perhaps, to refer to a passage where an inspired Apostle is estabhshing the very point in question. Look we then to the third chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and let us hear what he says. He is proving that all mankind, whether Jews or Gentiles, are under sin ; and in support of his asser- tions he brings together a whole cloud of witnesses : " It is written," says he, " There is none good, no, not one : there is none that understandeth ; there is none that seeketh after God : they are all gone out of the way : they are together become unprofitable : there is none that doeth good, no, not one^" Have we spoken any thing stronger than this ? Yet, in a subsequent chapter, the Apostle speaks in stronger language still : '' The carnal mind is enmity against God ; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be''." In another Epistle he denies the power of any man by nature even so much as to know the things of the Spirit ; " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foohshness unto him : neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned'^." Nor does he confine these assertions to any particular age or nation : he says of himself and his fellow Apostles, that even they, in their unregenerate state, " fulfilled the desires of the flesh and of the mind ; and were by nature children of wrath, even as others ^" Even after he was regenerate, he still speaks of himself, so far as he was yet unrenewed, as destitute of all good ; " In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no ffood thing."
We think that this will abundantly suffice for the confirmation of our sentiments from Scripture. The person that will not be convinced by these passages, would not be convinced even though we were to multiply quotations to ever so great an extent.
Turn we then to what, with this assembly at least, must have considerable weight, I mean the authentic records of the doctrines of our Church. In the 9th
*> Rom. iii. 9—12. c Rom. viii. 7.
^ 1 Cor. ii. 14. « Eph. ii. 3.