not imparting spiritual influences sufficient to counteract such excited propensities. But here, the disposing cause, comprises not only what pertains to man in innocence, but to the measures of Divine Providence and on this theory, were it not absurd to call the disposing cause, sin?

Another theory* attaches the disposing cause to the body or animal nature of man, in the influence which it has to increase the susceptibilities to self-love above the love of others. But this theory considers those measures of Providence which permitted the strong appeals of temptation in Eden, and established the laws of generation from Adam, as making up that disposing cause and on this theory too, were it not absurd to call that cause which originates in the body and not the soul, and connects, with it, the providence of God, the sin of the being?

Another theory considers the disposing cause as the occasion on which the divine energy gives being to sinful action in the agent combined with the divine energy itself; and so, the sin of Adam and the divine energy both, precede our first sin the temptation of Adam and the divine energy both,

"Per corpus solum, quatenus mores animi sequantur temperamentum corporis." "Augustinus olim, complures e patribus, Lutherani item plerique, atque insuper nonnulli e Reformatis." Van Mast. This theory, that the animal nature of man, as descending from sinning Adam, is the immediate occasion of the sin of his descendants, is traced, by Keil, from the fathers of the Church, by whom he shows it to have been very generally entertained, to the theology of the Jews and the writings of Paul, as its source, in contradistinction to the Platonic Philosophy. The modern writers to whom he attributes this opinion, are Vitringa, Koppe, Less, Michalis, Doderlein, Storr, Berger, Bauer, Mayer, Reinhard, Schleusner. vid. Keilii Opuscula. vid. etiam J. A. Lotze Monogramm. Dæderlein Inst. Theo. Christ., Doddridge's Lect., &c.

+"Cartesiani Theologi." "Animam rationalem non esse nisi actualem cogitationem, quæ, vel conveniat, vel repugnat legi divinæ." Van Mast.

preceded his first sin; as the disposing cause: and on this theory it is surely absurd to consider it, the sin of the being? But, once more,

3. The very principle on which the supposition proceeds, is absurd. It is this: that the cause must necessarily have the quality which exists in the effect: for, it is supposed that nothing can pertain to a being which can, in any way, become a cause or occasion of sin, without its being, on the very ground of sustaining such a relation, sin in itself; and we are at once, on this principle, thrown into the broad circle of causes which have influence or control over human volitions. Into this absurdity, this writer has fallen; and in it I shall leave him, in closing this survey of the arguments.

"To maintain, that there is a cause existing in the soul from which all sinful volitions proceed, and yet, that this principle has no moral evil in it, bears very much the appearance of a palpable absurdity. It seems to us like saying, that there is something, or rather every thing, in an effect, which was not in its cause: which is the same as to say, that there is an effect without a cause."

Admirable reasoning indeed; and the world must confess itself much indebted for the discovery of the wonderful axiom on which it proceeds! A cause, forsooth, must contain in it the quality of the effect, otherwise there is an effect without a cause! My volition is the cause of bodily motion : is motion therefore contained in the volition? or is the motion without cause? God has created matter: is therefore matter contained in God, or is it without a cause? Bodily appetite may lead one to a given purpose of evil: because the purpose is sinful, is bodily appetite itself so? Satan seduced Eve to prefer a forbidden good, and thus depart from God: because the preference itself was her sin, were the appetites of her nature to which the tempter addressed his appeals, also chargeable upon her as her sin? if so, she was always a sinner. Satan and all rebellious angels began to sin was it without occasion or cause that sin commenced, or if sin

:

began to be from some cause, could there be sin in the cause itself, before sin began to be? sin before there was sin? How is this? Sin cannot come into being from any cause, according to this writer, unless it exist previously in the cause. But as sin is in being, then, according to this writer, sin must have existed in its cause, and the sin pertaining to that cause must itself have had a sinful cause, and the sin of that cause a sinful cause preceding it, and so on, forever. According to this writer, therefore, sin has either existed from all eternity, or it has come into being without cause. He is shut up to this dilemma. Upon him the absurdity rests. "If he can please himself with such philosophy and theology as this, he is welcome to all the honor and gratification which the notion may obtain for him." But we are now come to the very hinge of the whole subject, and here the question must turn in his favor or in mine; and I feel disposed, therefore, to press the point. Sin has either existed from all eternity, or else it comes into being without cause. This is his dilemma. Sin has either existed from all eternity, or else it may come into being from some means, occasion, or cause, whether ab intra or ab extra, which is not itself sinful. This is mine. the whole subject; and how shall it turn? For him? or for me? I say this is the turning point: for; if he pretend to start away from this point, by saying that he applied his axiom only to the connection of the heart with the external conduct, I meet him with the impassible barrier, that I was not speaking of the established connection between the heart and the life, but of the heart with the causes which turn it; or the immanent preferences of the mind with those means or causes which direct or lead them to forbidden good; and therefore, I do, and will, hold him to this one point-that no means can turn the will of a moral being to prohibited good, or excite him to the immanent preference of such good, except it be a sinful means, cause, or occasion. I do, and will, throw him upon the sharp horns of his

Here is the very hinge of

own dilemma: that either sin has existed from all eternity, or else it has come into being without cause. And now, if any man knows what an absurdity is, whither shall I better direct him to see one than here? My readers need not think it cruelty, in me, to bid them look at the example; for it is the truth that pierces, not I. But as the reviewer has been so very sage as publicly to lament, before the whole Presbyterian Church, that I should have been so hasty as to publish, while yet a young man, a different view from his ; and exceedingly regrets that I had not talked over my views with my friends, for a half score years to come, before I gave them to the world; it is well, perhaps, to call upon every spectator to decide, whether any age to which this reviewer has attained, is to help him out of this absurdity; or whether his having talked over his views among his friends for scores of years is to alter the nature of unalterable truth? I care not for any of these circumstances of age or of talking, whether they be in my favor or his, they have not prevented him from falling into the absurdity. And if he is an old man, peradventure old age will afford me no security against absurdity. I see no reason from such an example to defer publications to future years. He may talk of men "involv ing themselves in a mist of metaphysics," but this is sure— no science of any species or name, can have the honor of involving him in this haze. Here the WHOLE QUESTION

TURNS.

The Reply of the reviewer to the arguments, has now been examined in detail; and the question is submitted to the judgment of my readers, whether the examination has not brought them, fairly, to that result which was anticipated, by me, at the opening of the chapter.

CHAP. III. THE REVIEWER SUBSTITUTES NO CONSISTENT VIEW OF THE NATURE OF SIN, FOR THE ONE CONTAINED IN THE DISCOURSES WHICH HE REJECTS.

THE writer, who would justify himself and his readers for rejecting any definite statement on a subject of importance, cannot consistently rest his cause, on a bare denial and his objections. Even if his objections in the case were valid and weighty, he and his readers are not to rest in a bare denial of positive statement. Something is to be affirmed in the case, and the affirmation to be proved true. At least, if an affirmation cannot reasonably be demanded in all cases, it is reasonably demanded in one like the present, in which a thing of such importance is concerned as the nature of sin. For he will hardly venture to say, that if he and his readers are justified in dissenting from my views on the subject, they can be justified in holding no definite views whatever. For, he must either pretend that sin is altogether an unknown and undefinable mystery; or else, acknowledge himself obliged to give some definite explanation of its nature. he pretend the former: then he has no grounds, by his own confession, for denying my definition: because his mouth is closed from affirming or denying any thing concerning its nature, by the acknowledgement that it is beyond his explanation any way. He can barely say that my explanation may or may not be true: but it was presumptuous in me to attempt any. Yet I have reason to presume, from the many very confident affirmations and denials, which he makes concerning its nature, throughout his whole performance, that he would not be considered as taking the ground of its utter undefinableness, if he could; and I know that he could not justly, if he would.

If

Upon this ground, then, I meet him, as having talked about a thing which can be defined, and which the word of