REMARKS.

1. It is consistent with the doctrine of this discourse, that infants should be saved through the redemption of Christ. They belong to a race who by nature and in all the appropriate circumstances of their being, will sin. The very birth of a human being is an event which involves the certainty of entire moral depravity, without the supernatural interposition of God to prevent it.-Do you ask, when he will begin to sin? I answer, I do not know, the precise instant. The Scriptures do not tell us,

and I can see no possible use, in saying that we do know, what it is most palpably evident we do not know.* Is it then said, that we sin before we are born? But there is no such thing as sinning without acting; and an Apostle has told us of two infants, who, while "not yet

*The ignorance of the writer on this point is not absolutely peculiar to himself. Says Dr. Emmons in a volume of his Sermons published in 1825, “It is certainly supposable, that children may exist in this world, some space of time, before they become moral agents; but how long that space may be, whether an hour, a day, or a month or a year, or several years, as many suppose, we do not presume to determine. But during that space, whether longer or shorter, they are not moral agents, nor consequently acountable creatures in the sight of God or man."—p. 257.

President Edwards, speaking of the commencement of actual sin in men, expresses himself thus, they "commit sin immediately without any time intervening after they are capable of understanding their obligation to God and reflecting on themselves;”—“no considerable time passes after men are capable of acting for themselves as the subjects of God's law, before they are guilty of sin; because if the time were considerable, it would be great enough to deserve to be taken notice of."-Works, Vol. VI, p. 161.

The reader will perceive that the views of the writer, respecting the point of time when men first commit sin, are to say the least not more indefinite than those of Dr. Emmons and President Edwards.

born" had done "neither good nor evil." Do you say they begin to sin at their birth? But some knowledge of duty is requisite to sin, and we know, for the inspired historian has told us, of some children who had "no knowledge between good and evil." Do you say it must be so, for they die and death among human beings proves sin. But children die before they are born, and perhaps also some children die who have no knowledge between good and evil. Do you say they are proper subjects of baptism, and this proves sin. How do you know, that baptism is not administered to infants simply as a seal of the covenant, exhibiting and ratifying its promises of good respecting them? Do you say, the language of the Scriptures, is universal, that all have sinned. The language too is universal, that we are to "preach the Gospel to every creature." Of course, if your mode of interpretation is right, we are to preach the Gospel to infants,—and to animals also!—to every creature.

Instead then of attempting to assign the precise instant in which men begin to sin, we choose to say they sin as soon as they become moral agents they sin as soon as they can; and who will affirm that this is not soon enough? If it be asked how soon, can they sin? I answer very early; even so early, that they are justly represented as sinning from their youth-and in the figurative language of the scriptures, from their birth, and even before birth; so early that the literal interval, if there be such an interval, between birth and the commencement of sin is either so short or unimportant, that the Spirit of inspiration has not thought it worthy of particular notice.

If then you ask, what becomes of an infant if he dies, while yet an infant?-I answer, he may be saved; in my belief he is saved, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. If you ask, how can this he? I reply, he belongs to a race who by nature, in all the circumstances

of their immortal being without the grace of this redemption, will sin. Place an infant then from his birth under the influence of the most perfect example and instructions,-yea place him amid heaven's purity and heaven's songs, and who shall say that he will not, without the supernatural grace of God's Spirit, be a depraved sinner and fall under condemnation ?When made meet therefore for the celestial paradise and admitted there, his song may tell of the grace that brought him to its glories.

2. That sin or guilt pertains exclusively to voluntary action, is the true principle of orthodoxy. We have seen that the older orthodox divines assert this principle, and that they abundantly deny that God is the creator or author of sin. By some strange fatality however these writers, are not believed by many, on these points; and we are told, as the ground for discrediting these unequivocal declarations, that they also constantly affirm that men are born with a corrupt and sinful nature, and with guilt upon them. True, very true. But now to the real questionhow in the view of these writers, does this nature with which they are born become corrupt and sinful?-By being so created? No such thing: for this they constantly and vehemently deny; and give as we have seen this reason for denying it,-that it would make God the author of sin. How then is it, that in their view each has a corrupt and sinful nature when born, and yet that God does not create it? Why, by the real act of each-by each one's corrupting his nature, just as Adam did his. But how can this be? They tell us how; viz. that Adam and his posterity were in God's estimation and were thus truly constituted, ONE BEING, One MORAL WHOLE-So that in Adam's act of sin, all his posterity being ONE with him, also acted as truly as Adam himself; and so, each and all corrupted their nature as freely and voluntarily

as Adam corrupted his nature. The question is, not whether this is not very absurd, but what did these men believe and teach? And I say they did believe and did teach that all Adam's posterity acted in his act, sinned in him and fell with him, and are considered truly and properly as sinning in manner and form, just as Adam sinned; and every one who has read his catechism or his primer must know it. This class of divines then never thought of predicating sin or guilt, except in cases of free voluntary action. So far as they are concerned therefore the doctrine of physical depravity is a theological novelty.

The history of this peculiarity, shows the same thing. The process has been this. The doctrine of imputation being rejected, as it has been in New England for many years, and with it our personal identity with Adam, there was no way left in which we could be viewed as the older divines viewed us; the criminal authors when born, of our own corrupt and sinful nature. Still the doctrine of a corrupt and sinful nature as such has been retained by some, and thus what the older divines made every man as one in Adam the author of, God must now answer for as its author by a creative act. Hence some have so professed and so preached, and have talked much of their own orthodoxy and of the heresy of others, and yet after all the outery, not a theological writer of eminence has ventured to this hour to publish to the world such a doctrine. The entire annals of orthodoxy do not contain the doctrine that God creates a sinful nature in man. Those men who have fought the battles of orthodoxy from the reformation to the present day, and who have been esteemed its successful defenders, have held most firmly and asserted abundantly, that all sin or fault must belong to the acts of the mind-to the evil will, or belong to nothing at all. Brethren, were these men heretics for this? Is

the man who believes and teaches the same thing, a heretic ?*

3. The view of sin or moral depravity maintained in this discourse, cannot be justly ascribed to mental perversion, or to any sinister or selfish design. For, what possible motive or object, can be assigned as the cause of perverting truth and evidence in such a case?-If popularity were the object, the charges of having departed from the true faith by renouncing former opinions, repeated from one end of the land to the other, show at least in respect to some of us, how ill-judged has been this expedient to gain popularity. Nor is this view of sin adopted for the sake of rejecting any one doctrine of orthodoxy, or of setting up any anti-orthodox peculiarity. For, they who adopt this view, as fully believe in the certainty of the universal and entire sinfulness of mankind-they as fully believe this sinfulness or depravity to be by naturethey as fully believe in the inefficacy of moral suasion and in the necessity of the Holy Spirit's agency in regeneration, as any other men. They no more deny that infants are sinners from their birth, that infants are saved

* So far as the views of the Orthodox are understood, it would seem that we are reduced to the alternative of renouncing orthodoxy on this subject, in every supposable form of it,-or of adopting some one of the following forms; either that Adam's posterity are ONE AND THE SAME BEING With Adam, and so guilty of his first sin by sinning in him,—or that God creates in us a sinful nature or something else, which deserves his wrath,—or that at the very moment of birth we sin with the knowledge of duty and as voluntary transgressors of known law,-or that we sin without the knowledge of right and wrong even in the lowest degree--or that as free moral agents, we sin knowingly and voluntarily when we become capable of thus sinning. Those who reject all these specific forms of the doctrine of depravity, must relinquish even the pretence to orthodoxy on this topic, and those who reject the last form of it, and adopt either of the preceeding forms, will it is hoped favor the world with some better arguments on the subject than have hitherto been furnished.