with otlier Scriptural doctrines. If the latter be true, the former must be true also. If the Bible teaches that men since the Fall have not lost all ability to what is spiritually good ; that they are not dead in trespasses and sins ; that they still have the power to turn themselves unto God, or, at least, the power to yield to the influence which God exerts for their conversion, and power to resist and refuse, then so far as this point is concerned it might be true that regeneration is the result of moral suasion. It might be true that " God offers the same necessary conditions of accept- ance to all men ; desires from the heart that all men as free agents comply with them and live ; brings no positive influence upon any mind against compliance, but, on the contrary, brings all those kinds and all that degree of influence in favour of it, upon each individual, which a system of measures best arranged for the suc- cess of grace in a world of rebellion allows ; and finally, saves, without respect of kindred, rank, or country, whether Scythian, Greek or Jew, all who under this influence, accept the terms and work out their own salvation, and reprobates alike all who re- fuse." 1 But, on the other hand, if the Scriptures teach that " man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation ; so as a natural man being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto ; " ^ then must it also be true that " when God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace. He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin, and by his grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good." ^ Then is it also true, that man in effectual calling " is altogether passive, until, being quickened and .renewed by the Holy Spirit, he is thereby enabled to answer this call, and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it."* If man is as really spiritually dead, in his natural state since the fall, as Lazarus was corporeally dead, then is the spiritual resurrection of the one as really a work of divine omnipotence as the bodily resurrection of the other. These doctrines, therefore, thus logically connected, have never in fact been dissociated. All who hold that original sin involves; spiritual death and consequent utter inability to any spiritual good, do also hold that his recovery from that state is not effected by any process of moral suasion human or divine, but by
1 The Quarterly Christian Spectator, of New Haven, vol. iii. 1831, p. 635.
2 Westminster Confession, ch. ix. § 3.
s [bid. ix. § 4. 4 Ibid. x. § 2.