If we would guard against insipid interpretations of Scripture, we should remember that we are utterly unable to turn to God before regeneration; that our state before regeneration is utterly wretched, depraved, and at enmity with God, Rom. viii.; that God both claims and exercises the right of making some free, and suffering others to remain in bondage, Gal. iv. 24-31 ; that God does not deal alike with all men, Rom. ix. 11; that the mercy published in the gospel neither is, nor needs to be ratified, by the natural man, but that the boundless grace of the new covenant makes us willing to turn to God. As it is certain that none escape from eternal perdition but those to whom he extends the grace of the new covenant, so it is also certain that he extends this grace to whom he will, and withholds it from whom he will. For he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth, Rom. ix. What our Lord and his apostles tell us repeatedly and constantly with regard to the bulk of the Israelitish nation, holds good with regard to all mankind: namely, if you inquire as to the immediate cause of their perdition and rejection, it is their actual guilt-if you inquire further, it was from the secret counsel of God, who had predetermined not to extend to them the grace of the new covenant (which it is his divine prerogative to give to some and to withhold from others), in other words, not to remove from them the condemnation in which all men are justly involved already.'

-pp. 112, 113. These, we regret to say, are prominently brought forward by our author as exclusively the first principles of the oracles of 'God.' Whether we shall have the happiness of contributing at all to the modification of his views we know not, but we shall take the opportunity of making on them a few remarks, which we hope will not be altogether lost.

We would not, of course, be understood as calling in question all that is contained in the extracts we have given. There never was an error which did not ally itself with some portion of truth; and it is one of the most painful features of the errors which we conceive lie now before us, that they ally themselves closely with some of the most fundamental and glorious truths of the gospel. We are not going to place among erroneous tenets, either the federal relation between Adam and his posterity, or the covenant character of the work of redemption. Neither Mr. Head nor any other person can hold more strongly than ourselves, first, that mankind are sharing by equitable implication the consequences of their first father's crime; and, secondly, that all who will be recovered from the universal state of sin and misery, will be so by virtue of a well-ordered covenant in which they have been from eternity comprehended. The points to which we object are the following.

In the first place, we demur to the sentiment that mankind are, for the sin of Adam, under sentence of eternal wrath. We are not ignorant of the seemingly conclusive process by which this

notion is arrived at. The argument is this: Eternal wrath was one of the penal consequences attached to Adam's sin; and mankind participate in the penal consequences of Adam's sin; therefore they are by virtue of it liable to eternal wrath. It is only in appearance, however, that this argument is decisive. In bar of the conclusion it is to be observed, that the penal consequences of Adam's transgression actually descend to his posterity in a mitigated and modified form. We say this not as matter of theory, but as matter of fact; and it is of easy demonstration. The sentence on our first parent ran in the following terms, In 'the day that thou eatest thou shalt surely die;' and it denounced, as we conceive, an immediate infliction of the punishment declared. Punishment, however, was not immediately inflicted; a fact which of itself evinced a modification of the sentence, and of the system of which it had been the threatened consummation. We ask by what possibility, under the strict-which is the only admissible-interpretation of the covenant of Eden, Adam could have been permitted to live nearly a thousand years, and in the midst of so many benefits. Of that covenant it seems to us that every day of his life must be regarded as a palpable violation. This was not the fulfilment of the threatening, it was an exercise of mercy; and there is no conceivable ground on which mercy could have been exercised towards Adam on his transgression, but the interposition of a system of which mercy was an element, an alteration of the method in which his Maker had primarily dealt with him. In a word, immediately on Adam's fall, and as a matter necessary to the prolonging of his life for a single day, there must have come into operation that merciful system of which the death of Christ is the meritorious basis, and which was announced to the transgressors, even before they left the garden of Eden, as the dispensation under which they were henceforth to live. In this condition the threatened results of his transgression were modified to Adam himself. At least one of them was altogether done away; inasmuch as it cannot be supposed that he was placed in a state of prolonged exposure to eternal wrath for his primary offence. His state then, we conceive, will be admitted on all hands to have been one of probation for his conduct subsequently to his original trial. Death yet remained, but it was at an indefinite distance in prospect. And then were added to his condition some elements which the original sentence did not express, but of which, undoubtedly, the modification of that sentence warranted the introduction. We refer here to the curse upon the ground, and the necessity of labor. These were not, and evidently could not have been, parts of a sentence which ran in the terms, In the day that thou eatest thou shalt die.' They were elements superadded to the system of mercy, and originated for the purpose of it, as modifications of man's new condition

suited to the ends which were to be answered by it. These, therefore, cannot be said to be penal at all, since they never were threatened as part of the punishment of any act of transgression. They are rather benevolent and salutary, and original elements of the new and merciful dispensation. Neither do we look upon death, or any other remaining part of the punishment annexed to the first transgression, as retaining, after the exit from paradise, its penal character. The system to which it belonged is terminated and past; and a new system has been introduced, of which punishment in the present world forms no part. Punishment does belong to it, but not present punishment. It looks for this to a future state and a coming judgment. Whatever of suffering occurs in the present state is, therefore, in accordance with the entire character of the state itself, not penal but corrective; and if any sufferings included in the first threatening are to be found in our present condition, it is not because, as parts of that threatening, they adhere to the posterity of Adam, but because they have been adopted by the author of the change as congruous with his plans, and as capable of being made subservient to our good. The condition of our first parent, as spared after the fall, we take therefore to have been one in which there neither lay upon him, nor appeared in prospect before him, any result, in its penal character, of his primary transgression.

Now it seems clear that, by virtue of the federal relation, the children of Adam must be regarded as born into a condition similar to that of their parents at the time of their birth. It would be strange to say that the offspring were liable to punishment for an offence committed by the parent, when all liability to punishment for that offence had been removed from the parent himself. The dispensation of mercy which relieved him, was surely intended and effectual to relieve them also. If, in reply to this representation, we are told that this is reducing the liability of Adam's posterity to share the punishment of his sin to nothing, with joy and thankfulness we confess it. For it is to us one of the most beautiful circumstances in the transactions of Eden, that the arrangements were adapted, at once to extend without limit the beneficial consequences of our first father's conduct if he had been faithful, and to shut up the ill effects of it, should he be unfaithful, within the narrowest possible compass. In the former case he was to have posterity, all of whom should inherit the fruits of his obedience; in the latter case, he should immediately die, nor leave a single child to partake the punishment of his crime. He could leave no child, but by virtue of a system of mercy which should prolong his own life. It is under and by virtue of the dispensation of mercy, therefore, that the whole posterity of Adam are born-under a system, that is to say, in which all

liability to punishment for the first offence is absolutely done

away.

We are not unmindful all this while of the important scripture, which instructs us that by the disobedience of one many were 'made sinners,' Rom. v. 19. The meaning of that passage we take to be, that, in consequence of one man's (Adam's) sin, all mankind have been treated as though they had been sinners. No doubt it is so. Mankind are universally treated by the Almighty as though they had been sinners before they were born; since they are brought by him into a state in which they are immediately subject to suffering, the appropriate consequence of sin. Since this cannot be in consequence of our own sin, it is a natural suggestion of common sense that it may be the result of sin committed by another; and the scripture expressly teaches that we are thus treated as sinners in virtue of the sin of our great progenitor, in whom all have sinned,' Rom. v. 13—that is to say, with whom all have been so identified as to become liable to the consequences of his sin. There is no inconsistency, we think, between these scriptures and the views we have stated above. Very much should we rejoice if we could attract to such views the candid attention of divines who, like our author, teach that men are condemned by the imputation of Adam's guilt, while our actual iniquities only make the justice of our condemnation more 'apparent.' Believing the sentiment to be utterly unscriptural, we may indulge ourselves in bewailing its mischievous tendency and effects; and most deeply do we deplore them. It directly instructs men that their condemnation is not their fault, but their misfortune-an act, not just but arbitrary, not equitable but despotic. As to condemnation on such a ground, it is impossible that men can either see righteousness in it, or feel humiliation for it; nor can they regard the great scheme of deliverance from it in any other light than as making them the subjects of a kind of game, in which their Maker (using his high prerogative of doing what he pleases) first plunges them into ruin with one hand, and then, with great ado, lifts them out of it with the other. It is a melancholy thing to see the momentous and glorious truths of the gospel reduced by its very ministers to such utter trivialities as these; and every thing separated from them by which the heart of a sinner is to be broken into contrition, or that of a saint kindled into love.

6

In the second place, we quite as strongly object to the language in which our author speaks of the depravity of mankind. Not that we doubt for a moment their actual depravity, or the existence in human beings universally, since the fall, and at their birth, of an element-call it the corruption of their nature if you will-from which iniquity directly and certainly springs. Our author, how

ever, together with the school to which he belongs, and in harmony (we regret to say) with the ninth article of his church, deems men to be born wicked, 'a seed of sin, deserving God's 'condemnation.' We are aware of the language of David in the fifty-first Psalm, Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin 'did my mother conceive me;' but we do not feel ourselves shut up by it to so revolting a conclusion as that new born babes are in any such sense sinful as to deserve God's condemnation.' The terms sin and ill desert are too superficially regarded, if they are taken to be in all cases synonymous. In truth, no little confusion seems to have been thrown into the subject before us, by a disregard of the various senses in which the word sin has come to be employed. In the strict and primary import of it, there is essentially implied the existence of a rational being, by whom, in his voluntary agency, sin is committed, and to whom exclusively the quality of sinfulness pertains. Sin implies a sinner, a being who sins. And a rational being sins, precisely as his voluntary agency is out of conformity with the rule which prescribes his duty. Afterwards we come to use sin as an abstract term, as though it were, what in strictness it is not, an entity independent of an agent; and as denoting either an abstract idea, or a quality of some being or action, or a spring of action in some being. We would mention instances of this varied use of the term, but that they will so readily occur to the reader's mind. Now, as it is evident that the ideas conveyed by the single term sin in its various uses differ widely from one another, it must be evident also that no one set of epithets, or relative terms, can be appropriate to it on all occasions. Attributes belonging to sin in one sense of the word will be found not at all pertinent to it in another. This is the distinction which we wish to apply to the matter before us. There is no quality which we more directly or more tenaciously attach to sin than that of ill desert; and it may seem startling, perhaps, to say that sin may exist without it. Neither is this possible, if we use the word sin in a certain sense; but that word is commonly employed in several senses, with some of which the idea of ill desert clearly is not congruous. Desert, whether of praise or blame, is a property attributable solely to an agent we might say, to an agent of a certain constitution and acting in certain circumstances, but this is not our present point; what we are concerned to make apparent is, that desert, whether of praise or blame, is a property of agents exclusively. A being who acts well or ill may deserve blame or praise; and he deserves them because he is the author of those voluntary exercises by which desert is generated, and of which praise and blame are respectively the recompense. We cannot say with propriety that actions deserve anything, or qualities, or impulses; or anything but an agent. It is in all cases he, who, by acting in a particular