be conceded that, in this
case, more of goodness to the race at large would
have been developed than we can recognise at
present ; would that prove that the dispensation
actually adopted, or the scheme of Providence under
which we are placed, is not characterised by good
ness ? 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 favour it may seem right
to him to impart, might perhaps have rendered us
more deeply indebted to his sovereign kindness than
he has done. Again, I say, suppose this were con
ceded, would it follow that we have received no
goodness from the hands of God because we have not
received the greatest conceivable amount of goodness ?

THE TSIIRD OBJECTION. 395
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 worm a man or an arch
angel, in order to be good to the worm ? Does he
exercise no goodness to man here because he places
the angel and the redeemed spirit in* circumstances
more favourable to the preservation of moral in
tegrity ? As the result of federal failure, the posterity
of Adam commence their moral trial in the present
state, without the high advantage which he pos
sessed, 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

396 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO
the mistake that God is not good to any being unless'
he vouchsafes his goodness to him in the highest
possible degree.
The fourth and last objection, which I deem it
necessary to consider, is, that the doctrine, affirmed in
preceding lectures, cannot be true, because little
children- are represented as patterns of humility,
meekness, gentleness, innocence, &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 converted, 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 chil
dren are made patterns of humility, meekness, and
innocence.' 1 Cor. xiv. 20: ' Brethren, be not chil
dren in understanding, howbeit in malice be yer
1 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,

. THE FOURTH OBJECTION. 397
with the most ingenuity, 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 therefore commit no actual or
active sin, must be true, unless the comparison which
he employs is destitute of all force."1
Dr. Taylor, no doubt, refers to the passages which
appear 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 representa
tion of its nature which has been given in preceding
pages. I cannot positively 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 hypothesis of Drs. Woods
and Spring ; that is, that native depravity consists in
wrong thoughts and feelings. He apparently, how
ever, p. 36, withdraws his attention from them, and
professes to proceed to the " examination of the texts
most frequently alleged in support of the position
that we are charged in Scripture with a sin which is
called orisinal, and which is both inherent and im-
puted." The inspired statements implying the inno-
1 Biblical Expository, vol. ii. pp. 40, 41.

398 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY JO
cence, &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 conclusion, drawn by him in the passage
quoted above, is that they commit no actual or active
sin ; and partly, also, because 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 conviction that they disprove the
existence of sin, in the mind of an infant, in the sense
in which Dr. Woods explains original sin. That
gentleman, as we have seen, identifies actual and
original sin. The latter consists, 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 humi
lity, gentleness, innocence, &c, with that hypothesis
of original sin — opposed in preceding pages — which
exhibits it as a fountain of positive evil in the heart ;

. THE FOURTH OBJECTION. 399
something morally wrong per se ; an essentially cor
rupt 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 designed to lead into sin..
If native depravity were a principle 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 ica/cia; and perhaps the last of all, the
solemn declaration of our Lord, " Except ye be con
verted, and 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 con
sciously felt; if it consist, as in preceding lectures
we have attempted to prove, in the destitution 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 language 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 infallibly, though not necessarily,
lead to actual sin, in some form or another, — what
may awaken emotions of pride, anger, malice, &c, and
generally does so, in one degree or another; 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

400 EXAMINATION OF AND REPLY TO
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 op
portunity 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
wrong ?
Now the terms pride, anger, malice, &c, denote
certainly constitutional feelings'— emotions arising out .
of the frame and texture of the mind — but not mere
constitutional feelings. 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. Russell, 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;"1
1 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.

THE FOURTH OBJECTION. 401
" that their infantile feelings, while mere infants, of
willing dependence on their parents, their indifference,
while in that condition, as to rank and precedency,
and their disposition 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."2 In short, when our Lord
declares that, unless we be converted and become as
little children, we cannot enter into his kingdom ; he
seems to teach us that, unless we become morally —
by the grace of God, and by sanctified effort to bring
our frowardness and self-will, and disposition 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.
Surely constitution is nature. What children are by constitution,
they must be by nature. There is a tendency among some evan
gelical writers, to use the terms nature, " moral nature," as if the
latter were identical with moral character. This is, however, a mis
take. There is a great difference between nature and character.
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 Devil ; but the character
of the two, is wide as the poles asunder.
2 Russell on the Adamic Dispensation, pp. 70, 71.

D D

APPENDIX.

D D

APPENDIX.

Note A. Page 44.
The consequences of transgression do not always rest with the trans
gressors themselves. — Text, p. 42.
" 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 their father's piety or virtue; and
they have been also deprived of very great privileges, afflicted 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.

406 APPENDIX.
" And as blessings were thus conveyed, so were punishments.
The seed of Ham were cursed with slavery, for their father's crime. —
Gen. ix. 25. All the children were swallowed up by an earthquake,
for the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, their fathers. —
Numb. xvi. 31. Achan's family were stoned, and perished with him
for his theft and sacrilege.— Josh. vii. 24. The children of the
Canaanites vrere 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
sureties, 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 in all his works. — 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
disgrace, 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
esteemed 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 60.
Since the delivery of this lecture I have been induced, by various
considerations, to examine the statements of the Rev. Howard
Hinton,* in reference to the words of the threatening, " In the day
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.'' I am somewhat appre
hensive that I must have misconceived hia statements, as they appear
to me self-contradictory; a fault which one does not anticipate from
so luminous and logical a pen.
Mr. Hinton maintains the position opposed in page 59, viz. that
the words referred to threatened the instant infliction of death. " It
appears," he says, " that in case of transgression, he would certainly
* " Harmony of Religious Truth."— Essay 6th.

NOTE B. 407
have no descendants; because the threatening was, 'In the day that
thou eatest thou shalt surely die.' If that covenant had been car
ried into full operation, therefore, Adam would have died childless,
and would thus have perished alone. This circumstance," he adds,
" seems to have been entirely overlooked by the divines to whom we
have referred," &c. This is, I observe, a mistake, 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 expo
sure 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. This latter idea, as the text states, is indicated by a
different formula. Mr. Hinton may easily satisfy himself of this,
by turning to Gen. vii. 1 1, also 1 3, where the forms are rwj tin
and o?!>a tim stiit as well as various other places.
Passing this, hbwever, 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
least, — (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
existence of the race, or death in the fulness of its meaning, i. e.
eternal death,) — was simply that the race should not be; not that
its members should exist in sorrow and pain, and in a state of moral
degradation, 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 Religious Truth." Mr. Hinton
maintains truly, as I think, the " universal reference " of the atone
ment. 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
fibst father's curse, since it is only by virtue of Christ's death that

408 APPENDIX.

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
out of being; but they are m being.
Again, Mr. Hinton says, page 138, "There is nothing more to
detain us from our conclusion that, though we have fallen in Adam
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 penal influences of his first parent's crime as though Adam
had never existed, or as though he himself were the first of mankind.
Having, through our progenitor's unfaithfulness, derived from the
covenant of Eden no benefit, we suffer under it no punishment. In
these respects, that system 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 venture
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 results
of his transgression.'' But, by hypothesis, the penal result to us of
his 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 be born. Mr. Hinton, however, adds :
" Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, were no tenants of this

NOTE B.. 409
happy earth .before 'Adam sinned.; but they entered it immediately
afterwards, and claimed their dominion in consequence of his crime."
" The world is in this state of sorrow simply because our first 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
threatening. But did the original threatening announce that, in
case of 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 conduct; so that if he had been faithful in the point in
which he was then tried, all his descendants would have been made
happy for the sake of his fidelity, while all should participate
likewise in the consequences 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 us as well as Adam. But, if
that threatening were, as Mr. Hinton represents, a threatening that
the race should not be born, I acknowledge it is past my finding
out how our existence in sorrow can be a proof of an arrangement
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 which 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
suspended upon his conduct; not perceiving, or not allowing, the
distinction 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,"

410 APPENDIX.
he must have exposed us, also, to the same calamity. It appears
to have been to help him to ward 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 posterity
of Adam are corrupt from their birth, and that this corruption
is derived from our first parent's fall " — he must, as it appears to
me, have taken a somewhat different 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
existence we should pass through. Hence he speaks of the sorrows
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 hypothesis, it could not have
been whether we should be pure and happy, or depraved and
miserable. Besides, I ask, How can Mr. Hinton render this hypothesis com
patible with the parallel between Adam and Christ, which, as he
admits, is drawn in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans?
"The whole of the passage," (vers. 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 desekts, 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 connexion, 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, irrespectively 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

NOTE B. 4.11
surely 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 when tracing the parallel? How ought it to run,
on Mr. Hinton's exposition of the. threatening? 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 does not say that non-existence reigned by
one, but death; which supposes, of course, previous life, for no one
can die till he has lived ; and supports the doctrine of the lecture,
viz. that the race was destined 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 sorrow 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 difficulty in which his system may
seem to be involved, but he overlooks the great difficulty. Main
taining, 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.
Now, 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 trans
gression ; but I maintain that they cannot be so considered. The

41.2 APPENDIX.
curse, according to Mr. Hinton's hypothesis, threatened non-exist
ence — 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 being in it, they could not
come out of it in any character or for any purpose whatever. Should
Mr. Hinton allege that sorrow and death may be regarded as commu
tation 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 afflic
tions 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, 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. According 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 dis
pensation 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, indeed, through the second Adam; but
this is owing to that gracious dispensation which has been esta
blished through Christ, and it alters not the original nature of the
things themselves. And our natural 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-

NOTE C. 413
out exposing the race to the same punishment by his sin. Now,
is not this. confirmed and illustrated by the case of our Lord? Were
what we may qall the personal and federal results, in his case,
identical? Surely not. The federal results are our pardon, 'sancti
fication, full and eternal salvation. The personal; — the name above
every name given to him ; the kingdom, &c.

Note C. Page 99.
The grand moral lesson taught by the issue of the trial of Adam in
paradise, is the entire dependence of man upon 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
dependence of man upon the Holy Spirit of God, is dependence
upon 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 thus to refrain. The only thing lacking, when
they put forth their hands, and took and ate the forbidden fruit,
was disposition to be subject to God's authority. That this dis
position 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 regarded as an excuse for disobedience, A wicked son
might plead the want of disposition to obey his father, but no father

414 APPENDIX.
on earth would on this account exempt him from the consequences
of rebellion. 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 disposition, 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 whether 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 trans
gressor, except when 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 powers which
are requisite to obedience are sustained,) is disposition to obey them.
The " cannot " is nothing 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 extenuating, only aggravates his guilt. He has
exposed himself to condemnation, but Divine grace has placed salva
tion within his reach. He has, however, no disposition to embrace
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 209.
original sin is not identical with actual sin.
Remarks of Mr. Moses Stuart on the hypothesis of Drs. Woods and
Spring, " that every infant just born is a moral and accountable
being, under a law which he knowingly and voluntarily transgresses,
at the very instant of his creation — at least of his birth."
"Have infants," he inquires, " any proper knowledge of the Divine
law, i. e. such a knowledge as enables them to distinguish between
moral good and moral evil ?' . In support of the negative he says;
" In Isa. vii. 14—16, the prophet declares, that a child shall be born
of a virgin, whose name shall be called Immanuel, and that he shall
eat butter and honey until he shall know to refuse the evil and choose

NOTE D. 415
the good." Here, then, the act of eating butter and honey is speci
fically designated, as a thing that would take place some time before
this child could know the distinction between good and evil.
" Now, as the Divine law" is good, ahd 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 knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither
.... 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 between their right hand and their left handV
(Jonah iv. 11.) The sentiment 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 be transgressors by the Divine word?
" 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 subject of
a preference given to Jacob, when he and Esau struggled in the
womb of Rebecca. (Gen. xxv. 21.) Paul says, in respect to this,

416 APPENDIX.
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 purpose 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, was
not made on the ground of any merit or demerit of any kind in the
children, but wholly of God's elective purpose.
" Now if both the children, after all, were actually sinners, (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 ;
Irat the Apostle, by the very ground of his reasoning, assumes it
to be a case of. neither merit nor demerit ; and therefore the Divine
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 children were not born, considers it as self-evident that
they had not done any good or evil. We have seen sufficient reason
of such a view 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 265.
is regeneration a physical change?
Some passages occur in one of Mr. Stuart's papers in the Repo
sitory, 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

NOTE E. 417
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
sin, as well as of native depravity. He represents it, therefore, ¦ as
the "germ" of sin. The question, then, appears to have forced itself
upon him, "How is the infant mind to be regenerated ? " What can
regeneration be 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 evidently 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 embarrass
ment, and writes with a singular want of perspicuity. Being the
subjects of native depravity, infants, he says, "must be regenerated;
they must be renewed, they must be sanctified ; i. e. rendered posi
tively holy, or rather brought, by the influences of the Divine
Spirit, to such a state that they will " '¦ develop affections and exer
cises positively holy ; for without holiness no man can see the Lord.5'
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 regenera
tion, or sanctification, or positive holiness, in the case of an infant ?
What must it be, in harmony with his principles 1 " 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 nothing else than some change
or operation upon the " germ." Accordingly 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 altogether predominant ; so that all the
motives to virtue are actually insufficient to overcome the force of
enticements to sin when human nature attains its mature develop
ment, and remains still unregenerate " — " 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 regulated, changed, modified, or
eradicated even (if it must be so), that the development of the
infant in theworld of glort," (the italics are mine) "will be one of
positive obedience and perfect holiness," (p. 44.) Every one must feel
that the preceding account of this affirmed necessary operation upon
the "germ" is singularly indefinite. Preceding statements would
seem to render it manifest, that it can be nothing else than the
E E

418 AFPENDIX.
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 conceptions 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 nature ; but a " germ " of sin, i. e. a susceptibility of impres
sion from sinful objects, can obviously 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 in
fants. 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 happiness 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, positively holy
any more than it can be positively sinful ? He denies that there is
in the infant anything that can be properly called sin. Can there
then be in the infant anything that can be properly called holi
ness ? Is not the one thing as impossible as the other 1 It is true,'
indeed, that the ten degrees of susceptibility existing in the infant's
mind might be reduced by physical power to two degrees. But
if the possession of 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 1 What can the regenerating process be in the case
of such an infant 1 Denying, as Mr. Stuart does, that in the new
birth what, for want of a better word, has been called a spiritual
taste is imparted, what, I again press the inquiry, can the regene
rating influence do for, or in, the child ? It surely will not be said
that it merely reduces the susceptibility 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 follow
ing passage : — ' This germ in our nature,' i. e. the susceptibility of

NOTE E. 419
being enticed to sin in a manner altogether predominant, 'is to
be in some way, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, so regu
lated,' (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 preceding 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 in 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 accordingly 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. In
fants must be rendered positively holy ; or, he adds, as if instantly
feeling that positive holiness cannot, on his principles, 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. Stuart. 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 affections 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 be nothing more than the extermination of the excess, — the
reduction 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 holiness ? 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 would fall back upon the question proposed in
E E 2

420 APPENDIX.
substance before, ' What is meant by this V What is done to the
mind, on his principles, when the germ is regulated or changed 1
I would now also further ask by what kind of influence this opera
tion upon the germ is effected ? Is it moral influence ? But the
infant, by hypothesis, is not a moral agent. How, then, can it be
affected by moral influence ? 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 Dwight, 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 unite with Mr. Stuart in
his views of the nature of sin, have embraced opinions which require
them to maintain the opinion of Dwight; 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, aay conceivable operation of the Holy Spirit upon
the mind of an infant, can render that infant positively holy?'
Mr. 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 entering heaven, is not
possessed till he has actually entered it. Thus, having affirmed that
something positive must be done for children, he adds, in explanation
of this something, ' They,' i. e. infants, ' must have some develop
ment of their faculties, as human beings ; they must 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
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-
cal Repository, by the Author. Dinnis, Paternoster-row!

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

Note F. Page 6.
ON THE IMMATERIALITY OF THE SOUL.
Lord Brougham, in his Valuable discourse upon "Natural Theology,"
says, " The doctrine of the materialists, in every form which it as
sumes, 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 demonstra
tion are fewer; the truth to which they conduct the reason is less
remote from the axiom, the instinctive or self-evident position,
whence the demonstration springs. We 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 effect 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,

422 APPENDIX.
will account for all the phenomena 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
argument, 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 consciousness.
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 known to us
by an inference — it may be an intuitive inference — of the mind.
But of what are. we conscious? — 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.

NOTE F. 423
And now, having reached the conviction that there is something
that thinks, .feels, &c, the question arises, or should arise, " What is
that something?" Lord Brougham assumes, in common with many
writers on this subject, that this something is mind, intending by
the word " mind " to denote an immaterial principle. Now, I con
fess 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 mind." ' The
argument can only be valid 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 premiss1 utterly undefended.
There is a farther step in the argument to which his Lordship has
not advanced, but which appears tome essential to its validity; at all
events, it must appear so to a materialist. His Lordship is bound
to show that the properties of thinking and feeling are so incom
patible 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 sub
stratum or permanent subject of the former, and matter the per
manent 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.

424 APPENDIX.
Note G. Page 9.
ON 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 Chris
tian 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, (Qusest. 20, in Genesin.) Epiphanius
thinks that the thing cannot be determined, (Hseres, 30.) Tertullian
placed it in the innate powers and faculties of the human soul,
especially in the freedom of choice between good and evil, (Adv.
Marc. II. 5, 6.) Philo placed it in the vove, the rational soul, and
associated with this phrase his Platonic notions respecting the
original ideas in the Divine mind (Koyog), 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 -kclq aydpwwoe Kara, pkv rrjv Sidvoiav ji/ceiwrat Qtiio
Xoyw, rfjc paKaplag QvtTEwe ixpaytiov, rj &it6aiza.ap.a rj diravyatjfia
ityovuJQ. — Origen, (Xlepl dp^Qy, III. 6.) Gregory of Nyssa, and
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, which, he says, the Bible does not
affirm. He knows and believes " quod in cunctis hominibus imago
Dei permaneat," (Ep. ad Joannem, in Opp. Hieronymi, torn, i.) Most
of the Grecian and Latin fathers distinguish between imago and
similitudo 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 powers. I shall not dwell upon the subtleties of
the schoolmen, which are still prevalent in the Romish Church.
Vide Petavius." (For an account of these, vide also Hahn, Lehrbuch,
s. 76.)— Knapp's Theology, pp. 168-9.
It is but little calculated to extort respect for the judgment and

NOTES H, I. 425
authority of the Grecian and Latin fathers, to find them making
the above distinction between imago and similitudo 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 was
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 H. Page 1.8.
SPIRITUAL LIFE.
" As life. in the 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, L e. 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 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 according 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 governmen t by a law, i. e. of understanding its Maker'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.."— Howe's Works, p. 530.

Note I. Page 34.
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

426 APPENDIX.
himself, or no otherwise affected his posterity than incidentally,
as the misconduct of an ordinary parent may affect the circum
stances of his children ; or whether he is to be regarded as a public
man, the head and representative of the human race, who, in conse
quence 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.
" The testimony of Scripture is so explicit on this point, that all
the attempts to evade it have been in vain. In Romans, chap, v., Adam
and Christ are contrasted in their public or federal character, and the
hurt which 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 Christ. Adam, indeed,
in verse 14, is called, with evident allusion 'to this public representa
tive character, the figure (tvwoq), type, 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 have 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
painful child-bearing threatened upon Eve has passed on to her
daughters. The ground was cursed ; but that affected Adam's pos
terity also, who, to this hour, are doomed to eat their bread by ' the
sweat of their brow.' Even the first blessing, ' Be fruitful, and mul
tiply, 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.

NOTE K. 427
posterity. In all these cases they are addressed in such a form of
speech as is appropriated to individuals ; but the circumstances of
the case infallibly show, that in the whole transaction they stood
before their Maker as public persons, and as the legal representatives
of their descendants, though in so many words they are not invested
with these titles." — Watson's Theological Institutes, vol. ii. pp. 222-3.

Note K. Page 40.
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 unjust 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 with an eternal
anger upon same 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

428 APPENDIX.
least it is not against justice for God in such a case to use the power
and dominion of a Lord. But this cannot be reasonable to he 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
recompense, and it can never turn to good." — Vide Works, vol. ii.
p. 544.
In the preceding statements this eminent writer 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 world, 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
which 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 does 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. But 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
displeasure 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 .

NOTE L. 429
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 :" ov Xviroyaa paXXov irepa /caXtwe ij
roug e£ tavr.wv KaKaTrda-^ovraQ cl avrove opq.v, 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 upon their master's houses. And if it happen that
the parents die before, yet it is a plague to them that they know, or
ought to fear, the evil shall happen upon their posterity " quo
tristiores perirent," as Alexander said of the traitors, whose sons
were to die after them. "They die with sorrow and fear." — Vide
Works, vol. ii. p. 544.

Note L. Page .42.
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 Provi
dence. A thoughtless and extravagant man brings his family 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 peculiar difficulty, but one common to it with a multitude of
every day occurrences; so that it needs no special defence. That
which forms a justification of similar facts will sufficiently justify
this fact. An infidel is as much bound to explain the common
difficulty as a Christian. The principle of justification in all
the cases is this, namely, that the injury sustained is the loss, and
merely the loss, of chartered benefits; so that neither the im
poverished child, nor the diseased child, nor the entire race of man,
sustains any wrong.
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 vindi
cation. The first point of analogy is this : that the consequences of

430 APPENDIX.
moral actions frequently reach beyond the actors themselves, and
involve in suffering those who may be free from personal blame.
Sufficient has been said in the body of this work in illustration
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 sufficiently 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
may see fit to appoint. Now the point of resemblance to which
I now refer is this : that when individuals suffer loss, without per
sonal blame on their part, bringing in Us 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 give 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. We, 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
sovereign 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 equity 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

NOTE M. 431
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 would, 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 bound to give property 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
of possessions which had been . acquired by their own labour and
industry — as a punishment 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 60.
We are certain, however, that they ivoidd 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,
* Disp. vol. i. p. 31.

432 APPENDIX,
but 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? Surely life, not immortality. Immor
tality is nothing else than eternal life. A being may be immortal
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 Divine promise
and decree — of enjoying it ; but the phrase, " to possess immortality,"
is absurd. When Mr. Faber says our first parents, were originally (why say
originally ?) created immortal, I am disposed to ask, " What is
meant by the words V Immortality is only eternal existence. Now,
as existence itself, and a fortiori eternal existence, in the case of a
creature, can only be enjoyed as the result of divine decree and
operation, I presume, that to be created immortal is to be destined,
by a decree of God, to be 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 immQrtal 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 ?
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 sustent'ation.
But let us hear Theophilus. " Was man created mortal ? By no
means ! — Immortal 1 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

NOTE M. 433
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 divine sup
port. The withholding of that support will of course be followed
by the death of the creature, but that does not make God tne author
of his death, any more than the setting of the sun is the cause
of the subsequent darkness. Besides, the withdrawment of sustain
ing 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 dis
obedience to God, he should turn to the works of the flesh, he would
become unto 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 grievously, that by
this sin, the nature, not only of one single man but of the whole
human race was changed, and fell from the possibility of immortality
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 punishment
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. For 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 voluntarily 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," <fec, chap. v. Emerson's translation.

F F

434 APPENDIX.
Note N. Page 60.
DEATH the result of sin.
Jeremy Tailor, as it appears from the following passage, thinks
differently. " ' 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
husband ; these things were so before, and would have been so ; for
the Apostle, pressing the duty of subjection, gives two reasons why
the woman was to obey. One of them only was derived from this
sin, the other was the prerogative of creation; '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 grace and favour, by God's anger they were now left to
fall back to the condition of their nature." — Works, vol. ii. p. 532.
" Death, at first," says our author, " was the condition of nature."
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.
What 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 esta
blishment 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

NOTE N. 435
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
taken place; and therefore creeping upon his belly did not enter by
sin, but became a punishment 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. 16,) 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
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 woman .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
sin." It is not said that subjection 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.

F F 2

436 APPENDIX.

Note 0. Page 63.
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 dust has been redeemed at an infinite cost from the
prison in which it might have slept forever 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 effected by the latter.''
- — Wardlaw's Essay on Pardon, &c. 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
it to future punishment ; for, if the original curse contemplated
either one or the other of these results, it must — in 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 " impurity • and
woe," the argument of my friend must, as it appears to me, be
regarded as conclusive.
My mind has, however, been forcibly thrown upon the inquiry,
" What do the writers opposed by Dr. Wardlaw mean ? " Bodily
death alone, they say, was threatened by the curse. Now, what is
bodily death 1 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

note o. 437
on in 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 their 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 curse, 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 con
cession of the objectors themselves, immaterial, is incapable of being
destroyed, in the sense in which the body is destroyed — i. e. by resolu
tion into its elementary principles. The soul can only be destroyed
by annihilation. Now, 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 extinction of the vitality or life of the
body, I should ask whether that extinction be not the cessation of
the animal functions, or the withdrawment of their spring, or
source — that is, the dissolution of the union between these two con
stituent parts of man ? We speak, indeed, of the body as dying,
and I do not wish to discard that 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 principles. 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 in 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

438 APPENDIX.
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 result, from the separation of the soul from Gcd.

Note P. Page 78.
ON THE ENORMITY OF THE SIN OF ADAM.
The small service, however . . . was 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. (4.)
Because he committed that sin in a sanctified place, which was a
type of the heavenly Paradise, almost under ¦ the eye of God himself,
who conversed with him in a familiar manner." — Nichols' Transla
tion, vol. ii. p. 373.

NoteQ. Page 121.
I have said in the text that the verb r*!J in Hiphil is obviously
susceptible of the meaning " to punish" though no case of the
occurrence of the verb in that sense had met my notice. Since the
delivery of the Lecture, I have examined the matter more care
fully than I had previously been able to do. I find rather more
than twenty instances of the use of the verb, in- this conjuga
tion, 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 wickedly. In one instance, viz. Dan. xi. 32, it

note r. 439
is rendered to do wickedly ; 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 trouble ; 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 lo 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 ?" Who
shall make miserable, 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 punished 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 making 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 him wicked, i e. to corrupt his character, than to punish
him, is to do it. The judge, who passes sentence upon a criminal,
makes him wicked — that is, treats him as such — by legally awarding
punishment : the executioner, who inflicts the punishment, makes 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.

Note R. Page 126.
IMPUTATION.

The following remarks on imputation, by Dr. Watts, it may be well
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 imputed to him; his wickeplness is

440 APPENDIX.
upon him; he bears his iniquity: that is, he is reputed or accounted
guilty; he is condemned and dealt with as an offender." "But
if a man, having committed treason, has his estate taken from him
and his children, then they bear iniquity, the iniquity of their father,
and his sin is imputed to iliem 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 murcLerer,
and upon 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 imputed to his little child; since those acts were quite out
of the reach of an infant, nor was 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 particular 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 ?" " Sin is taken either for an act of disobedience to
a law, or for the legal result of such an act ; that is, the guilt or
lidbleness 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 account of it." " Thus the sin of Achan was so im
puted to his children, that they were all stoned on account of it.
(Jo'sh. vii. 24.) In like manner the covetousness of Gehazi was im
puted 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 liableness to punish
ment; and sometimes the punishment itself, whether it fall upon the
original criminal, or upon others 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

.note r. 441
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 will level almost all his arguments against the imputation
of the actions themselves, and then triumph in having demolished
what we never built, and in refuting what we never asserted."
I 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 imputation — 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 inaccu
rate. Nothing but sin and righteousness can be imputed; the
consequences of both may be transferred but not imputed; and the
endurance of the consequences of the sin, is the imputation of the
sin. Dr. Watts has involved himself in difficulty by adhering to
the generic sense of guilt,; — viz., legal exposure to punishment. 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 which
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 difficulty 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 his
guilt 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—

442 APPENDIX.
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 dif
ficulties. 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 common figure of speech,
said to be imputed to the children when they suffer or enjoy the
consequences of their father's treason or eminent service."

Note S. Page 151.
THE EFFECTS OF THE ORIGINAL TRANSGRESSION.
On this point Arminius, " Thesis xxxi. De effectis peccati primorum
parentum," expresses himself in the following manner. Regard
to general usefulness leads me to prefer giving his statements,
not in the original, but as faithfully rendered, as it appears to me,
by Nichols.
I. The first and immediate effect of the sin which Adam and Eve
committed in eating 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 Deity, — [that is, as I presume the
meaning is, from what he had done to offend the Deity,] — arose his
wrath on account of the violated commandment. In this violation
occur three causes of just anger: (1.) The (derogatio) disparagement
of his power or right. (2.) A denial of that towards which God
(afficiebatur) had an inclination. (3.) A contempt of the Divine
will intimated by the command. ,
III. Punishment was consequent on guilt and the Divine wrath ;
the equity of this punishment is from guilt, the infliction of it is by
wrath. But it is preceded both by (offensa) the wounding of the
conscience, and by the fear of an angry God and the dread of punish
ment. Of these man gave a token by his subsequent flight, and by

NOTE S. 443
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 unto
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 offended 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 likewise ceased to lead and direct man, and to bear inward
testimony to his heart of the favour of God. This circumstance
must be considered 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 trans
lucent 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 symbol 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
(studium) his care to preserve the individuals of the species ; and
that on the woman to the perpetuation of the species.

444 APPENDIX.
IX. But because the condition of the covenant unto which God
entered with our first parents was this, — that if they continued in
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 which they had themselves
received; but, that if, by disobedience, they rendered themselves
unworthy of those blessings, their posterity likewise (carerent)
should not possess them, and should be (obnoxii) liable to the con
trary evils. (Huic accidit ut.) This was the reason why all men
who were to be propagated from them in a natural way, became
obnoxious to death temporal and death eternal, and (vacui) devoid
of this gift of the Holy Spirit, 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 discussion :
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 right
eousness only is original sin itself, as being that which alone is suffi
cient 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. — Vol. ii. pp. 374-5.

Note T. Page 152.
ON THE FALL.
" Man was endowed not only with the knowledge of his duty, and a
fixed inclination to it, but also with various appetites, affections,
and desires, which were constituent principles of his nature. These
having been given to him by his Maker, were innocent in them
selves, 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 office of the moral principle to superintend and direct
them, their excitement might anticipate its interference, and be

NOTE T. 445
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 con
science 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 harmony of the soul would be immediately
disturbed; and the desire or appetite having acquired new strength,
would press forward to its gratification without 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 finite creature, he
was capable of endless improvement in wisdom : all that was ne
cessary was, that the gratification of this desire should be sought
only by such means as his Creator might approve. In this state of
mind, the prospect of acquiring knowledge would naturally excite
the desire; and at this critical moment, the exercise of virtue con
sisted in subjecting it to moral restraint. To permit the desire to
continue, without due consideration of the means, was a fault ; and,
besides, gave it time to gather such force as might impel to im
mediate 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 reflecting upon his words,
the moral principle was thrown off its guard; the desire became
urgent, and fixed their attention solely on its object; which at
length so fascinated them, that they lost all power of resistance, 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 this account, it appears that our first parents were guilty
of sin in their hearts, before they committed it with their hands ;
and that the eating of the forbidden fruit was only the outward
expression of the vitiated state of their minds. The desire of know
ledge by unlawful means, being indulged, disordered their whole
moral constitution; and they had already rebelled against God
before they openly violated his law. 'Lust,' or desire, 'when it
hath conceived, bringeth forth sin; and sin, when 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 parents did break the

446 APPENDIX.
commandment of God. That the fault was entirely their own, and
that God was in no sense the author of their sin, will appear from
the following observations, which are chiefly a repetition of what has
been formerly stated.
" First. God created man perfectly holy ; with no defect, no
weakness, no tendency to sin. Every power was conferred upon
him which was necessary to enable him to maintain the rank, and
to perform the duty assigned to him.
" Secondly. God set before him the fittest motives to secure his
obedience. He promised, as its reward, eternal happiness to himself
and his offspring ; he denounced death as the penalty of sin. The
trial which he prescribed to him was perfectly easy. The restraint
imposed upon him could hardly be considered as any restraint at all,
surrounded as he was with the choice and abundant productions of
Paradise. " Thirdly. God did not withdraw, 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 his 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. 344-6.

Note U. Page 171.
They triumph now, not merely in adult age, doc.
" 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 within 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 oicdvSaAa, Matt, xviii. 7, 8; ^° 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 e'^eXkojuevoc and
GEXta&fitvoQ. The image is here taken from animals, which are

NOTE X. 447
ensnared by baits (ZiXeap) 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, lust conceives, (ixiBvpia
ovWafiovaa,) 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 what is called peccatum actuate internum.
But finally, desire brings forth sin, the evil intent passes into action,
and is accomplished. This is peccatum aetuale externum. Hence
flows Qavaroe, misery, unhappiness of every sort, as the consequence
and punishment of sin." — Knapp, p. 257.

Note X. Page 174.
THE DESIRE'S OF MEN NOT SINFUL, PER SE.
In immediate connexion with the passage quoted from Dr. Knapp,
page- 174, 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 desire; 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, " which fix
upon forbidden things. In Rom. vi. 12, we are directed not to let
our sinful appetites rule, and not to obey the body " (flesh) " in the
lusts thereof; here, therefore, it is presupposed that these tempting
lusts remain." — Theology, p. 256.

448 APPENDIX.

Note Y. Page 180.
THE 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
version to God. In this sense of the 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
righteousness, 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, with 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 priori as probable that minds differ, as that the
features of the face differ ; more so, in fact, for personal resemblance
is frequently to be traced in expression, and it is the mind that
gives expression. There are original desires, but these desires vary
considerably as it regards their objects 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 in
tensely. Now, in a mind capable of intense emotion, and destitute
of the great controlling principle which adorned the mind of Adam,
there will be more of positive depravity than in a feebler mind; that
is, the possessor of such a mind will love the world and sin more
intensely, and hate God more intensely, and put forth more power
ful 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 in the mind of Satan

NOTE z. 449
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 depravity 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 182.
ON traducianism.
To the Pelagians the propagation of sin by generation seemed neces
sarily to imply that the soul is "ex traduce," which implication
appeared to them an objection against original sin. " You say,"
says Julian, addressing himself to Augustine, " that sin then passed
over when all men (to use your own words) were that one. By such
an argument," he adds, "you show nothing but your own impiety;
impiety, I say, by which you believe that souls are propagated just
like bodies; which error was formerly condemned as profane in
Tertullian and Manes; and which is so nefarious, that, since we
made the objection to you in the letter which 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 Augustine
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 ignorance
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 purified by regeneration,
certainly either both are derived in their corrupt state from man
(traducianism), or the one is corrupted in the other, as if in a
corrupt vessel," (What is this but materialism?) "where it is placed
by the secret justice of the Divine law (Creationism). But which
G G

450 APPENDIX.
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. Coelestius 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 imparing unity of faith. On the other hand, Augustine
sought here to separate a point important in theology, clearly taught
in the Holy Scriptures, and founded in the analogy of Christian
doctrines, from one which was rather a matter 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 mankind ; and
it was equally certain to him, that any view confiicting with this
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
lieved, he 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," by Dr. Woods, jun., American Bib.- Repository,
January, 1833, pp. 107-8.

Note A A. Page 191.
ON THE PHRASE " ORIGINAL SIN."
The celebrated Jeremy Taylor has given an account of the meaning
of this phrase very different from the one suggested in the text.

NOTE BB. 451
His statement is as follows: "Original sin is so called roraxpijn-uwc,
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
nality peccatores;' so St. Austin; and therefore St. Ignatius calls
it raXmdv Svaaifctav, the 'old iniquity;' that which was in the
original or first parent of mankind."— 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
present meaning, at least, of the phrase original sin. 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 they are born.

Note BB. Page 222.
ON THE NATURE OF ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY.
" This natural depravity consists in inordinate and violent
propensities to the objects and pleasures of sense," say Storr and
Flatt, — "propensities which 'war' against reason and conscience,
against that which accords with the law of God, and with pro
priety. (Rom. vii. 16, 22, 25.) It therefore consists in a prepon
derance of the propensities of our nature, for the objects and
pleasures of sense, which may, indeed, for a while, remain unobserved ;
but will immediately manifest 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 voluntarily submit
ourselves to the dominion of these inordinate propensities, befirre this
unlatvfid and defective inclination of our nature can be charged to

452 APPENDIX.
our 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 some
times prevents him from approving and embracing the truth, and
sometimes, 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 de
pravity. This conflict retards and renders difficult their progress
in sanctification, and as the result is often so disastrous, frequently
affixes many a stain to the piety of the best of men." — Storr and
Piatt's Biblical Theology, pp. 350, 351.
The passage, marked by italic characters, is in accordance with
another occurring 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,
renders it more difficult for some men to fulfil the law, than others ;
so, also, it is by no means impossible that an undue propensity for
the objects of sense may have been inherited from Adam by all his
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
surmount the difficulties 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

NOTE cc. 453
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 which 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 286.
THE EXTENT OF God's LAW.
The following just and somewhat novel mode of exhibiting the
principle which renders \% 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 Rev. Jesse Appleton, D.D., late President
of Bowdoin 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. We are
not unfrequently led to entertain wrong opinions of the 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 the estima
tion of civil law, an upright man. The law requires nothing which
he refuses to yield. Whether in discharging his debts, or in sup
porting or defending the State, he is actuated by a regard to per
sonal 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; while the name of our Maker
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

454 APPENDIX.
young nobleman, when different 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 affectionate 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
gratitude inevitably ceases the moment you have ascertained that
his views are exclusively fixed on his own emolument. The case
is not different 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 which
God and reason approve, they are innocent or virtuous. So far
as they pursue different ends, they are sinful. It is a maxim, taken
from the morals of Aristotle, that many actions which seem worthy
of commendation, lose all their value when we investigate the prin
ciple that produced them." — Vol. i. pp. 393-4.

THE END.

B. CLAY, PRZNTLK, DREAD STHEET HILL.

SStorfes bg tfie same gtut&or.

ELEMENTS OF MENTAL AND MORAL SCIENCE;
Second Edition, greatly enlarged. Svo. price 8s.
and conduce Sj"1™ jh?^n '?' T£ CM?ect s™tim™t, more clear, condensed,
Volume w "ever J™S"B' 5LI,° £bjeCtS "/ ,Mental and Moral Sclence' th™ any single
the Judgm^loS^r^S^^tS^^is;^ ~ "° reaS°n '" "^
Ub^.'JSj.Sl'fi^Sf M°ral SdenCe " WD1 find "S W3y int° CTery -"Elected
tao^sTcom^^ and * "*" *-«>"•" " As. a test-
"Dr. Payne's work is highly valuable to the ethical stadent."-Congregalional Magazine.

II.
LECTURES ON DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY, ELECTION, &c.
Second Edition. 8vo. price Ws. 6d.
"A masterly specimen of theological controversy, conducted in a Christian spirit, and with
unflinching deference to the supreme authority of the Word of God."— Evangelical Magazine,
"¦ In no other volume can be found so much clear statement, sifting investigation, and
sound reasoning." — Eclectic Review.
" Dr. Payne's work is a most valuable addition to our contemporary sacred literature." —
It has our warmest recommendation." — Congregational Magazine.

III.
ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE AND GENERAL GRAMMAR.
Foolscap 8vo. price 4s. Qd. cloth.
" We strongly recommend the book to the perusal of all those who, within a moderate com
pass, wish to see a valuable compendium of a branch of literature which is often too much
neglected by educated persons." — Congregational Magazine.
" Dr. Payne has produced a succinct and perspicuous Essay on Language, well written and
sound ; and calculated to facilitate the acquirement of an ample vocabulary, and the mastery
of those difficulties which, so few make efforts to overcome. We consider this work highly
creditable to the Doctor's philological knowledge, and strongly recommend its perusal and
study." — Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette.
" This excellent little volume supplies a want which has long been felt, and in a way which
will by competent judges be deemed highly satisfactory. It exhibits in a concise and interesting
manner, for the benefit of a large and important class of readers, the substance of several able
and learned treatises at present inaccessible for their price, and unsuitable from their nature
for popular use, and therefore possesses additional interest to many whose opportunities of
reading are not extensive, from the account it gives of the opinions held by many of the
eminent writers on some of the most difficult points on which it treats. At a trifling expense,
and with a small expenditure of time and labour, the reader may put himself in possession' of
the sentiments of numerous authors, while the author shows amidst such varied and conflict
ing opinions which of them are most worthy of general reception." — Scotch Reformer's Gazette.

For further notices see Literary Gazette, Alhen<sum% Evangelical Magazine, anil Patriot
Newspaper.

THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES OF
THE CONGREGATIONAL LECTURE
Have already been published, and may be had of
JACKSON & WALFORD.

I.— CHRISTIAN ETHICS;
Or, Moral Philosophy on the Principles of Divine Kevelation. By the Kev.
Ralph Wardlaw, D.D. Fourth Edition, fcap. 8vo., price 6s. 6d. cloth.
II.— THE CAUSES OF THE CORRUPTION OF
CHRISTIANITY.
By the Rev. Robert Vaughan, D.D. 8vo., price 10s. Gd. cloth.
III.— THE CHRISTIAN ATONEMENT ;
Its Basis, Nature, and Bearings; or, The Principle of Substitution Illustrated, as
applied in the Redemption of Man. With Notes and Illustrations. By the
Rev. Joseph Gilbert. 8vo. price 10s. 6<J. cloth.
IV— DIVINE INSPIRATION;
Or, The Supernatural Influence exerted in the Communication of Divine Truth,
and its Special Bearing on the Composition of the Sacred Scriptures. With
Notes and Illustrations. By the Kev. Eeenezer Henderson, D.D. Svo.
price 12s. cloth.
V.— HOLY SCRIPTURE VERIFIED ;
¦Or, The Divine Authority of the Bible confirmed by an Appeal to Facts of
Science, History, and Human Consciousness. By the Rev. George Redkord,
D.D. LL.D. 8vo. price 12s. cloth.
VI.— SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGY ;
Or, The Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological
Science. By the Rev. John Pve Smith, D.D. F.R.S. F.G.S. Third Edition,
fcap. 8vo. price 7s. cloth.
VII— THE CONNEXION AND HARMONY OF THE OLD
AND NEW TESTAMENTS;
Being an Inquiry into the Relation, Literary and Doctrinal, in which these two
parts of the Sacred Volume stand to each other. By the Rev. W. Lindsay
Alexander, M.A. 8vo. price 12s. cloth.
VIII.— THE THEOLOGY OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN
CHURCH,
Exhibited in Quotations from the Writers of the first Three Centuries. By James
Bennett, D.D. 8vo. price 10s. 6d. cloth.
IX.— THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS PROVED,
And their Agency, particularly in relation to the Human Race, Explained and
Illustrated. By the Rev. Walter Scott, President and Theological Tutor of
Airedale College, Bradford, Yorkshire. Second Edition, fcap. 8vo. price 6s.
cloth.
X.— THE SACRAMENTS;
An Inquiry into the Nature of the Symbolic Institutions of the Christian Reli
gion, usually called The Sacraments. By Robert Hallev, D.D. Part I.
Baptism. 8vo. price 14s. cloth.

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