IT IS IMPOSSIBLE they should have, or do any good thing. There is nothing in their nature, as they have it at the first birth, whence should arise any true subjection to God." Vide pages 170, 178, 202. He also declares that men come into the world" mere flesh," and in their native state "are without ability to help themselves." And of Adam's first sin he affirms, "It is truly and properly theirs, (his posterity's) and therefore God imputes it to them. There is no sure ground to conclude that it must be an absurd and impossible thing, for the race of man truly to partake of the sin of the first apostacy, so that this in reality and propriety shall become their sin." * * * In Boston's Fourfold State, ed. 1814, I find the following. "God may justly condemn men for their not obeying his law perfectly, though now they have no ability to keep it. How is it possible thou shouldst be able to do any good whose nature is wholly corrupt? Ah! what a miserable spectacle is he that can do nothing but sin! Art thou yet in thy natural state? Truly then thy duties are thy sins. All thy religion, if thou hast any, is lost labor. Thou canst not help thyself." pp. 30, 100, 101, &c. In Brown's Essay on the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, a work which has had no small reputation in Connecticut, the question "Why must the spirit enable us?" is answered thus, "Because by nature we have no strength to do anything spiritually good.” Dr Hopkins furnishes us with this testimony. "By the constitution and covenant with Adam, his first disobedience was the disobedience of all mankind. * * The disobedience of Adam decided the character of all his * natural posterity. When Adam had sinned, by this the character and state of all his posterity were fixed. Many have supposed that none of mankind are capable of sin or moral agency before they can distinguish right from wrong, and know what the law of God requires, and what it forbids, but this wants proof. * * The curse implies in it all the evil that man is capable of suffering, even endless destruction. As the sin was common to all, so was the curse." 1 vol. pp. 208, 259, 260, 268, &c. And in his chapter on election he says it is a mark of arrogance and presumption in men, to think "that they have their life in their own hands so far as to determine whether they shall be virtuous and holy, and be saved or not, without God's unpromised, special influence to turn the point in their favor." 2 vol. p. 163. Moral good, says he, is "a free, undeserved gift of God." "The Christian is no further holy than he is made so by the omnipotent energy of the divine spirit." p. 171. Dr Griffin assures us that by virtue of a secret covenant "the elect were caused to believe, and so made to share in the promises, which others might by believing of their own accord. And he tells us the final issue will be the same to the non-elect as though the capacity for moral goodness did not exist." And yet further—“ the posterity of Adam were before their existence appointed to a state of condemnation." Work on Atonement, pp. 68, 72, 140, 146. Dr Bellamy affirms that "mankind were by the fall, brought into a state infinitely worse than not to be;into a state for substance as bad as that which the damned are in." The Synod of Dort give this account of original sin. "All men are: conceived in sin, and born children of wrath, without ability for any good tending to salvation, inclined to evil, dead in sins, and slaves of sin; and without the regenerating grace of the holy spirit, have neither will nor power to return to God, to correct their depraved nature, or to dispose themselves to its correc tion." The readers of Dr Beecher's works know what reliance is placed upon the Synod of Dort. In the Creed of the Theological Institution is the fol lowing passage," being morally incapable of recovering the image of his Creator, which was lost in Adam, every man is justly exposed to eternal damnation." Is it not here affirmed that men are obnoxious to eternal punishment for not doing that which they are incapable of do ing? This incapacity is native, and therefore what we could not help having. And if a native incapacity for goodness exist in the human soul, is it possible for the soul to be good? Besides what I have now recited, I would refer you to the Unitarian Advocate, first volume, for similar quotations. And in particular to the sermon of Dr Beecher, in which he asserts that there is nothing in the human constitution of which religion is the result. I am perfectly willing to rest my defence against the charge of misrepresentation, upon a fair comparison of the sentences complained of in my sermon, with the passages here produced from orthodox writings. And until you define what you mean by the declaration, "That since the fall of Adam, men are, in their natural state, altogether destitute of holiness, and entirely depraved," or show how men thus depraved can change their na tures and become what God requires, I must believe that the Creed in the Spirit of the Pilgrims teaches what the Westminster Confession and Catechisms teach, and confirms all I have endeavored to establish on their authority. To the abusive language in which you have uniformly spoken of Unitarians, I have nothing to reply, but the wish that you may learn of the meek and lowly One, a better temper. EDITOR. THE DOUBLE WILL. IT is the Orthodox doctrine that God acts a double part towards mankind. He sustains two distinct, independent, contradictory characters. In the one, he commands to be done what, in the other, he determines shall not be done. In the former he appears with invitations, entreaties, promises and threats, addressed to all men, which, in the latter, he has already restricted to a part only of the race. By the one it would seem as if he wished us all to be good and happy. By the other he has ordained "all distinctions of character," and decided that a particular number shall be made holy and happy, and the rest abandoned to sin and misery without respite or end. We proceed to substantiate this statement by the proper evidence. Dr Griffin in his work on Atonement already cited in a preceding article, writes as follows:"I have shown you two independent characters on earth. If God acts according to truth, there will be a counterpart of them in the heavens: he himself will sustain two characters, altogether independent of each other. As he stands related to the moral agent, he is the moral governor; as he stands related to the mere passive receiver, he is the sovereign efficient cause. I say then, if he act towards these two independent characters of man according to truth, the moral governor will appear in his operations independent of the sovereign efficient cause. And so it is. These two characters of God are not only distinct, but in some respect are opposite to each other. In the one character God wills to suffer men to sin, when his influence could easily prevent; in the other, he earnestly forbids them to sin, and urges all the motives in the universe to dissuade them. In one character he wills to suffer men to perish when his influence could easily prevent; in the other he swears by his life that he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that they turn and live; and then presses them to return as though his own existence was at stake. In one character he determined before the non-elect were made that they should be left for destruction; in the other he would have us to understand that he made them from the purest benevolence; and to confirm this, he has spread an ocean of atoning blood between them and perdition, and follows them with entreaties even to the gates of hell.-Contemplate God in a single character, and there is no vindicating the sincerity of his invitations to the non-elect; for then the whole that can be said is, that he presses those to live whom he has unchangeably doomed to destruction." See pages 205, 206, 207. See also Hopkins' system of Divinity, vol. 2, chapter on election. As the moral governor of the world and the sovereign efficient cause are the same being, the God who is declared in the scripture to be the God of the spirits of all flesh, |