era of the reformation, have been chiefly owing to the changes in the system of mental and moral science. Whenever tha system shall be fully understood, and established on the immovable foundation of truth, all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, will be of one mind in their mode of stating the doc trines of the gospel, as they already are in their spiritual feelings. Till then, all that can be done by the friends of truth will be to show, that the objections which are urged against the doc trines of grace, can be urged with equal power, against all the facts in God's moral government.

From the beginning, formidable objections have been brought against what are called the Doctrines of Grace, or the Evangeli. cal System, or Calvinism. These objections have seldom, if ever, been drawn from the Bible. Their strength has consisted in the alleged fact, that these doctrines are in opposition to the established principles, by which God governs the world. We concede, that there is just enough of apparent irregularity in those principles, to make these objections plausible with the great mass of men, just as there was enough of irregularity and improbability in the Copernican system of astronomy, to make it for a long time liable to many and plausible objections. Cer tain appearances strongly favoured the old doctrine, that the sun, moon, and stars travelle, in inarshalled hosts, around our insig nificant orb, just as, in the Arminian system, certain appear. ances may seem to indicate that man is the centre of the system, and that God, and all the hosts of heaven, live and act chiefly to minister to his comfort. But it is now clear, that all the proper facts in astronomy go to prove, that the earth is a small part of the plan, and to confirm the system of Copernicus. So we affirm that the Calvinistic scheme-despite all Arminian appearances, is the plan on which this world is actually governed; and that all the objections that have been urged against it are urged against facts that are fixed in the very nature of things. And we affirm that a mind which could take in all these facts, could make up the Calvinistic scheme without the aid of revelation, from the actual course of events; just as in the ruins of an ancient city the skilful architect can discern in the broken fragments, pillars of just dimensions, arches of proper proportions, and the remains of edifices of symmetry and grandeur.

In entering on this subject, however, we cannot but remark, that the Evangelical Scheme is often held answerable for that which it did not originate. We mean, that when opposers approach the Christian system, they almost universally hold it responsible for the fall, as well as the recovery, of man. They are not willing to consider, that it is a scheme proposed to remedy an existing state of evil. Christianity did not plunge men into sin. It is the system by which men are to be recovered from wo-wo which would have existed to quite as great an extent, certainly, if the conception of the evangelical system had never entered the divine mind. The theory and practice of medicine is not to be held answerable for the fact that man is subject to

disease and death. It finds men thus subject; and all that can be justly required of the art, is that to which it makes pretensions, viz. that it can do something towards removing or alleviating human suffering. So in Christianity. That men are in fact in the midst of sin, suffering, and death, is undeniable. The doctrine is common to the deist, the atheist, and the Christian. For that Christianity is not answerable. It proposes a remedy, and that remedy is properly the Christian system. Still we shall not, in our present discussion, avail ourselves of this very obvious remark; but shall proceed to notice the objections to the entire series of revealed facts, as if they constituted one system: -and the rather as the evangelical system proposes a statement respecting the exact extent of the evil, which has an important bearing on the features of the remedy proposed.

1. The first fact, then, presented for our examination is the fall of man. The Scriptures affirm that a solitary act—an act n itself exceedingly unimportant-was the beginning of that ong train of sin and wretchedness, which has passed upon our world. Now, we acknowledge that to all the mystery and fearfulness of this fact our bosoms beat with a full response to that of the objector. We do not understand the reason of it; and what is of more consequence to us and to the objector is, that an explanation of this mystery, forms no part of the system of evelation. The only inquiry at present before us, is, whether the fact in question is so separated from all other events, as to be expressly contradicted by the analogy of nature.

We know there has been a theory, which affirms that we are one with Adam-that we so existed in his loins, as to act with him-that our wills concurred with his will-that his action was strictly and properly ours-and that we are held answera le at the bar of justice for that deed, just as A. B. at fifty is responsi ble for the deed of A. B. at twelve. In other words, that the act of Adam, involving us all in ruin, is taken out of all ordinary laws by which God governs the world, and made to stand by itself, as incapable of any illustration from analogy, and as mocking any attempt to defend it by reasoning. With this theory, we confess we have no sympathy; and we shall dismiss it with saying, that in our view, Christianity never teaches that men are responsible for any sin but their own; nor can they be guilty, or held liable to punishment, in the proper sense of that term, for conduct other than that which has grown out of their own wills. Indeed we see not how, if it were a dogma of a pretended revelation, that God might at pleasure, and by an arbitrary decree, make crime pass from one individual to anotherstriking onward from age to age, and reaching downward to "the last season of recorded time,"-punished in the original offender; repunished in his children; and punished again and again, by infinite multiples, in countless ages and individualsand all this judicial infliction, for a single act, performed cycles of ages before the individuals lived, we see not how any evidence could shake our intrinsic belief that this is unjust and improbable.

We confess we have imbibed other views of justice; and we believe that he who can find the head and members of this theory in the Bible, will have no difficulty in finding there any of the dogmas of the darkest night that ever settled on the church.

But, that the consequences or results of an action may pass over from one individual to another, and affect the condition of unborn generations, we hold to be a doctrine of the sacred Scriptures, and to be fully sustained by the analogy of nature.* And no one who looks at the scriptural account of the fall and recovery of man, can doubt that it is a cardinal point in the system. We affirm that it is a doctrine fully sustained by the course of events around us. Indeed the fact is so common, that we should be exhausting the patience of our readers by attempting to draw out formal instances. Who is ignorant of the progressive and descending doom of the drunkard? Who is stranger to the common fact, that his intemperance wastes the property which was necessary to save a wife and children from beggary-that his appetite may be the cause of his family's being despised, illiterate and ruined; that the vices which follow in the train of his intemperance, often encompass his offspring, and that they too are profane, unprincipled, idle, and loathsome? So of the murderer, the thief, the highwayman, the adulterer. The result of their conduct rarely terminates with themselves. They are lost to society, and their children are lost with them. Nor does the evil stop here. Not merely are the external circumstances of the child affected by the misdeeds of a parent, but there is often a dark suspicion resting upon his very soul, there is felt to be in him a hereditary presumptive tendency to crime, which can be removed only by a long course of virtuous conduct, and which even then the slightest circumstance re-excites. Is an illegiti mate child to blame for the aberration of a mother? Yet who is ignorant of the fact that, in very few conditions of society, such a son is placed on a level with the issue of lawful wedlock? So the world over, we approach the son of the drunkard, the murderer, and the traitor, with all these terrible suspicions. The father's deeds shut our doors against him. Nor can he be raised to the level of his former state, but by a long course of purity and well-doing. Now in all these cases, we see a general course of things in Divine Providence, corresponding, in important respects, to the case of Adam and his descendants. We do not deem the child guilty, or ill-deserving, but society is so organized, and sin is so great an evil, that the proper effects cannot be scen, and the proper terror be infused into the mind to deter from it, without such an organization. It is true that these results do not take place with undeviating certainty. It is not always the case that the

*Rom v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 49; Josh. vii. 24, 25; Ex. xvii. 16; 1 Sam. xv. 2, 3; Matt. xxiii. 35. This view is by no means confined to revelation. The ancient heathen long since observed it, and regarded it as the great principle on which the world was governed. Thus Hesiod ays, πολλακι και ξυμπαδα πολις κακου ανδρος επαυρου: And Horace says, Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi.

child of a drunkard is intemperate, idle, or illiterate; while it is always the case, that a descendant of Adam is a sinner. In the former case, there may be other laws of governinent to prevent the regular operations of the plan. In the latter, God has not seen fit wholly to interrupt the regular process in a single instance. Even when men are renewed as the child of the drunkard may be removed from the regular curse of the parent's conduct the renewed man still is imperfect, and still suffers pain and death.

But, we know, there is an appearance of much that is formidable in the difficulty, that a single act, and that a most unimportant one, should result in so many crimes and calamities. But the objection, as we have seen, lies against the course of nature, as truly as against the revealed facts resulting from the connexion of Adam and his descendants. To lessen the objection, we would further remark, that it is not the outward form of an action which determines its character and results. The blow which in self-defence strikes a highwayman to the earth, may have the same physical qualities, as that which reached the heart of the venerable White of Salem. It is the circumstances, the attendants, the relations, the links that bind the deed to others, which determine the character of the action. Adam's act had this towering preeminence, that it was the first in the newly created globe, and committed by the first of mortals; the prospective father of immense multitudes. In looking at it, then, we are to turn from the mere physical act, to run the eye along the conduct of his descendants, and to see if we can find any other deeds that shall be first in a series, and then to mark their results, and in them we shall find the proper analogy. Now it is evident, that here we shall find no other act that will have the same awful peculiarity as the deed of our first father. But are there no acts that can be set over against this, to illustrate its unhappy consequences? We look, then, at the deed of a man of high standing whose character has been blameless, and whose ancestry has been noble. We suppose him, in an evil moment, to listen to temptation, to fall into the wiles of the profligate, or even to become a traitor to his country. Now who does not see how the fact of this being a first and characteristic deed, may entail decper misery on his friends, and stain the escutcheon of his family with a broader and fouler blot? Or take an instance which approaches still nearer to the circumstances of our first parents' crime. One false step, the first in a before virtuous female of honourable parentage, and high standing, spreads sackcloth and wo over entire families, and sends the curse prolonged far into advancing years. It needs no remark to show how much that deed may differ in its results, from any subsequent acts of profligacy in that individual. The first act has spread mourning throughout every circle of friends. Lost now to virtue, and disowned by friends, the subsequent conduct may be regarded as in character, and the results terminate only in the offending individual. It is impossible here not to recur to the

melancholy case of Dr. Dodd. His crime differed not from other acts of forgery except in his circumstances. It was a first deed, the deed of a man of distinction, of supposed piety, of a pure and high profession, and the deed stood out with a dreadful preeminence in the eyes of the world; nor could the purity of his profession, nor the eloquence of Johnson, nor the voice of thirty thousand petitioners, nor the native compassion of George III. save him from the tremendous malediction of the law-a death as conspicuous as the offence was primary and eminent.

We think from this peculiarity of a first offence, we can meet many of the objections which men allege against the doctrines of revelation, on the subject. If further illustration were needed, we might speak of the opposite, and advert to the well-known fact, that a first distinguished act in a progenitor may result in the lasting good of those connected with him by the ties of kindred or of law. Who can reflect without emotion on the great deed by which Columbus discovered the western world, and the glory it has shed on his family, and the interest which in consequence of it has arisen at the very name, and which we feel for any mortal that is connected with him? Who can remember without deep feeling, the philanthropy of Howard, and the deathless lustre which his benevolence has thrown over his family and his name? Who thinks of the family of Washington without some deep emotion, running back to the illustrious man whose glory has shed its radiance around Mount Vernon, around his family, around our capital, and over all our battle-fields, and all the millions of whom he was the constituted political father? There is a peculiarity in the great first deed which sheds a lustre on all that, by any laws of association, can be connected with it. Compared with other deeds, having perhaps the same physical dimensions, it is like the lustre of the sun diffusing his beams over all the planets, when contrasted with the borrowed, reflected rays of the moon which shines upon our little globe.

Now we think there is an analogy between these cases and that of Adam, because we think it is a fixed principle in moral as in natural legislation, that the same law is applicable to the same facts. We find a series of facts on the earth, and a similar series in the movement of the planets, and we have a single term to express the whole-gravitation. We deem it unphilosophical to suppose the nature is there, in the same facts, subjected to different laws, from what passes before our own eyes. So when we find one uniform process in regard to moral conduct-when we find results, consequences and not crimes travelling from father to son, and holding on their unbroken way to distant ages, why should we hesitate to admit, that to a great extent, at least, the facts respecting Adam and his descendants fall under the same great law of divine providence? We do not nere deny, that there may have been beyond this a peculiarity in the case of Adam, which must be referred to the decisions of divine wisdom, and justified on other principles than those of any known analogy. But we never can adopt that system which