The penalty of the law was death, including death spiritual, physical, and moral. Physical death is universal ; eternal death, temporarily suspended for Christ's sake, is denounced upon all the impenitent. As one part of the penalty has taken effect, even upon infants, who have never been guilty of actual transgression, we .must believe the other part to have taken effect likewise. Brutes, who also suffer and die, are not moral agents, nor were they ever embraced in a covenant of life, and therefore their case, al- though it has its own peculiar difficulties, is not analogous to that of man. Geology affirms that brutes suffered and died in suc- cessive generations before the creation and apostacy of man. This is at present one of the unsolved questions of God's provi- dence.— See Hugh Miller's Testimonies of the Eocks.
16. How may it be 'proved by what the Scriptures say con- cerning regeneration ?
PROVED BY THE NECESSITY FOR REDEMPTION. 255
The Scriptures declare —
1st. That regeneration is a radical change of the moral char- acter, wrought by the Holy Ghost in the exercise of supernatural power. It is called " a new creation ;" the regenerated are called " God's workmanship, created unto good works/' etc. — Ezek. xxxvi., 26 ; Eph. i., 19 ; ii., 5, 10 ; iv., 24 ; 1 Pet. i., 23 ; James L, 18.
2d. Regeneration is declared to be necessary absolutely and universally. — John iii., 3 ; 2 Cor. v., 17.
17. Hoiv may it be proved from what the Scriptures say of redemption ?
The Scriptures assert of redemption —
1st. As to its nature, that the design and effect of Christ's sacrifice is to deliver, by means of an atonement, all his people from the power as well as from the guilt of sin. — Eph. v., 25-27; Titus ii., 14 ; Heb. ix., 12-14 ; xiii., 12,
2d. As to its necessity y that it was absolutely necessary for all — for infants who never have committed actual sin, as well as for adults. — Matt, xix., 14 ; Rev. i., 5 ; v., 9.
Some have essayed to answer, that Christ only redeemed in- fants from the "liability to sin." But redemption being an atonement by blood, the "just for the unjust," if infants be not sinners they can not be redeemed. A sinless liability to sin is only a misfortune, and can admit of no redemption. — See Dr. Taylor's " Concio ad Clerum," (New Haven, 1828,) pp. 24, 25 ; also Harvey's Review of the same, (Hartford, 1829,) p. 19.
18. State the evidence afforded by infant baptism.
Baptism, as circumcision, is an outward rite, signifying the in- ward grace of spiritual regeneration and purification. — Mark i., 4; John iii., 5 ; Titus iii., 5 ; Deut. x., 16 ; Rom. ii., 28, 29. Both of these rites were designed to be applied to infants. The appli- cation of the sign would be both senseless and profane if infants did not need, and were not capable of the thing signified.
19. What is the objection that many present to this doctrine, drawn from their view of the nature of sin ?
The Pelagians hold that sin consists alone in acts of the will
256 ORIGINAL SIN.
transgressing known law, and that it is essential to free agency that a man is always as free to cease from sinning as to continue to sin, and consequently that there is no such thing as inherent moral depravity, innate or acquired.
Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of New Haven, the prince of American new school theology, taught that sin consists solely in acts of the will. That " original sin is man's own act, consisting in a free choice of some object rather than God as his chief good." He includes in this definition the permanent, governing prefer- ence of the will, which determines special and transient acts of choice ; which preference is formed by each human being as soon as he becomes a moral agent, and is uniformly a preference of some lesser good in place of Grod. He maintains also that the nature of man, in the condition in which it comes into being, in consequence of Adam's fall, is the occasion, not the cause, of all men invariably making a wrong moral preference, and conse- quently original sin is by nature in the sense that the will enacts it freely though uniformly as occasioned by nature, yet that the nature itself, or its inherent tendency to occasion sin, is not itself sin, or ill-deserving. — See "Concio ad Clerum," New Haven, 1828, and Harvey's Keview thereof.
20. How may their objections be answered ?
The Pelagian doctrine is disproved by the true theory of moral agency, (see below, Chapter XVIII.,); by the universal judgment of men that there is such a thing as moral character, properly the object of praise or blame, which determines the action, and from which any action derives all the moral quality it possesses; by all the Scriptures teach of depravity of heart as well as act, from birth and by nature ; and by all that they teach also with respect to man's inability to change himself, and of the nature and neces- sity of the new birth. — See Chapter XVIII., questions 21-25.