the law, and of the vast extent of its requirements, he doubted not his power to keep it, and thus to merit its promised reward. But how great a change was produced in his views by the light of the Holy Spirit! How was his pride abased, and his impotence disclosed, when the true nature and wide demands of the law were presented to his mind! "But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Now the experiment was made; now his boasted ability was put to the What was the result? So far from being able to keep this holy law, he found, by woful experience, that the application of its rigorous demands to his conscience, served only to irritate his lusts, to awaken his dormant sins, and to discover to him his deep-rooted and dreadful depravity. "Sin," he confesses, "taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence :" and thus, "the commandment, which was ordained unto life, he found to be unto death."*

test.

It appears, then, whether the appeal be made to the standards of our Church, or to the testimony of Christian experience, or to the oracles of the living God, that sinful man is unable to repent, to believe, or to do his will: and it follows, that the language on which we animadvert, is a manifest departure from the form of sound words used both in the Bible, and in that book which we acknowledge as the Confession of our Faith, and as containing a correct exhibition of revealed truth.

To justify themselves, preachers who use such language, will recur to a favourite distinction, and say they mean, not a moral, but a natural, ability. And why do they not keep in view this distinction? Why use such unqualified language? Why assert that man has full ability, ample power, when they intend only natural ability, in opposition to moral ability, of which they affirm he is destitute?

Moral ability, then, by their own acknowledgments, is necessary to the actual performance of obedience to God's holy will, as well as natural ability; consequently the latter, separate from the former, is not sufficient; and it is, therefore, un

* Rom. vii.

warrantable to affirm, that sinners possess ability, full ability to do whatever is required from them by the divine law. An unregenerate man has a natural power to eat; God commands him to eat to his glory; and can this man perform the action of eating in a holy manner, while destitute of renewing grace, because he has the bodily organs necessary for masticating his food? By no means: he can eat, but he cannot eat to the glory of God: he can do the natural action, but he cannot do it in the holy manner in which God commands it to be done.

A combination of two powers is necessary to raise a certain weight. Here is the human, and there the mechanical, power; I assert, there is full power to raise the weight. Remove the human, and leave the mechanical power, or take away the mechanical and leave the human power; I assert there is not power to raise the weight.

But what is meant by this natural ability in sinners to do the will of God? Does it mean no more than that they are endowed with the faculties of understanding, will, and affections, and are therefore accountable creatures? This is the signification attributed to the phrase by Fuller, Smalley, and others. Our objection to the use of this phrase, when employed to denote the possession of these faculties, shall be stated in a subsequent part of this essay. At present our design is to expose the impropriety of maintaining that sinners have full ability to do all that is required of them by the law of God.

If the possession of these faculties constitute the ability of sinners, then they must be in such an unimpaired state as really to enable them to fulfil the requirements of the law, without the aid of any other power, or the mode of speaking adopted by some divines, cannot be justified; because an ability that is not sufficient to perform any work, certainly cannot be denominated, with any propriety of speech, full ability, ample power. But the advocates of this phraseology allow the understanding to be blind, the will rebellious, and the affections perverse; and moreover maintain, that till sinners be

:

born again, regenerated in a supernatural manner, created anew by Almighty power, they never will repent, never will believe, never will obey. Now, if these faculties must undergo a supernatural change before sinners can obtain that moral ability which is absolutely necessary to enable them to do their duty, what becomes of their full ability, their ample power? That the unregenerate possess the faculties belonging to human nature, which make them accountable creatures, no one denies this is not the question at issue; it is one widely different,-Whether they possess full ability to do whatever is required of them while all these faculties are corrupted, disordered, and enfeebled by sin? This is the the question. If they be endowed with such ability, then they know their duty in all its extent, and their understanding is not blinded; if they be endowed with such ability, then their hearts are free from enmity, and burning with supreme and intense love to God: because, without such knowledge of duty and such love to God, it is impossible to keep his holy law: and to affirm a man to be possessed of present ability to keep the law perfectly, and at the same time to affirm that he is ignorant of its requirements, and destitute of love to the supreme Lawgiver, is a contradiction; for the law requires him this moment to know his duty fully, and to act from perfect and unabating love to God. But for such knowledge and such love in unregenerate sinners they do not contend; on the contrary, they allow them to be at once destitute both of the one and the other: why, then, will they use language so grossly improper as that which we censure; and, in opposition to their own acknowledged principles, assert that men, blind in their understandings, and in their hearts opposed to God, possess full ability, ample power to fulfil all his good and holy will!

Compare this ability with the work it has to perform. The law requires them to know the Lord; but they know him not! The law commands them to love God with all their hearts; But enmity reigns in their hearts! bow their wills submissively to its supreme authority; but

The law requires them to

their wills are rebellious! The law commands them to centre all their affections on Jehovah; but their affections are centred on the world! When ignorance shall become the source of knowledge, and enmity the parent of love; when obedience shall spring from rebellion, and order from disorder, as their natural fruits; then, and not till then, will it be true, or consistent, to affirm, that an unregenerate sinner has full ability to keep all the commandments of the Lord our God.

To maintain that fallen man has ability to do the whole will of God, is to maintain that he has an ability superior to that of Adam in his primeval state of innocence and holiness. When our first parent came fresh from the creating hand of God, light, and love, and order reigned in all his faculties; and, in the course of his obedience, he had to struggle with no inward darkness, or disorder, or corruption. Free from every defect and weakness, his powers were perfectly equal to the work required from him by the law of his God.

With such ability was the first man blest; and less than this could not have been pronounced sufficient. Have, we ask, his posterity such ability? Are their faculties in this perfect state? All are depraved by sin: darkness, enmity, and disorder reign in the soul. And yet with faculties, thus corrupted and enfeebled, it is asserted, that fallen man has ability to do the whole will of God; and, in fact, to do more than was required from our great progenitor, while rejoicing in the full possession of all those noble and holy endowments with which he was enriched by the munificence of his Creator: for he is commanded to convert himself, to make himself a new heart,-to rise from the dead,-and to become a new creature! How extravagant the assertion! All this is his duty, because his Maker requires it from him; but the work far transcends his ability, and can be accomplished only by the mighty power of God. To convert the soul from sin to holiness, to take away the stony heart, and give a heart of flesh, -to raise the sinner from the dead,-and to create him a new creature in Christ Jesus, and adorn him with the lost image of his Creator, is described by inspired writers as the appro

priate work of Jehovah : and it seems surprising that sensible men, contemplating the nature of the work, and attributing the glory of it to our God, and allowing it never was, and never will be, accomplished by any son or daughter of Adam, still maintain the ability of man to be equal to it.

Jehovah proclaims to apostate man his entire duty, not to inflate him with lofty notions of his own power, but to convince him that he is fallen from his primitive rectitude; to abase his pride, by teaching him his impotence and vileness; to awaken his fears by a sense of his misery: and that, feeling his depravity, his wretchedness, and his utter inability to fulfil the will of God, or to rescue himself from his deplorable circumstances, he may be constrained to look for deliverance to that merciful Being whom he has offended, and from whom alone can come all-sufficient aid.

To the preceding discussion it may be objected by some, that the term natural has been used in a sense different from what they choose to give it. We mean by it, they may say, what it signifies, when we speak of the natural, as distinguished from the moral, attributes of the Supreme Being. Let us try the question on this ground; and inquire whether this signification of the term will authorize the assertion that sinners have full ability to do the whole will of God.

It is admitted by the objectors, that fallen man has not moral ability to obey the divine law and consequently they must allow it to be impossible for the unregenerate to yield the required obedience; or maintain the absurd position, that they can keep the law of love without love in the heart, serve the Lord with a rebellious will, and delight in him with affections under the reigning influence of sin; or that they can, in a moment, regenerate and create themselves anew, and render themselves perfect, as their Father in heaven is perfect.

The union of two powers, natural and moral, is necessary to qualify a man for yielding obedience to the divine law it follows, therefore, that if one (the moral for instance) of the requisite powers be destroyed, man is no longer qualified to yield obedience. His ability is gone. Natural ability to do natural