Such a

the passions and appetites, and to give an entire predominance of the moral and intellectual over the animal, would equally destroy the probation of man. change in man would be appropriate to a state of reward, but not of probation. If God so changes the nature of any human being, that any act is necessarily holy, then, although the act may be followed by good consequences and in itself be right, still the agent has no merit, is no better or more worthy of reward and of happiness for having done it.

Such a regeneration as this change of nature would be, instead of promoting by discipline a meritorious character, would put an instantaneous stop to all moral improvement, and render it impossible. All desert, all merit, all blame, all character, as instantly ceases when a man becomes incapable of doing evil, as when he becomes, or is incapable of doing good. And so, according to this theory, the regenerate are placed as far from the line of moral agency on one side, as the unregenerate are on the other. Suppose, when an agent, whom we think free, is deliberating on two courses of action, one of which he perceives to be good, and the other wicked, while he is holding the thing in suspense, and balanced, as we may say, a foreign agent having access to his mind, and sufficient power, gives supernatural strength to the good motive and turns the scale; though the action might be good, and benefit the man, would not the merit of it be entirely destroyed?. Though we might call the man fortunate, could we call him worthy, or meritorious on that account? Supposing an evil spirit, on the other hand, should interpose and super

naturally turn the scale in favor of the wicked action; though the action might be evil, and attended with evil consequences, should we not consider the agent unfortunate rather than criminal? Just so with a regenerated and an unregenerated man, according to the system we are considering. One is constrained to do evil by an agency without and beyond his control, his own nature made incapable of doing anything that is good; and the other equally constrained by an agency without and beyond his control, to do good, by his own nature, changed, by an immediate act of God, from a prompter to all evil, to a prompter to all good.

It may be objected to this, that according to my own showing, the principles laid down would destroy the moral desert of very good men in their actions, and the moral turpitude of very bad men in theirs. For it is confessed on all hands that long habits of sin do at length in a manner enslave the will, till at last it becomes next to impossible for a wicked man to choose right, and habit or his own nature depraved by bad usage, comes in like an evil, supernatural power, to turn the scale and determine the mind to evil. According to my system, it may be objected, he is not to blame. So on the other hand, by long habits of virtue the choice. of good becomes spontaneous and almost infallible. It may be said, that I would make the suggestions of habit destroy all merit, and a man become incapable of virtue, just in proportion to his approach to perfection.

I answer, that the slavery of the will, the incapacity to do good, has been brought on by the man, himself.

It is one of the natural consequences and punishments of sin. So has the readiness of the choice of good been produced in the good man by his own free agency How? by forming the habit of choosing right, and he is justly entitled to all its benefits, as the other as justly suffers the merited effects of indulgence in what he knew to be wrong. And this opens to us the atrocity of that injustice which this system charges upon God. It makes him inflict this impotence of the will, this incapacity to all that is good, on an innocent being, on every child that comes into the world, previous to all moral action, all character and desert, which could be the just punishment only of a long course of wilful sin. On the other hand, he bestows this spontaneous choice of good, which we have seen is the necessary consequence and the proper reward of a long course of well-doing, arbitrarily on some, who have done nothing, and according to this system could do nothing, to merit this unspeakable and immeasurable distinction.

These considerations moreover throw great light on the doctrine of spiritual influences in general. They show us what immediate action of God upon the mind is consistent with moral agency and what is not. We see there can be no action immediately upon the will. God, it is true, may by his access to the mind, and the power he has over it, influence a man to do this or that, or to go to this place or that, and this action or motion may save the man's life, or procure him some other good. But so far as his will was acted upon by God, he is neither better nor worse, his moral probation or progress is neither hindered nor helped by it. In order

that an action may have a moral character, and make a man better or worse, it must originate in the determination of the will itself, and not in something else, or in some other will. Whatever influence God exercises upon man as a moral agent, to make him better' or worse, must not touch the will, but leave it free. Any attempt to make man good by operating immediately on the will, even by almighty power, must defeat itself and destroy that very freedom on which all good or ill desert depends. Nothing in man, we have already observed, is of a moral nature, either of good or ill desert, which does not pass through the understanding, is not perceived by that to be either good or evil, and is not embraced by the will as good or evil. The only way then in which God himself can act upon the mind of man, by which he can be made morally better, is by presenting ideas to his understanding. Why not produce feelings and dispositions and actions? We answer, that feelings produced in any other way than through the understanding which approves or disapproves, have no moral character, and though they may promote present enjoyment or produce suffering, do not merit either praise or blame, do not make a man either better or worse. And dispositions not the result of choice and cultivation, but arbitrarily bestowed, are equally destitute of all worth or ill desert. Were goodness the production of the immediate action of God upon the will, the feelings and dispositions, all external means and institutions of religion and morality would have been superfluous. No revelation would ever have been given, for the inward man was just as accessible

to God without as with a revelation. All we can say is, that this immediate influence is not the way in which he has chosen to call forth goodness in man. It is by addressing him from without through the senses, by nature, by Providence, by experience, by the example of others, by the accumulated wisdom of ages, by revelation, by prayer, by the other institutions of religion. With these he has connected the growth of holiness in the soul of man, just as he has connected the sowing of the seed and the labors of cultivation with producing a harvest, instead of calling it into being by an immediate act of creative power.

We object, in the third place, that the doctrine of passive regeneration connected with human inability, makes the preaching of the Gospel a solemn mockery. It makes the preacher contradict himself at every breath. He stands professedly to call sinners to repentance, and he must, if he be faithful, say to men, in the name, and as the ambassador of Christ, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." But if he tell them the whole truth, as he is bound to do, he must likewise tell them, that it does not depend upon their will, that they cannot make one effectual motion towards it, till God works upon their hearts, and there is nothing that they can do which will prepare themselves for it, or induce God to do it. If this be not a solemn mockery, and a cruel one, I know not what is. That it does not bring all such religious instruction into entire discredit, is because the grossness of the contradiction is kept out of sight, by general, mystical, and indefinite language.