have the comfort to believe, that the knowledge which Christians have of divine truth is progressive. It will undoubtedly be growing in clearness and comprehensiveness, to the end of time, and forever. When Christians come to associate profound humility, unquenchable zeal for improvement, and the spirit of prayer, with the exercise of their mental powers, they will soon outgrow their errors, and their intellectual and moral littleness, and speed their way towards a state of perfection. And if, even after attaining to the perfection of that higher state to which they now aspire, they find, as they doubtless will, that some subjects or parts of subjects lie beyond the reach of their intelligence; their very perfection will teach them to acquiesce in their ignorance.

CHAPTER X.

Remarks on the words innate, transmitted, hereditary, constitutional, imputed.

It would accord best with my views of what is proper and useful, to confine my remarks and reasonings to the doctrine of human depravity, just as it stands in the Bible, and to its practical uses, avoiding altogether the discussion of the abstruse, metaphysical questions which are everywhere agitated at the present day. I cannot but approve the sentiment of Howe in the following passage, taken from his LIVING TEMPLE. "As for them that could never have the gospel, or infants incapable of receiving it, we must consider the Holy Scriptures were written for those that could use them, not for those that could not; therefore to have inserted in them an account of God's methods of dispensation towards such, had only served to gratify the curious and unconcerned, not to instruct and benefit such as were concerned. And it well became hereupon the accurate wisdom of God, not herein to indulge the vanity and folly of men." But

as men cannot be kept from agitating questions of a metaphysical nature on this subject, and as many of the opinions which they form, are, in my apprehension, not only erroneous, but of hurtful tendency; I have thought it expedient to join with them for a time, in the consideration of these speculative matters, and to endeavour to show, that there is nothing in the results of thorough philosophical investigation, which is at all unfavorable to the commonly received doctrine of human corruption.

Before closing this Essay, it seems necessary that I make a few remarks on the meaning of the words innate, transmitted, hereditary, constitutional, &c. and on the propriety of applying them to the depravity of man.

The word innate, together with the words which Johnson uses to explain it, are applied as freely to the qualities of the mind, as to any thing which pertains to the body. Thus writers speak of innate integrity, innate eloquence, inborn passions, inborn worth, inbred affection, &c. Innate is opposed to the word superadded, which in this case would denote something which does not arise from any thing in man's nature, or from what he is by birth. If depravity belongs to man in the state in which he is born; if a foundation is laid for his sinning in his very nature; it is perfectly suitable to call his depravity innate. To say that man is born destitute of holiness, and with a propen

sity to sin, is the same as to say, that man's destitution of holiness, or his propensity to sin, is innate; in other words, that it is natural.

The word connate is seldom used at the present day; although there would seem to be no special objection against it. For how can man's depravity, or propensity to sin, be innate, born in him, without being connate, that is, born with him?

Hereditary means, descended from an ancestor ; transmitted from a parent to a child. Now is it not a plain matter of fact, that a depraved nature, a propensity to sin, has descended from the common ancestor of our race to all his posterity, that it is transmitted from parent to child? Are we not "degenerate plants of a strange vine? And if depravity comes in this way, what impropriety is there in calling it hereditary?

I beg leave in this place to offer a few more remarks on the doctrine universally maintained by the Orthodox, namely, that we are depraved and lost in consequence of the offence of Adam. Let us inquire in what way Adam's apostacy produced such an effect upon his posterity.

First; was his transgression so charged to his posterity, that they are subjected to suffering on account of it, while they themselves have no sin, or, at most, none which is the ground of their suffer

ings? My reasoning here will relate exclusively to that period of life which precedes any sinful exercises. Because as soon as we have exercises, however feeble, which constitute actual sin, no one supposes that we suffer solely on account of Adam's sin. In regard to the first period of our infancy, there are two suppositions to be here considered; one is, that we have a sinful nature, a corrupt moral propensity; the other, that we have nothing which is in any respect or in any degree of the nature of sin; that we are free from moral depravity. Those who believe in the doctrine of imputation in the strictest sense, hold the former of these suppositions—namely, that we have from the beginning a vitiosity of nature. Now what reason can they have to deny, that in the infliction of evil upon us in infancy, God has a respect to our moral corruption? Can they be sure, that our depravity is of no consideration with God in respect to our sufferings at the beginning of life, and that he brings them upon us on account of Adam's sin, and on that account exclusively? It may indeed be true that we suffer at that time on account of the offence of him who was the head, and, in an important sense, the representative of our race. And it may also be true, that we suffer on account of that moral corruption which belongs to us from the first. God may have respect to each of these in the sufferings to which he subjects us in early infancy. And he may have