This is undoubtedly good reasoning, if the obstacle to be overcome is purely physical; but not otherwise. It proceeds entirely on the ground that this disposition is such, that a moral influence, from its nature, is not at all adapted to remove it. It is for that reason that it is believed no agency of motives which can be brought to bear on the voluntary powers, no matter to what extent it is carried, nor what modification it assumes, can have any tendency to subvert it. But what is that but a complete definition of a merely physical attribute? What more can be said of any property, over the existence of which the will can exert no influence, and has no jurisdiction? If a moral influence, from its very nature, is wholly unadapted to change this disposition; if from its nature a physical agency is necessary to accomplish a change in it; must it not be solely because it is a merely physical property?

But to try the question more closely. It will be admitted, that the cause that no moral influence can change the disposition, is either a want of adaptation in the nature of that influence to produce the change; or else a deficiency in its degree. But those who hold the doctrine in question, do not allow that it is the latter: They expressly teach, that advance it to any degree of strength whatever within the compass of possibility, and still it cannot excite men to the exercise of holiness, nor make any approximation toward it; nor even fail of producing directly the opposite effect. But if it is the former, then the ground of that want of adaptation must be, that the disposition is a physical, instead of a moral attribute, and therefore requires a physical agency to effect any change in it.

Or in other words: the cause that no moral influence can produce a change of the disposition is, either that the structure of the mind is such, that it is destitute of a physical capacity for that class of volitions which is morally excellent, and therefore a moral influence has no adaptation to produce such volitions in it, any more than it has in brutes, or any

thing else totally incapable of them;-and will the friends of the doctrine in question admit that? it is precisely what they are regarded as teaching:-or else the mind has all the physical capacity requisite for the exercise of such volitions; and the cause that it cannot be made to exercise them, is simply, an impossibility of bringing such a degree of moral influence to bear on it, as is necessary to lead it to exert that capacity. A capacity lodged in the mind of man, which it is absolutely impossible should ever be brought into exercise! How then is its existence proved? Who can discover the existence of what can never be made to develop itself? God has endowed every one of his moral creatures in this world with a capacity which, with all his infinite resources of contrivance and execution, he can never in a single instance bring into exertion! Has God then given powers which are beyond his control? What is this capacity? The self-determining power of the will, which the friends of the subject in question have so often employed themselves in annihilating? But no one surely will feel inclined to adopt this side of the alternative. It can never be believed that God has communicated powers which he is utterly incapable of bringing into exercise. It must then be admitted that if such an attribute as the disposition in question exists in the human mind, its nature must be purely physical.

VIII. If a moral influence is thus entirely unadapted to lead men to the exercise of holiness, it follows, as an obvious consequence, that the renovation of the heart is caused by a purely physical agency, and is itself nothing more than a physical effect. Accordingly it is taught as a part of the system under consideration, that the regenerating agency of the Divine Spirit is solely of that kind, and is employed solely in producing a physical change.

"The divine operation in regeneration of which the new heart is the effect, is immediate; or it is not wrought by any means as the cause of it; but by the immediate power and

energy of the Holy Spirit. It is called a creation; and the divine agency in it is as much without any medium, as in creating something from nothing. Men are not regenerated in the sense in which we are now considering regeneration by light, or by the word of God. . . . . That operation which changes the evil eye to a single eye cannot be by means of light, but must take place antecedent to any light, or any influence or effect that can be produced by it."—Hopkins System of Divinity, Vol. 1. p. 536.

"The Calvinist tells you that the heart is so depraved that it will not improve divine influence till it is changed; that it stubbornly resists all light and motives till it is forced to submit; that the moral Ruler has as much occasion to subdue it by strength, as an earthly king to quell by force his rebellious subjects; and that the simple history of the change is, that God makes his people willing in the day of his power.....The decisive question is, was the power [by which regeneration was produced] applied to the motives to open a passage for themselves—or to the heart to open a passage for them? Let the event declare; the heart was new before the motives entered. As then the change in question is effected neither by mechanical causes, nor by the influence of motives, it is not brought about by any of the laws of nature, and of course is supernatural. An effect may be supernatural which is produced by a second cause, if that cause is above nature, for instance an angel but the one under consideration is not only supernatural, but immediate; or if not altogether immediate because there was such an antecedent as the presentation of motives, yet immediate in the sense in which those effects were which followed the extension of Moses' rod, the blast of trumpets before the walls of Jericho, the voice of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, the application of clay to the eyes of the blind man, &c. In all these cases the antecedent had no such influence as belongs to a second cause in nature,

for instance to fire as the agent in consuming a building; but every body sees that the power was as immediately exerted as though no antecedent had taken place. In the same sense the power which changes the heart is immediate, acting through no second cause; producing its effect by no instrument......Regeneration is the formation of the eye, but light is necessary to actual vision."-Park-Street Lectures, p. 144, 145. 158, 159. 176.

The reader perceives these passages deny that the Spirit of God employs a moral influence, or any means whatever in regenerating the mind, and represent the change as accomplished solely and directly by the divine energy-by an immediate act of Almighty power on the soul; and therefore by an agency in the strictest sense physical.

But is the change produced merely a physical effect? Unquestionably. Why is a physical agency employed, unless the effect to be produced is solely of the same nature? The regenerating influence must be employed either in effecting a change in the physical constitution, or else simply in exciting the soul to an exertion of the attributes with which it was before endowed. If it is only the latter, why is the immediate act of the Divine Spirit, instead of second causes, necessary to accomplish it? Are there no second causes in existence, or can none be created, which can be brought to act on the mind in such a manner, as to lead it to exert all its attributes ?—to exhibit every capacity of its nature?

But to subject the question to a more thorough ordeal. It must be admitted that the agency of the Divine Spirit in regeneration is employed either in effecting a change in the physical constitution, or else in simply producing an act or operation of the constitution which before existed. But the theory under consideration explicitly denies that it is employed in producing the latter. It represents the effect produced as being a "new disposition." which is "the foundation" of the "exercises" of the mind,

and necessarily exists antecedently to the exercise of any holy act. The language of the Park-Street Lectures-and it undoubtedly expresses the views generally held on the subject-is, Though the Word of God in the shape of motives has an important use in occasioning the exercises of the new heart, it is in no sense instrumental in changing the disposition." It must be acknowledged that we can see no instrumentality in truth to create, or increase, or continue the new disposition. In the regulation of that power truth has none of the influence of a second cause......It may then be asked, why should a second cause intervene, which has no influence? If divine power produces the whole effect, why couple itself with a powerless cause? These questions would be unanswerable if there was nothing to be done but to create and continue, and increase the new disposition; but there are views and affections and acts of the will and motions of the body to be produced, or the disposi tion is utterly useless. In the production of all these, both in their beginning and in all the degrees of their increase, truth, when it finds the disposition favourable, has the proper influence of a second cause."...." "At the time of conversion" [which is represented as a consequence of regeneration]" the truths of the word are the instruments of producing all the thoughts which fill the understanding, all the motions of the heart, the will and the body; and are the instruments therefore of producing the whole of that turning which the term imports."-p. 156. 172. 175.

The most specific and palpable distinction is thus made between the new disposition, which is represented as the effect produced by the regenerating influence; and all the holy exercises of the mind of what kind soever they are. The former exists antecedently to the latter, and is the source or "power" from which they spring, and is caused by the immediate act of the Divine Spirit, without the cooperation of any means-whilst "the truths of the word.

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