4. Still another point needs recognition. As long as we remain in this world, however deep, fervent, and thorough our religious life, there are sources of danger within. There inhere in our nature as essential elements of it, at least in this present life, appetites, passions, and affections, without wliich man w^onld be unfit for this present state of existence and would cease to be man. These, although innocent in themselves, are simply un- reasoning impulses over which we need to keep con- stant watch and ward, ruling them by reason, conscience, and divine grace, else they lead to sin and death. By these "sin entered into the world, and death by sin." When Eve, in Eden, "saw that ilie tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to bo desired to make one wise," the temptation was a skilful appeal to elements in her nature which were pure from the hand of the Creator. The desire for
pleasant food is not sin ; nor is the higher taste -which finds enjoyment in contemplating beautiful forms and colors. Nor can we condemn the still more elevated instinct of the soul which delights in mental activity and tlie acquisition of knowledge. If these aptitudes and instincts had not existed in original human nature, the temptation of Satan would have had no power. " The deaf adder hears not the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely."
Consequently, in the work of sanctification, the vari- ous instincts and passions of original human nature do not need to be rooted out, but to be restrained, chasten- ed, disciplined, made to obey reason and the voice of God. The due enjoyment of pleasant, food is not the gluttony which the wise man condemns. A father may provide for his children by a wise foresight which is by no means the " covetousness which is idolatry." When foul outrage is done to the innocent and the defenceless, we may feel our souls flame with fiery indignation, and " be angrj' and sin not." God " setteth the solitary in families" by the affections with which he endowed man at the beginning ; and nothing is more beautiful than the relations which grow out of them, where the divine intent rules, and nothing more debasing and destructive than their abuse.
These elements of our nature survive the deepest work of grace. AVhen the wondrous change has come to the penitent believer and he has "put on the new man which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness," he is still human, still nothing less than man. The world appeals to him, Satan assails him, and in himself is the tinder which the glancing sparks of temptation tend to kindle. "There is no discharge in that war." Till life itself is done, some form of peril will remain. Youth may be tempted by fleshly lusts, man- hood may become ambitious and proud, age misanthrop- ic and avaricious. The innocent appetite to which, in Eden, the forbidden fruit appealed may be perverted into the despotic tliirst of the inebriate ; Eve's delight in beauty may be the germ from which shall spring a life given up to frivolity and empty show; and the no- bler hunger for knowledge may break away from all authority and madly labor to reason (iod out of his own creation. Nevertheless, these possibilities of evil do not prove that God's children cannot in this world be saved from moral depravity, nor that the continuous commission of wilfid sin must stain the lives of the holiest of them till the very hour of death. They are proof, rather, that conversion docs not end probation; and that it behooves every man, whatever progress he m.ay have made in divine things, to "keep his body under, lest that by any means he should be a castaway."
5. One more point needs to be stated. Discussion on this subject has often been rendered inconclusive and unsatisfactory by tlie misuse of terms. The West- minster Confession, as explained b}' the Exposition pub- lished by the Presbyterian Board of Publication, makes "original sin" include three wholly different things: (1) the guilt of Adam's sin; (2) the inherited de- pravity of soul ; (.3) the damage done the body. M'es- ley also uses the term sin in three different senses: (1) the depravity inherited from Adam; (2) "voluntary transgression of known la^^■;" (3) involuntary infrac- tions of the divine law. Owing to this confusion of terms, there have been hot controversies where tliere was little real difference of opinion : whole octavos have been wasted in refuting what nobod\- holds, and prov- ing what nobody doubts ; and theological champions tight imaginary foes, and are happy in imaginary vic- tories. If matters not really belonging to the question of entire sanctification are ruled out, we shall find that just two points need investigation: («) What script- ural ground is there for the belief that the Cliristian may in this life be delivered from the moral depravity which he inherited as a member of a fallen race? (A) How far and in what sense may the believer be kept in this life, through grace, from the commission of sin?
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II. Dijferent Ecclesiastical Views on the Suhject. — 1. Tlie Romish Theory. — The Council of Trent teaches that the sacrament of baptism, rightly administered, ^vaslles away guilt and depravity of every kind. It pronounces anathema against those who presume to think or dare to assert " that, although sin is forgiven in baptism, it is not entirely removed or totally eradi- cated, but is cut away in such a manner as to leave its roots still firmly fixed in the soul." The Coimcil, how- ever, declares that concupiscence, or the fuel of sin, re- mains. " Concupiscence is the effect of sin, and is nothing more than an appetite of the soul, in itself re- pugnant to reason. If unaccompanied with the con- sent of the will or unattended with neglect on our part, it differs essentially from the nature of sin."