It appears from the authoritative statements of this doctrine, as given in the standards of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, that the inability under which man, since the fall, is said to labour, does not arise : —
Inahility does not arise from the Loss of any Faculty of the Soul.
1. From the loss of any faculty of his mind or of any oi"iginal, essential attribute of his nature. He retains his reason, Avill, and conscience. He has the intellectual power of cognition, the j)ower of self-determination, and the faculty of discerning between moral good and evil. His conscience, as the Apostle says, approves or disapnroves of his moral acts.
Nor from the Loss of Free-agency.
2. The doctrine of man's inability, therefore, does not assume that man has ceased to be a free moral agent. He is free because he determines his own acts. Every volition is an act of free self- determination. He is a moral agent because he has the conscious- ness of moral obligation, and whenever he sins he acts freely against
1 III. iv. ; Nieineyer. 2 Chapter vi.
a Ibid. ch. xv. i. § 3. ■» Ibid. ch. x. § 2.