10. What constitutes a virtuous and what a vicious char- acter ?
Virtue, as denned in the answer to the last question, attaches
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only to the will of man (including all the conative faculties), 1st, to its permanent disposition; 2d, to its temporary affections; and, 3d, to its volitions. Some of these states and actions of the will are not moral, i. e., they are neither approved nor condemned by the conscience as virtuous or vicious. But virtue or vice belong only to states of the will, and to voluntary acts. A virtuous char- acter, therefore, is one in which the permanent dispositions, the temporary affections and desires, and the volitions of the will, are conformable to the divine law.
A vicious character, on the other hand, is one in which these states and acts of 'the will are not conformable to the divine law.
The acts of volition are virtuous or vicious as the affections or desires by which they are determined are the one or the other. The affections and desires are as the permanent dispositions or the character. This last is the nature of the will itself, and its character is an ultimate unresolvable fact. Whether that cha- racter be innate, or acquired by habit, the fact of its moral quality as virtuous or vicious remains the same, and the consequent moral accountability of the agent for his character is unchanged.
It must be remembered that the mere possession of a con- science which approves the right and condemns the wrong, and which is accompanied with more or less lively emotion, painful or pleasureable as it condemns or approves, does not make a character virtuous, or else the devils and lost souls would be emi- nently virtuous. But the virtuous man is he whose heart and actions, in biblical language, or whose dispositions, affections, and volitions, in philosophical language, are conformed to the law of God.
With this preface we come now to consider directly the
ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.
11. How do our standards answer the question, How did God create man ?
Con. Faith, Chap. IV., sec. 2. Larger Cat., Q. 17. Shorter Cat., Q. 10.
12. Do the Scriptures certainly sanction the distinction we make betiveen the material and spiritual elements of man's nature ?
224 THE ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.
Certainly. 1st. In their account of man's creation. God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and thus he became a living soul, Gen. ii., 7. This indicated his special relation to our souls as the Father of our spirits, Heb., xii., 9. 2d. In their account of the immediate result of the dissolution of the personal union of body and soul in death, Eccle. xii., 7. 3d. Both the words nvevfia and ipvxrj, spirit and soul, are constantly used in the New Testament to signify the rational and immortal part of man, Luke i., 47, and viii., 55 ; Matt, x., 28 ; Heb. vi., 19. In two passages they are used together by Paul to embrace exhaustively, in the popular philosophical language of the day, the whole man. " Your whole body, soul and spirit/' 1 Thess. v., 23 ; Heb. iv., 12. 4th. In their assertion that while the body waits in the grave, the spirit, at death, goes immediately to God, 2 Cor. v.. 1-8, and Phil, i., 23, 24.
13. In what sense was man created in the image of God ? 1st. In respect to the spirituality of his nature, man, like
God, is a rational, moral and free agent.
2d. In respect to the moral integrity and holiness of his nature, Eph. iv., 24 ; Col. iii., 10.
3d. In respect to the dignity and authority delegated to his person, as the head of this department of creation, Gen. i., 28, and ii., 19, 20, and the 8th Ps.
14. Wherein did man's original righteousness consist ?
In the perfect conformity of all the moral dispositions and affections of man's will to the law of God, of which law his con- science was the organ.
As a consequence of this there was no schism in man's nature. The will, moving freely in conformity to the lights of reason and conscience, held in harmonious subjection all the lower principles both of body and soul. In perfect equilibrium a perfect soul dwelt in a perfect body.
15. In what sense is original righteousness said to be natural ?
It was the moral perfection of man's nature as it came origi- nally from the hands of the Creator. It is natural in the sense that it belonged to man's nature at the first, and that it is essen-
CREATED HOLY. 225
tial to his nature to render it perfect as to quality, but it is not natural in the sense of being necessary to constitute him a real man, or responsible as a moral agent. Man is as much responsible since his fall as ever before.
16. Prove that man was created holy.
It belongs to the essence of man's nature that he is a moral responsible agent.
But, 1st. As a moral creature man was created in the image of God, Gen. i., 27.