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The review furnishes a proper occasion for prosecuting the inquiry. Whether it possesses intrinsic merit to challenge a reply other than the Discourses themselves, is not for me to decide: but appearing before the public in a periodical which is clothed with the ecclesiastical authority of the ex-president of Princeton, it convinces me that there is need of plain and thorough discussion on the question in controversy. And as the review touches on all the points. which seem at all relevant to the question, and contains all the objections which I can well conceive of being started against the definition of sin maintained in the Discourses, I know not that a fairer opportunity than is now presented me, could arise, of entering more fully into the discussion of the subject than I did formerly.

The subject merits strict attention. Although it be more grateful, to the ministers of Christ and to his people, to carry the vigor of their hearts and hands into the benevolent enterprizes of the age, and thus leave, at their deaths, the fragrant memorial of their acts and doings with another generation, than to turn aside one moment to settle their views on any point of doctrine; yet justice to the cause of their Divine Master, and an enlightened benevolence in regard to the interests of his kingdom on the earth, must dispose them to seek carefully the truths of Scripture. In respect to the truth concerning the nature of sin, particularly; much is involved in it—much, with regard to a suitable vindication of the justice and glory of God; a becoming humiliation of sinners; a correct delineation of the Gospel duties of submission, repentance, and faith; a forcible inculcation of the obligations which bind to the performance of these duties and I feel, therefore, confident, while entering upon these remarks, that I am warranted to proceed in them by the intrinsic importance of the subject to myself and my fellow-men. For, need I state, how deeply ministers of the Gospel are affected, by the views which they take of sin, in the manner of discharging their office of

preaching to sinners? or private Christians, in their humiliation before God and their strivings after conformity to his will? or all men, believers or unbelievers, in their convictions of the truth and rectitude of the Gospel?

The prosecution of this inquiry will lead me to assume the form of controversy: I hope to avoid its asperity. The heat does not enable us to see: it is the light only. I would remember, through the following pages, my opening remark, and the excellent rules of Stapfer. Yet, to err is human and if, in the plainness with which I may occasionally speak towards one who has made the attack and who is anonymous, there should appear, in the view of any, a defect of the charity that respecteth, I crave of such an one that he fail not himself in the charity that forgiveth.

My controversy is not with that abstract being, the Christian Advocate; it is with the individual writer of the review. Nor shall I deem it friendly or just in that writer, if he shall have any strictures to make upon the following pages, that he take any method of expressing them in which he shall still be anonymous. Decorum and charity should be guarded by the bonds of a known name.

The reader who is desirous of prosecuting the inquiry with me, may learn, in the following chapter, the state of the controversy. All I ask of him in entering upon the following pages, is the patience of clear and candid thinking; without which, he may well dismiss reading, content with his knowledge.

THE POINTS IN CONTROVERSY.

In order to ascertain on which side the truth lies in the present controversy, it will assist us to propound distinctly, at the threshold of our inquiries, the main points which are at issue. In every case of variance, it is necessary. We are relieved of the perplexity of irrelevant matters. We survey more lucidly the bearing of evidence. But in the present case, there are peculiar reasons, which demand a distinct statement at the outset. The reviewer has intropoints at issue. He has

duced things irrelevant to the real not distinctly stated what they are. He has advanced, with random and scattering remarks; and aided himself, by misconceptions of my meaning and arguments involving a petitionem principii.

Perhaps it will not be too great a digression in this place, to give those of my readers who have not seen the review, the brief outline of it which follows. The writer begins with deploring that Yale College should not have better religious instruction than the specimen afforded in the Discourses. He proceeds, with finding fault with my preaching at all on such a subject; my taking for it the text I did; my expressing the meaning of the text in words differing from those of the apostle; my explanations of the proposition; my arguments in proof of it; my inferences from it: and then appends, to this universal fault-finding, some ten or a dozen as he thought, no doubt, very horrid consequences of there being any truth in the whole matter. The whole is wound off with a peculiar flourish of grief over me, that I, while yet a young man and without the delay of long talks, should have ventured to express my opinion on the subject before him and the public; have rendered it so difficult for me to confess and retract; and have engaged,

with my colleagues in office, to subvert the principles of the great and good Edwards! A faithful outline of the spirit of the review; almost of the letter! A skeleton, of it, in which the specific organs stand out prominent, as the phrenologist might say! I have not indeed taken the language of the reviewer scattered over several pages of the Advocate, but I have done it into plain English; calling a spade, a spade; as Baxter says of himself in his auto-biography. Truly this course of the reviewer, which commenced with brow-beating me for discussing such subjects in the pulpit, and ended with closing my mouth from ever addressing the public again till I reach some higher eminence in age, savours more of an attempt to put down all discussion, by the exercise of anile authority, than of a fair intention to meet a subject on its own merits and give its advocate a candid hearing. May I be pardoned, if I indulge the strong temptation here to inquire: what is the age of this reviewer? how long has he talked over his views? what is the age on which he fixes as proper for expressing opinions to the public? how long must one talk before he prints? Did Calvin transgress these ecclesiastical canons of age and talking, by publishing his Institutes while yet a young man? Who among authors, ancient or modern, have insulted the aged by such transgression? But I forbear: remembering that I am upon a digression; which, though it may illustrate, to such as have not read the review, the propriety of several remarks which follow, it were tedious to prolong.

To return. The present case peculiarly demands, that every extrinsic thing be separated from the real points in question, and that these be allowed to stand or fall with the preponderating weight of evidence-a procedure, the fairness of which will be disputed by none whose honest intention it is to hold the truth.

Now the case is not one which justly brings into controversy facts as to the existing character of mankind. In the essential facts, I agree with the reviewer. But more of this

afterwards. Neither does it relate to the degree of guilt which attaches to man for his sin: which demands humility as deep, as God is great and good. But, it is simply an inquiry into the nature of that in man which constitutes the foundation of guilt: and all the questions which are fairly at issue in such a case, are simply three:

Is moral disposition in man, resolvable into immanent preference?

Is it preference which involves the knowledge of obligation between moral opposites?

Is there morality in any cause which lies back of moral preference, occasioning the certainty why the being prefers as he does?

These questions comprise the substance of all contained in the Discourses and appended Notes. If these be shown true, the amount of what I have advanced, in them, stands : if these are false, it falls. For,

If moral disposition be the preference of a being in regard to ultimate ends, then it is reducible to the action of the being. We really describe it, by saying, he prefers that end. We describe it at its origin, by saying that, when it began to be, he then first preferred that end; and we describe its continuance, by saying that he continues to prefer that end. We all the while carry with us the idea of an active being who prefers: and we all the while suppose that, when he carries out his immanent preferences into emanent volitions controlling acts of the intellect or body, he is still an active being who prefers and chooses. And if moral disposition lie here, the original proposition is true, so far as it reduces all sin to acts of will in the moral agent.*

* A late author, defines moral disposition to be 'the bent of the heart to the chief good; and, its bent to subordinate good and that which is interdicted by law.' These are what I have termed ultimate acts of will; for what will is that which cleaves to no ultimate good? Subordinate acts of will are, in my definition, the volitions immediately concerned in overt actions in which the being prosecutes the preferred

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