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denying it, is, that if the testimony of God, so interpreted, be allowed to stand, he is indulging in certain indefinite views which he will be required to reduce to greater precision. I refer to his notions of a sin of omission disconnected from voluntary action; of a sin which consists in possessing a wrong "seat of the affections" in distinction from wrong affections themselves; and of a sin which consists in the substance of a conceived fœtus. These indefinite notions, of his are brought to show that the word of God cannot possibly contain any such meaning; as if the plain letter of the testimony were not to rule us, or as if his notions, from whatever source he pretend to derive them, could be allowed to put a sense upon the letter. But whether he were not obligated in this case to look a little more narrowly into his own views, and reduce them to some greater precision than that in which he has allowed them to lie in his mind, rather than insist that, as they are, they are to give due shape to the divine testimony, is the very question: and so, his notions which he pretends to set up as criteria of the meaning of divine testimony, come fairly within the province of close and critical investigation.

Whether his notion of a sin of omission disconnected from voluntary action, be one which he can allege, with any great confidence, in settling the meaning of divine testimony; I will leave to be gathered, from the remarks which have been already advanced on that particular class of sins. With respect to his notion of sin, which consists in possessing a wrong" seat of the affections" in distinction from wrong affections themselves,-how far the notion shall have weight in settling the meaning of Scripture, may appear, more clearly, when I come to speak of it more distinctly in its relation to the argument which follows. But as to the notion of the sin which consists in the substance of the conceived fœtus; I will allow a little space here, to examine how far such an opinion is entitled to aid us in settling the testimony of God on the nature of sin.

The passages on which this writer has fixed for justifying his opinion respecting the fœtus, are these: "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one." "By nature the children of wrath." "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." He adduces these, as "texts of Scripture which do not admit of this interpretation:" viz., the interpretation given by me, of the law, judgment, and testimony of God, relative to sin. He observes: "unless in the first moment of existence when conceived in the womb, there be an exercise of volition, in which the embryo, as a moral agent, violates a known rule of duty, these words can never be reconciled with Professor F.'s theory." In another place the writer intimates that the only way in which these texts can be reconciled with the proposition for which I have adduced divine testimony in evidence, is," the opinion that man is a moral agent in the womb, and puts forth wrong choices in the first moment of his conception." The opinion of the writer therefore must be, that sin, at first, exists in the substance of the foetus; and that this is clear evidence that all which the Scriptures say concerning the nature of sin, cannot be allowed to have such a meaning as that it consists in actively violating law. Now whether this crude notion of his, shall be permitted to regulate the meaning of the testimony in question, my readers may judge from the following considerations.

1. This notion of sin in the substance of the fœtus distinct from transgression of law, is not asserted in the passages to which he resorts. He cannot pretend that either of the above declarations of Job, or Paul, or David, relate directly to the nature of sin; that they tell, like the passages I was examining, what it is; that they attempt to set forth the thing in which it essentially consists. They do not assert, that sin consists in something beside transgression. It can only be an inference, therefore, which this reviewer attempts to derive from them, that they support the idea of an essentially different species of sin, which is not transgression.

2. This notice of his, is an inference which he makes in contradiction to direct assertions of Scripture. For, laying out of the question, now, the revelation which God has made of his views of sin in his acts of legislation and judgment, there was, in the proof which I alleged, his direct assertion and testimony. "Sin is the transgression of law." "Sin is not imputed when there is no law"—and, a fortiori, when the existing law is not violated by the being. Against these plain and obvious assertions relating to the very thing in question, the reviewer alleges a notion of his, supported by bare inference and which is most liable to err; God in giving testimony? or this writer in deducing inferences?

3. This notion, is an inference of his, altogether unsupported by the scope of the passages themselves. For, any one, on narrowly inspecting them, will perceive, that they relate to the bare fact of the reign of sin over the descendants of Adam; leaving all those passages of the word of God which declare what sin is,--unqualified in their meaning, unrestricted in their application to all existing cases of sin; to form the correct and sole criterion of the sin which does in fact so prevail over his descendants. The most which can possibly be said of them, is that they define, either the time or the manner, in which sin prevails over the descendants of Adam: and on either supposition, the inference is unsupported, which the reviewer opposes to the argument. For,

First on the supposition that these passages fix on the time when sin begins to exist, how can the circumstance of time affect the nature of the thing which begins to exist? Does this reviewer intend to show that they fix the beginning of sin at the time of conception; and that at such a time, sin cannot possibly exist according to the definition of God? But that is to argue against the veracity of God! It is not altering the meaning of God's declarations. I ask him, how he can refuse God's declaration of what sin is? How he can change its plain and obvious meaning? Is it

reverent now, to turn to another part of the word of God, and say, that God declares sin to begin at so early a period as to disprove and overthrow his own declarations concerning it! The word surely is to go for what it declares: and if God plainly declares that sin is the transgression of law; that the thing for which he blames and punishes any of his subjects is their violation of law; then is the reviewer bound, by this declaration, to believe that every being whom God pronounces to be a sinner and under condemnation, is a transgressor and a violater of law, or else impeach the veracity of God. What God asserts of the nature of sin, he is bound to carry with him to all the instances in which God testifies any creature of his to be a sinner. Let him ridicule, if he please, the idea that the embryo at conception violates law yet if he believes that God declares in these passages that sin literally begins at that period, he is bound to believe that law is violated at that period; if that man is then personally a sinner, that he then personally violates law: for God has made this his definition of sin. What if he cannot think such a thing possible of "the embryo?" Neither can the Unitarian think it possible that Christ should be God. But shall God's declarations, therefore, go for nothing? Or, shall he, therefore, conjure up a new species of sin, of which God's definition knows nothing, and think thereby to save God's veracity?

But the very difficulty which he feels concerning these passages is one of his own making: and why should he throw it upon me, or on the Scriptural definition? For,

Secondly: The other supposition, that these passages fix on the manner in which sin begins to exist, is obviously the only true one. Job, if the passage refer to parentage at all, speaks of derivation from iniquitous parents affecting the offspring. David speaks merely of being conceived and formed by his parents unto iniquity. The plain sense of the original is, not that he was conceived a sin, or a sinful thing,

but in sin, or unto sin;* referring to that law of derivation by which parents affect the moral state of their offspring. Indeed, if we suppose passages like these, were intended to assign the precise time of the commencement of moral, accountable character; we set them at irreconcileable variance with each other: for, in that case, we make them assign to the beginning of one and the same thing in an individual, i. e. sin, at least three distinct periods of time: viz., the time of Adam; the time of conception; the time of birth; and it is self-evident that a thing cannot really commence its existence at three distinct periods of time. But when applied, according to their only obvious meaning, to a train of originating causes, they speak a very intelligible and consistent meaning, as well as a very weighty truth; that the sin of Adam, conception from his descendants, birth from his descendants, lay the certain foundation of sin in the being descended of Adam, conceived, and born: and the only intimation which they give as to the time of the real commencement of sin, is the plain inference which arises from such a train of causes; viz., that men begin to sin as soon as they are capable of sinning. In other words they are, by birth and descent, sinners and not holy beings.

I assert then, that the reviewer has not, in these passages, even the insufficient ground which he claims to have for making them qualify God's definition of sin: viz., that they fix on a time too early in his view for the possibili

Origen: "gos ro àμagravei Te-
Interogatively: as the language

* Hilarius: “Sub peccati lege." puxaev." Dæderlein: "For sin?" of self-reproach in penitent David, for perverting the proper end of his creation and birth, by sin: thus; was I [born] for sin? was I [nourished] of my mother for the purpose of iniquity? But Iunge, his editor, rejects it, as "durior interpretatio;" and reduces the phrase to an idiom; expressive barely of a sense of his having sinned, "a prima ætate." "Quod memini, culpâ, me immunem non sentio:" the declaration of a feeling, rather than the inculcation of a doctrine concerning conception and birth. With the latter, agrees Morus. Epit. Theo. Christ. For such an idiom, vid. Job. 31, 18.

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