sality of sin among men is compatible with his nature and with his government of the world. (3.) The Bible, as often before remarked, accounts for and vindicates the corruption of our race on the ground tiiat mankind had a full and fair probation in Adam, and that the spiritual death in which they are born is part of the judicial penalty of his transgression. If we reject this solution of the fact, we cannot deny the fact itself, and, being a fact, it must be consistent with the character of God.
Tlie Doctrine represents God as the Author of Sin.
3. A third objection often and confidently urged is, that the Church doctrine on this subject makes God the author of sin. God is the author of our nature. If our nature be sinful, God must be the author of sin. The obvious fallacy of this syllogism is, that the word nature is used in one sense in the major proposi- tion, and in a different sense in the minor. In the one it means substance or essence ; in the other, natural disposition. It is true that God is the author of our essence. But our essence is not sin- ful. God is indeed our Creator. He made us, and not we our- selves. We are the work df his hands. He is the Father of the spirits of all men. But He is not the author of the evil disposi- tions with which that nature is infected at birth. The doctrine of original sin attributes no efficiency to God in the production of evil. It simply supposes that He judicially abandons our apostate race, and withholds from the descendants of Adam the manifestations of his favour and love, which are the life of the soul. That the in- evitable consequence of this judicial abandonment is spiritual death, no more makes God the author of sin, than the immorality and des- perate and unchanging wickedness of the reprobate, from whom God withholds his Spirit, are to be referred to the infinitely Holy One as their author. It is moreover a historical fact universally admitted, that character, within certain limits, is transmissible from parents to children. Every nation, separate tribe, and even every extended family of men, has its physical, mental, social, and moral peculiarities which are propagated from generation to generation. No process of discipline or culture can transmute a Tatar into an Englishman, or an Irishman into a Frenchman. The Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, and other historical families, have retained and transmitted their peculiarities for ages. We may be unable to ex- plain this, but we cannot deny it. No one is born an absolute man, with nothing but generic humanity belonging to him. Every one is born a man in a definite state, with all those characteristics phys-
254 PART n. ch. VIII. — sm.
ical, mental, and moral, which make up his individuahty. There is nothing therefor? in the doctrine of hereditary depravity out of analogy with providential facts.
It is said to destroy the Free Agency of Men.
4. It is farther objected to this doctrine that it destroys the free agency of man. If we are born with a corrupt nature by which we are inevitably determined to sinful acts, we cease to be free in performing those acts, and consequently are not responsible for them. This objection is founded on a particular theory of liberty, and must stand or fall with it. The same objection is urged against the doctrines of decrees, of efficacious grace, of the perse- verance of the saints, and all other doctrines which assume that a free act can be absolutely certain as to its occurrence. It is enough here to remark that the doctrine of original sin supposes men to have the same kind and degree of liberty in sinning under tlie in- fluence of a corrupt nature, that saints and angels have in acting rightly under the influence of a holy nature. To act according to its nature is the only liberty which belongs to any created being.
§ 14. The Seat of Original Sin.
Having considered the nature of original sin, the next question concerns its seat. According to one theory it is in the body. The only evil eflTect of Adam's sin upon his posterity, whuli some theo- logians admit, is the disorder of his physical nature, whereby undue influence is secured to bodily appetites and passions. Scarcely dis- tinguishable from this theory is the doctrine that the sensuous nature of man, as distinguished from the reason and conscience, is alone affected by our hereditary depravity, A third doctrine is, that the heart, considered as the seat of the affections as distin- guished from the understanding, is the seat of natural depravity. This doctrine is connected with the idea that all sin and holiness are forms of feeling or states of the affections. And it is made the ground on which the nature of regeneration and conversion, the relation between repentance and faith, and other points of practical theology are explained. Everything is made to depend on the in- clinations or state of the feelings. Instead of the affections follow- ing the understanding, the understanding, it is said, follows the affections. A man understands and receives the truth only when he loves it. Regeneration is simply a change in the state of the aflfections, and the only inability under which sinners labour as to the things of God, is disinclination. In opposition to all these doc-