certain circumstances, emotions of sorrow instinctively arise, it follows that he has a natural ability to sorrow for sin? It is as though we should say, that one is able to speak, because his vocal organs are perfect in form, though paralyzed. It is as if we should examine the machinery of an engine, and, upon finding each piston and cylinder, each wheel and lever, perfectly shaped and rightly adjusted, assert it to be able to start forward and perform its office, although the motive power is wanting. The most perfect intellectual machine can have no ability to moral action, unless the moral power is attached. And as it is acknowledged that the moral power is wanting in fallen man, ability to right moral action is entirely wanting. The natural faculties must fail, impotent as the palsied tongue, powerless and still as the steamless engine. We cannot properly assert ability, in any case in which full power to do is not present.

2. This lame and untenable conception is logically identified with the doctrine that ability must be commensurate with obligation,―a doctrine, in its turn, immediately leading to the heresy of perfectionism. The command is, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." If the doctrine be true, this command involves the assertion of a power in all men to be perfectly conformed to the image of God. They are consistent who have accepted the conclusion, and asserted for themselves the attainment of a sinless state,-of which John says they who claim it "deceive themselves, and the truth is not in them."-1 John i. 8. How different the teachings of the Scriptures, which unfold the eternal law of God, unlimited by the sin and frailty of man! Copied from the perfections of the Holy One, they bear inscribed on every page the righteous mandate, and the inexorable curse, upon "every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them."

3. The distinction indicated by the phrases, "natural and moral ability," is without a shadow of countenance in the Scriptures. They, everywhere, regardless of any such philosophical subtleties, assert man's inability, in the most absolute and unlimited terms. The gratuitous introduction of the phraseology here considered, thus contrary to inspired example, and at vari

ance with sound reason and the analogy of faith, could not, therefore, but be dangerous. As experience has too fully proved, it is most disastrous, ensnaring unregenerate souls into a false confidence and fatal hopes, and beguiling the ministry away from the simplicity and truth of the gospel.

The catastrophe of the fall, was, therefore, not only an evil of infinite moral enormity, but still further calamitous, as by it man was plunged in a returnless abyss of iniquity and woe.

29. The crime

one.

We have seen, that when Adam sinned there were two distinct elements inseparably identified in the action,-the apostasy of his heart and nature from God; and, as an immediate and necessary consequence of this, the overt act of transgression. Again, involved as essential and inseparable elements in the apostasy, were the two constituents already pointed out, the departure from original righteousness, and the corruption of man's nature. Original righteousness was lost, not by an active interposition of God, taking it from the apostate pair; but by virtue of the fact, that the embrace of sin was of itself the casting off of righteousness. To say that man apostatized, is, in other words, to say, that he made himself unrighteous. By the act, he abandoned the attitude of conformity to the law, and assumed that of alienation. The second incident in the apostasy, was the insurrection of the powers of Adam's soul against God, and the assumption of an attitude of enmity toward him. Not as though this was a consequence following after the transgression, and springing out of it. But the apostasy itself was the assuming of a depraved attitude,—the embrace of corruption; and the depravity of his subsequent life was nothing but the apostasy perpetuated:―its turpitude is that of the very apostasy itself. The point which is here of importance, is, that the loss of original righteousness, and the corruption of nature, are not only one and the same thing, viewed under two different aspects, but that they are the very soul and essence of the apostasy itself,-things without which it could not exist, which could have had no existence except by the apostasy, and which, as long as they continue, are neither more nor less than the first sin perpetuated. Hence the great pro

priety of that designation, by which Augustine, and after him the entire church of God, is accustomed to call these incidents of the first transgression,-the original sin. Now, original sin is not one thing in Adam, and another in his posterity; but it is, in him, and in them, one and the same thing. The apostasy is one, in all men. In all, its incidents are identically the same, and inseparable from it. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so to all men death passed through the one in whom all sinned."

10. Conclusion.

The conclusions, to which we are led by the whole testimony of the Scriptures on the subject, are:-that there is a principle inherent in the souls of men, which is hostile to God; that it originated in the apostasy of our first parents from God, and is that apostasy derived from them, and abiding in their seed;-that it exerts an absolute control over the entire moral character of unrenewed men, ruling their affections, and guiding all their actions;-that hence their affections are natively and inveterately averse to God; and their actions at variance with his law;-that this principle is properly sin, and is in fact that to which the name principally applies,— as being the primary, fundamental and essential sin, which originates all actual transgressions, and imparts to them their moral enormity;—that these latter are not so properly called, sins, as, the workings of sin,-the fruits of sin, (Rom. vii. 5, 8;) that is, of this inherent principle of depravity in the heart; and, that this original sin,-alike as it is the apostasy of our nature, in the person of Adam, and persistent alienation, or depravity, in our own,-is our crime, is of infinite enormity, and, according to the requirements of the holy law, and the demands of divine justice, involves us under the whole burden of the infinite curse of God; whence we are by nature children of wrath.

trine.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PROPAGATION OF ORIGINAL SIN.

Ir will not be necessary to go to any length in explaining the way in which original sin is propagated from our first parents 21. The doc- to their seed. The principles upon which the result depends have been sufficiently developed already. Our first parents apostatized from God, and depraved themselves. Their posterity were "in their loins, as branches in the root,"*-as members in the body; and, as the deed attached to all that was in them, it therefore belongs to us. "We existed, and consented and sinned, in our cause,-in the one Adam."t The common nature of all was in him. His sin was the apostasy from God of this common nature. And, as the nature, thus apostate and depraved, flows by ordinary descent to the successive generations of men, it everywhere verifies its identity by the corruption and enmity to God, which it conveys from the first parents to all. On this subject the argument is brief and simple, and the conclusion unavoidable. That the sin of Adam was a depravation of his nature, as well as an act of sin, we have demonstrated, and can scarcely be questioned. That there was in him any other than the depravity thus originated, no one will pretend. We have seen it to be the unanimous and unambiguous testimony of the Scriptures, that the sinfulness of his seed is derived from him. If this be so, then is it one and the same, numerically, with that which was in him. But, in him its elements were two, to wit:-apostasy, and corruption,-the entrance of depravity, and the depravity which entered. Both of these, therefore, are elements in that which flows from him to his pos

*Westminster Sum of Christian Doctrine, head i. 3. Confession, ch. vi. & 3. † Van Mastricht, Lib. iv. cap. ii. 24.

terity. The corruption, which is found in all the race of man, is either numerically one and the same, in all the members of the race, or it is diverse in them severally. But if it be diverse, then each individual has a distinct and several depravity, original in and peculiar to him; and the corruption of the children is not derived from their parents, although it be like theirs, and that of the whole race. In this case, the doctrine of original sin,of the apostasy and depravation of the race, in Adam,—is repudiated, and the depravity is to be attributed to one of two causes, -either the creative power of God, or the personal and several apostasy of each individual. On the contrary, if the depravity be "conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation," as our Confession asserts, then it is, and continues to be, numerically, one and the same thing in Adam, and all the generations to whom it is conveyed from him. By a just judgment of God, the sin which our first parents embraced was left in possession of the nature which had yielded to its power; and, as we receive that nature, it comes not only burdened with the guilt of its crime, but bound under the depravity which then gained dominion.

22. Sin is

Here, it is necessary carefully to distinguish between two things which widely differ, although not unfrequently confounded with each other, that is, the penal abansometimes pe- donment of the creature to the bondage of his already existing corruption, and the penal infusion of depravity into one as yet undefiled.

nal.

That, in the former sense, sin may be, and often is, the punishment of sin, is unquestionable. This it may be in two ways. (1.) The sin of one may be the punishment of the sin of another. Thus, God says to David, "Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife."-2 Sam. xii. 10. Hence the crimes and blood which thenceforward characterized the house of that man of God. So, in Isaiah we read, "O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against a hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge,