No. VII.

DEPRAVITY Consists in the want of holiness, or, if you please, Jove of sin; and has no connexion, strictly speaking, with a man's ability to do right or to do wrong. In this sense I consider mankind by nature as totally depraved, for they have no love to God, to his law, or government, or gospel. They have no incapacity to do right but what arises from their love to do wrong; there is no bar in the way of their doing their whole duty, but their disinclination to do it. Their love of sin, though voluntary, is so decided and uniform, their disinclination to obey God, though free, is so determined and strong, that some have been pleased, for the sake of distinction, to term it a moral inability.

If it must be admitted as a perfection and felicity, in any language when it is stored with words and phrases fully adapted to express, without tedious circumlocution, the various ideas we may wish to convey, it surely cannot be denied that the phrase, moral inability, is both useful and necessary. If it be convenient to have a phrase which shall express, in a clear and simple manner, the impediment which arises from a strong disinclination to do a thing, or a voluntary determination not to do it, the phrase before us is convenient. I am unable to pluck the sun from his station in the heavens; this is called a natural inability. I am unable to ascend a tower and throw myself down; this is a moral inability. And, using words according to their common and popular import, in the former of these cases there is a want of ability; in the latter a want of will.

However the sinner's inability may be considered, whether natural or moral; whether in want of ability, or in want of will, one thing is certain, the above distinction exists, and has been recognised by the ablest, most perspicuous, and most classical writers in our language, and probably in all languages. Indeed, there is not a day passes, there is scarcely an occurrence in which this phraseology is not adopted; and I am bold to say none use it oftener than those very persons who inveigh so bitterly against moral inability as an idle and useless distinction. Every body, learned and unlearned, old and young, uses the phrase, and under

stands it.

Every one is in the habit of saying, when he feels an utter disinclination to do a thing, "I cannot do it :" When he is determined not to do a certain act, "I cannot do it: I am unable to do it." This phrase prevails in all sorts of business, on all occasions, in all books, and in all languages, and the man who condemns the distinction has nothing to shield him from the charge of dishonesty but incorrigible ignorance.

Now, no great stretch of metaphysics is necessary to perceive, that if it be proper for me to say I cannot do an act, merely because I am determined not to do it, it is proper also to call that a moral inability, to distinguish it from that inability which arises. from want of power.

Having shown what I mean by a moral inability; having said, as I think, enough to put the adversaries of this distinction both to silence and to shame, I now proceed to observe, in brief, that mankind labour under no other kind of inability to perform the whole duty which God requires of them. In proof of this, had I time, I might quote almost the entire volume of Scripture. Were a hundred prisoners chained, like Baron Trenck, by massy Jinks and staples to the floor and walls of their prison, should a man go into the prison and begin to exhort them to hasten out without delay; what would they think of him? they would take him either for a ty rant come to insult their helplessness, or for a madman or an ideot; and they would reply to his exhortation, do you not see these chains? why do you insult us?

An exhortation or command to do a duty, always implies a belief in the one who exhorts, that he, to whom the exhortation is given, is capable of doing the duty enjoined upon him. If this great principle be denied, the plainest dictates of common sense and justice are abolished and done away, and the Bible becomes a book of riddles and contradictions. It is, indeed, such gross perversion of the plainest dictates of reason, justice, and common sense, that has filled all christendom with infidels, atheists, and apostates that has shrouded the Christian church with darkness-filled her with impurity and rottenness, and smitten her with decline and consumption.

A great part of the Bible is made up of exhortations, persuasions, and commands to mankind, to forsake their sins, and to

love and obey God. But a set of preachers come forward and employ a large portion of all their sermons in persuading people that they cannot do any of these things, which God, and his prophets and apostles have exhorted and commanded them to do, any more than they can pluck the sun from the heavens. And when one endeavours to relieve the difficulty, by showing that their inability is only of the moral kind, consisting in want of will, and not of power, an outcry is raised, he is hooted and scouted as an Arminian, and the people assured, over and over again, that their inability is a true and natural incapacity, or want of power.

Every one knows that universal assent, (" quod est norma loquendi,") has rendered it as proper for me to say, I cannot throw myself into a furnace, or from a precipice, as it is to say, I cannot overturn a mountain. But these "cannots" are of a very different character-one is a mere want of will, the other is a total want of power. What rational ground of objection is there to calling one a natural, the other a moral inability? The distinction is clear-it is easily perceived-it is useful; for, in fact, none is more used; it is necessary, because no other simple phrase can express it. Who does not perceive how it alters the case, whether a man is prevented from doing his duty by want of will, or by want of power? And, I add, this distinction applies to one of the most important doctrines of religion. Yet these triangular divines cannot perceive it: but their cannot is a will not. And how difficult it is to make a man see what he will not; for none are so blind as those who will not see. If y f you even seize them by the shoulders, and turn them by main strength round towards the object, they will then turn away their face. But if you force their heads round in the direction, they will then shut their eyes; force open their eyelids, and they will roll away their eyeballs.

The violent opposition to this grand and obvious distinction arises from this, that, if once admitted, their scheme of depravity is overthrown. Their successful opposition is, to them, worth as much as victory.

The scripture writers wrote long before modern controversies had given a technical meaning to half the terms in theology; long

before the church had been dressed up in the stays of Aristotle, or tricked out in rags, ribands, and fringes of oriental philosophy. They stood in no fear of the pedantic square and compasses of the learned Dr. Buckram. Their style, though bold and figurative, was free and popular, and easy to be understood. Indeed, as to the great doctrines of religion, it is easy to be understood by us, at this distant day, except where covered by the cobwebs of biblical critics, and entangled by the bewildered and bewildering brains of learned theorists, who sit plodding in their studies, till they become enveloped in clouds and vapours, and are fairly led into the great, great dismal, by an ignis fatuus; or, like one of the most learned and best of men, imagine themselves a teapot.

It is impossible to follow the strain of exhortation which flows unceasingly through the Old and New Testament, and not perceive that it was given on the full persuasion and assurance that men are fully able to do what they are exhorted to do; that their only impediment lies in the will, and is, of course, their crime; whereas, if it lay in want of power, it would be their excuse. But I am mortified, I blush for human nature, that it is necessary to insist on this point. That it should ever have been doubted is full proof of moral depravity--of wilful blindness.

Those who insist on a true and natural inability in the sinner to obey God, furnish him with the best excuse imaginable; for he will say, I cannot do right, and, therefore, I am not to blame. Whereas, those who lay all the blame on the will, devest him of all excuse, and effectually convince him of criminality. And this is probably the clue to that flaming zeal to abolish the distinction of moral inability evinced by many, and the readiness to embrace the doctrine of these teachers, by a still greater number. While paying, as they imagine, a profound compliment to the shrine of humility, they find their pride and sloth sufficiently gratified.

But the advocates and disseminators of error have generally sterner and more cogent motives, than are intrinsical to their system, otherwise their mighty structures would soon crumble to their foundation, and vanish "into air-thin air." These motives grow out of their particular circumstances: in short, they

are selfish motives, arising from interest and ambition. And, surely, the professed champions of selfishness cannot be disgusted with the charge of a little selfishness, since they assume the thing charged by avowing the principle. Their selfish mo tives I shall hereafter notice.

If the term inability be at all applicable to a man when nothing impedes him but disinclination, the sinner's inability must be pronounced wholly of the moral kind. This can be shown, to a degree of certainty approaching as near to mathematical demonstration as any proposition of an abstract and moral nature. It was far from the design of these numbers to enter into the details of argument; and it shall suffice to say, that the sinner can do his whole duty, because that duty is easy, and adapted to the powers and faculties of all rational minds. If it be easy to believe what is made clearly evident, and to love that which is infinitely beautiful, the sinner's duty is easy. The sinner can do his duty because that duty is prescribed by an infinitely wise and good being, who knows how to adapt his requirements to the capacities of his creatures, and whose wisdom and goodness are manifested by that adaptation. That nothing prevents him from conforming to all divine requirements but want of will to do it, is evident from the whole word of God, in which his nonconformity is invariably placed on that footing alone, and is in no place ascribed to any other cause. The continual exhortations and commands of God show us how God himself estimates the sinner's ability; and the duty to perform, and the ability to perform it, are the exact measures of each other; in short, obligation and ability correspond, and run parallel with each other, and cease together. All just notions of the nature and powers of a moral. agent, set this point in the clearest light; and when I hear a man begin to talk about a moral agency to do wrong, but not to do right, I feel myself much in the predicament of St. Anthony when lecturing the fishes: and did I not know that a moral agent might be very ignorant, I should almost be tempted to deny that exalted rank to such superlative ignorance.

To believe in absurdities, and things evidently false, and to practise supposed impossibilities, requires, indeed, a monstrous stretch of faith, and an incredible degree of power; perhaps these