century; nor are we aware that any other doctrine on this subject was taught in our Church by a man of true learning, till it became the fashion to neglect the writings of the primitive fathers, and to adopt, in their stead, either the criticisms and speculations of a futile philosophy on the one hand, or the gloomy doctrines of Calvin on the other. That our reformers paid a due regard to the authority of the fathers of the primitive church, is apparent from their preface to the Book of Common Prayer; and that they were not misled, when drawing up the Articles of Religion, by a vain philosophy, or an undue deference to the Apostle of Geneva, is equally apparent from the following account of the conduct of their Lutheran guides.

"Avoiding all intricate questions upon the subject, they taught, that original sin is a corruption of our nature in a general sense, a depravation of the mental faculties and the corporeal appetites; that the resplendent image of the Deity, which man received at the creation of the world, although not annihilated, is nevertheless greatly impaired; and that in consequence the bright characters of unspotted sanctity, once deeply engraven on his mind by the hand of the living God, are become oblite rated, the injury extending to his intellect, and affecting as well his rea. son and his will, as his affections and passions. When therefore they contended, as frequently they did, that our nature is corrupted, they contrasted the position with the scholastical doctrine of its integrity: and when they urged its total corruption, they opposed the idea of a deterioration in one part only, and even that consisting of a propensity void of sin. To conceive that inclination to evil incurs not in itself the disapprobation of Heaven, appeared to them little better than an apology for crime; or at least a dangerous palliation of that, which the Chris tian's duty compels him not only to represss, but to abhor.

"Yet while they argued, that in consequence of this depravity we are to be considered by our natural birth as the children of wrath, they ad mitted, that by our new birth in baptism we all are made the children of grace. When however, on this occasion, they pressed the necessity of complying with a gospel institution, we must not suppose them to have understood that expression in its strongest sense, as excluding from every hope of mercy, those whom involuntary accident or incapacity has pre vented from participating in the Christian covenant." (Pp. 60-62.)

This extract is taken by our author from the writings of Melancthon and Luther; and on that account, as well as on some others, we doubt if it be altogether just to the Schoolmen. To`conceive that inclination to evil, as evil, incurs not in itself the disapprobation of Heaven, is such a gross absurdity, that nothing but the most direct evidence could convince us that it had ever entered into the discriminating head of Scotus. That evidence, however, is not furnished by the note to which our author refers. There, indeed, we find Melanethon saying," Adversarii docent, naturalem illam impotentiam, et inclinationes legi Dei contrarias, peccata non esse;" but betore we infer from this that the adversaries conceived inclination to evil not to incur the disapprobation of Heaven, we must know first what natural

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inclinations we have that are contrary to the laws of God; and secondly, what laws of God are here meant. Luther, in the same note, expressly excepts from these sinful inclinations, " appetitus cibi et potus, amor conjugis, liberorum, et parentum, et similes affectus; and admits that these "etiam in integra naturâ extitissent;" but we think it may be doubted whether we derive immediately from Nature any other appetites than these, and such as these. Envy is a passion, indeed, radically evil; but it certainly is not derived by generation from Adam; for there have been many individuals, in whose hearts it had no place; and the process of its formation has been frequently and clearly traced. It may be doubted, we think, whether ambition be connate with the mind of man, for it seems to depend upon the state! of society; but whether it be or not, surely it cannot be said that every kind and every degree of ambition is sinful. Every appetite, when excessive, leads to sin; and so it would have done in the paradisaical state, had it not been checked by the spirit of God: but a man is not surely a sinner merely because his appetites are strong, if he have been enabled so to curb them, as to deny them every gratification not consistent with those wise purposes for which they were implanted in his breast. Propensio ad venerem is generally the concomitant of youthful vigour and good health; it is, indeed, in the opinion of some of the most eminent physicians of the age, inseparable from that state; but is there any thing sinful in health and vigour? Nay, that propensity itself may, in some cases, be the occasion of virtue instead of vice; for if he who feels it in its strongest degree, conduct himself as regularly as he who hardly feels it at all, the former is surely the more virtuous man of the two.

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It is, however, true, that in order to fit ourselves for that state of future felicity, in which we shall neither eat nor drink; marry, nor be given in marriage; but be wholly spiritual as the angels of God in Heaven, we must endeavour gradually to eradicate our sensual appetites, as soon as they have answered the purposes of the present life; for the flesh and the spirit being contrary the one to the other,' such appetites would render us incapable of relishing those good things which God hath prepared for all who love and fear him. The inclinations of the flesh, therefore, have, as our Article teaches, so far the nature of sin, as to render us unfit for the kingdom of Heaven, because they are." contrary to the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" and if this were all that the Schoolmen meant by "inclinationes legi Dei contrarias," they might say with truth, " peccata non esse;" because, while the struggle between the flesh and the spirit continues, such inclinations must be occasionally felt; and though they unfit him who feels them for the happiness of Heaven, they cannot, it resisted, subject him justly to the pains of hell. But we shall

By Locke, Hartley, and the author of the Dissertation prefixed to King's Origin of Evil, &c. &c.

have occasion to enter into this subject more fully bye-and-bye, when we state what we believe to be the sense of our own Article on original sin in the mean time, we return to our author.

"Upon the whole, their (the Reformers') adversaries rested much upon the following philosophical truths; that we ought not to be esteemed vir tuous or vicious, worthy of praise or censure, merely on account of involuntary passions; that all sin is determinable by the act of the will; and that human nature is not evil. This they readily admitted in its proper place, when applied to a suitable object, and brought before a suitable tribunal, the doctrine of morals and the judgment of mankind: but they reprobated the attempt of introducing it in order to supersede Christianity, and to prove from it the purity of man in the estimation of God; of him, in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, and who chargeth his angels with folly.' If therefore they dwelt much upon the dark side of the question, it was no more than the occasion demanded; the bright side of it had been long held up by the Church of Rome in so fallacious a point of view, that it seemed almost impossible to err in that respect." (Pp. 63, 64.)

In this conclusion we cannot acquiesce. Though the Church of Rome had erred on one side, it surely was not impossible to err on the other; and Dr. Laurence, we are persuaded, will readily admit, that no opinions which have been attributed to Scotus and his followers, on the subject of original sin, are more erroneous, or more dangerous, than the contrary opinions of Calvin on the same subject. That Luther and his adherents proceeded in the course which they are here said to have pursued, we have not a doubt; nor are we inclined to blame them, though, in their controversies with the Church of Rome, they sometimes carried their opposition too far. In such a situation as their's, extremities were unavoidable; but when they sat down, not to write controversies, but to compile formularies of faith for ' the use of the Church, it is to be hoped that they withdrew their attention wholly from the writings of the Schoolmen, and directed it steadily to the Holy Scriptures, and the traditionary interpretations of those Scriptures which may be collected from the writings of the three first centuries, before the subtleties of a vain philosophy had much corrupted the simple though sublime doctrines of the Gospel. If this was their conduct, when they set themselves to draw up the

The opinion of a single father, or, indeed, of many fathers, respecting the sense of any passage of Scripture, is of no value, unless supported by sound reasoning and sober criticism; and as reasoners and critics, those men were in general far from eminent. When we find them, however, agreeing with each other in the interpretation of any text, and declaring that it has been so understood from the beginning, wherever the Gospel has been preached, the case is very different, and he would be a bold man who should controvert such an interpretation, unless it be obviously contrary to the grammatical sense of the words so interpreted, or lead to impiety or absurdity..

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doctrine which they wished to establish respecting the consequences of Adam's transgression, they would banish from their minds the opinions of Aquinas, Scotus, &c. on the subject, and endeavour to discover what had been taught by Moses, the prophets, Christ, and his apostles; convinced, as they all declared themselves to be, that whatsoever may not be proved by the Scriptures (whether it be true or not) is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the Christian faith.

As Adam fell by transgressing the commandment recorded in the 17th verse of the 2d chapter of the book of Genesis, it is obvious that the consequences of his fall must be implied in the meaning of the words which our translators have rendered, "thou shalt surely die," and that he must himself have fully understood those words. If the reformers wished to understand them likewise, they would of course begin by inquiring how they had been used by Moses on other occasions. Now they occur in the Pentateuch at least twenty-nine times*; but they are never, except in the two important passages (Gen. ii. 17, and iii. 4) of which we are inquiring into the sense, to be understood to mean any other kind of death than that which is common to man and beast ; as the reader may convince himself, by turning to the texts referred to at the bottom of the page. But we should be glad to know by what canon of criticism we are authorised to interpret the two passages in question, so as to give to the words "thou shalt surely die," a sense quite different from what they will bear any where else in the books of Moses, and quite different, likewise, from what is their most obvious and natural sense even in these two passages themselves. Could Adam, when he was told that, on eating the forbidden fruit, he should surely die, imagine that, instead of passing to his former state insensible, this threat implied that the natural faculties of his mind should be depraved; that he should propagate a depraved race; and that, on account of this natural depravity, he and they should be liable to suffer the pains of hell for ever?

We are perfectly aware, and so doubtless was he, that the human soul is of an order superior to the souls, or vital principles, of the brutes that perish, and that it does not necessarily die with the body; but he must have been likewise aware, that its existence, as well as the existence of every thing created, depends upon the will of God, and that therefore it might die with the body, or survive it, according to the good pleasure of the Father of Spirits. To the apostate pair, a ray of comfort was held out in the promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent; but without that promise, they could surely derive no hopes of any kind of immortality from the

* Gen. ii. 17; iii. 4; xx. 7; xxvi. 11. Exod. xix. 12; xxi. 12, 15, 16, 17; xxii. 19 (in the Heb. 18); xxxi. 14, 15. Lev. xx. 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 27; xxiv. 16, 17; xxvii. 29. Numb. xv. 35; | xxvi. 65; xxxv. 17, 18, 21, 31.

sentence:

sentence: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

If this be not sufficient evidence that the penalty denounced against the first transgression, was neither more nor less than death in the most absolute sense of the word, as it denotes the loss of conscious existence, it may be corroborated by the testimony of our blessed Lord himself, and his apostle, St. Paul. When Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life," it is obvious, from the context, that his meaning was not that he was the first revealer of a resurrection from the dead, but that he was the author of it, and that every wellgrounded hope of living in a future state rests on him. Accordingly St. Paul says, "If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they, also, who are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished¿ého, are lost," as if they had never been. That this is the meaning of the verb who is rendered indisputable by the 22d verse, in which we are assured, that "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive;" for if the death which all incurred by the fall of Adam, was any thing else than the forfeiture of immortality, it is evidently not true that as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

When all title to immortality was forfeited, those supernatural graces of the Holy Spirit, or that teaching of God, which the primitive fathers, as well as Bishop Bull and Archbishop King among the moderns, call sometimes original righteousness, and sometimes the divine image, were forfeited likewise; for those graces, or that teaching, being originally intended to guide man on his way to Heaven †, must of course have been withdrawn when Heaven was shut against him.

"Part of man's punishment" (says Archbishop King) was the with drawing of the extraordinary grace of God from him, that was ready to guide and direct him in all his actions, and leaving him to his own power and faculties to conduct and support him. So I understand the 22d verse of the 3d chapter: And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil. And now least he fut forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden. Some take this for an ironical

Ist Cor. xv. . 16, 17, 18.

+ It was the doctrine of the primitive church, and it is a doctrine which might easily be proved from the Scriptures, that under the first covenant man was not intended to live for ever on this earth; but that after a sufficient probation here, he was, without tasting death, to be translated into some superior state, or Heaven. Into this discussion our limits permit us not to enter; but we refer the reader with confidence to Bishop Bull's Dissertation on the State of Man before the Fall.

speech,