Scriptures, teach him he ought to feel of his moral corruption and degradation.
6. It need scarcely be added, tliat what the Scriptures so man- ifestly teach indirectly of the depth of the corruption of our fallen nature, they teach also by direct assertion. The human heart is pronounced deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Even in the beginning (Gen. vi. 5, 6), it was said, " God saw that tiie wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every im- agination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Job XV. 14-16, " What is man, that he should be clean ? And he which is born of a woman, that he should be rigliteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints ; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water." Eccl. ix. 3, " The heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the "dead." With such passages tiie Word of God is filled. It in the most explicit terms pronounces the deg- radation and moral corruption of man consequent on the fall, to be a total ai)ostasy from God ; a state of spiritual death, as implying the entire absence of any true holiness.
Third Argument from the early Manifestation of Sin.
A third great fact of Scripture and experience on this subject is the early manifestation of sin. As soon as a child is capable of moral action, it gives evidence of a perverted moral character. We not only see the manifestations of anger, malice, selfishness, envy, pride, and other evil dispositions, but the whole development of the soul is toward the world. The soul of a child turns by an inward law from God to the creature, from the things that are un- seen and eternal to the things that are seen and temporal. It is in its earliest manifestations, worldly, of the earth, earthy. As this is the testimony of universal experience, so also it is thg doc- trine of the Bible. Job xi. 12, " Man " is " born like a wild ass's colt." Ps. Iviii. 3, " The wicked are estranged from the womb ; they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." Prov. xxii. 15, " Foolishness (moral evil) is bound in the heart of a child."
These three undeniable facts, the universality of sin among men, its controlling power, and its early manifestation, are clear proof of the corruption of our common nature. It is a principle of judg- ment universally recognized and acted upon, that a course of action in any creature, rational or irrational, which is universal and con- trolling, and which is adopted uniformly from the beginning of its
2o8 PART n. Ch. vm.— sin.
being, determines and reveals its nature. That all individuals of certain species of animals live on prey ; that all the individuals of another species live on herbs; that some are amphibious, and others live only on the land; some are gregarious, others solitary; some mild and docile, others ferocious and untamable ; not under certain circumstances and conditions, but always and everywhere, under all the different circumstances of their being, is regarded as j)roof of their natural constitution. It shows what they are by nature, as distinguished from what they are, or may be made by external circumstances and culture. The same principle is applied to our judgments of men. Whatever is variable and limited in its man- ifestations ; whatever is found in some men and not in others, we attribute to peculiar and limited causes, but what is universal and controlling is uniformly referred to the nature of man. Some of these universally manifested modes of action among men are refer- rible to the essential attributes of their nature, as reason and con- science. The fact that all men perform rational actions is a clear proof that they are rational creatures ; and the fact that they per- form moral actions is proof that they have a moral nature. Other universal modes of action are referred not to the essential attributes of human nature, but to its present abiding state. That all men seek ease and self-indulgence and prefer themselves to others, is not to be attributed to our nature as men, but to our present state. As the fact that all men perform moral actions is proof that they have a moral nature, so the fact that such moral action is always evil, or that all men sin from the earliest development of their powers, is a proof that their moral natui-e is depraved. It is utterly inconsist- ent with all just ideas of God that He created man with a nature which with absolute uniformity leads him to sin and destruction ; or that He placed him in circumstances which inevitably secure his ruin. The present state of human nature cannot therefore be its normal and original condition. We are a fallen race. Our nature has become corrupted by our apostasy from God, and therefore every imagination (z. «., every exercise) of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually. See also Gen. viii. 21. This is the Scriptural and the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal, and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.
Evasions of the Foregoing Arguments.
The methods adopted by those who deny the doctrine of oi'iginal sin, to account for the universality of sin, are in tie highest degree unsatisfactory.
§ 13.] ORIGINAL Sm. 239
1. It is not necessary here to refer to the theories whirh get over this great difficulty either by denying the existence of sin, or by extenuating its evil nature, so tliat the difficulty ceases to exist. If there be really no such evil as sin, thei'e is no sin to account for. But the fact of the existence of sin, of its universality and of its power, is too ])al|)able and too much a matter of consciousness to admit of being denied or ignored.
2. Others contend that we have in tlie free agency of man a sufficient solution of the universality of sin. Men can sin ; they choose to sin, and no further reason for the fact need be demanded. If Adam sinned without an antecedent corrupt nature, why, it is asked, must corruption of nature be assumed to account for the fact that other men sin ? A uniform effect, however, demands a uniform cause. That a man can walk is no adequate reason why he always walks in one direction. A man may exercise his faculties to attain one object or another; the fact that he does devote them through a long life to the acquisition of wealtli is not accounted for by saying that he is a free agent. The question is. Why his free agency is always exercised in one particular direction. The fact, theiefore, that men are free agents is no solution for the universal sinfulness and total apostasy of our race from God.
3. Others seek in the order of development of the constituent elements of our nature, an explanation of the fact in question. We are so constituted that the sensuous faculties are called into exercise befoi'e the higher powers of reason and conscience. The former therefore attain an undue ascendency, and lead the child and the man to obey the lower instincts of his nature, when he should be guided by his higher faculties. But, in the first place, this is altogetiier an inadequate conception of our hereditary depravity. It does not consist exclusively or principally in the ascendency of the flesh (in the limited sense of that word) over the Spirit. It is a far deeper and more radical evil. It is spiritual death, according to the express declarations of the Scriptures. And, in the second place,, it cannot be the normal condition of man that his natural faculties should develop in such order as inevitably and universally to lead to his moral degradation and ruin. And, in the third place, this theory relieves no difficulties while it accounts for no facts. It is as hard to reconcile with the justice and goodness of God that men should be born with a nature so constituted as certainly to lead them to sin, as that the}' should be born in a state of sin. It denies any fair probation to the race. According to the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Church, mankind had not only a fair but a
240 PART ir. Ch. vin. — sin.
favourable probation in Adam, who stood for them in the maturity and full perfection of his nature ; and with every facility, motive, and consideration adapted to secure his fidelity. This k far easier of belief than the assumption that God places the child in the first dawn of reason on its probation for eternity, with a nature already perverted, and under circumstances which in every case infallibly lead to its destruction. The only solution therefore which at nil meets the case is the Scriptural doctrine that all mankind fell in Adam's first transgression, and bearing the penalty of his sin, they come into the world in a state of spiritual death, the evidence of which is seen and felt in the universality, the controlling power, and the early manifestation of sin.