acts, consisting of the perception and comparison of motives, the estimate of their relative worth, and the choice or willing of the external action." " When we speak of the means of regenera- tion, we shall use the word regeneration in a more limited import than its ordinary popular import ; and shall confine it, chiefly for the sake of convenient phraseology, to the act of the will or heart, in distinction from other mental acts connected with it ; or to that act of the will or heart which consists in a preference of God to every other object ; or to that disposition of the heart, or govern- ing affection or purpose of the man, which consecrates him to the service and glory of God." x
" Self-love or desire of happiness, is the primary cause or rea- son of all acts of preference or choice which fix supremely on any object. In every moral being who forms a moral character, there must be a first moral act of preference or choice. This must re- spect some one object, God or mammon, as the chief good, or as an object of supreme affection. Now whence comes such a choice or preference ? Not from a previous choice or preference of the same object, for we speak of the first choice of the object. The answer which human consciousness gives, is, that the being con- stituted with a capacity for happiness desires to be happy ; and knowing that he is capable of deriving happiness from different objects, considers from which the greatest happiness may be de- rived, and as in this respect he judges or estimates their relative value, so he chooses or prefers the one or the other as his chief good. While this must be the process by which a moral being forms his first moral preference, substantially the same process is indispensable to a change of this preference. The change involves the preference of a new object as the chief good ; a preference which the former preference has no tendency to produce, but a direct tendency to prevent ; a preference, therefore, not result- ing from, or in any way occasioned by a previous preference of any given object, but resulting from those acts of considering and comparing the sources of happiness, which are dictated by the desire of happiness or self-love." 2
Regeneration being a change of purpose, the mode in which it is produced is thus explained. " If man without divine grace is a moral agent, then he is qualified so to consider, compare, and estimate the objects of choice as means of happiness, and capable also of such constitutional excitement in view of the good and evil set before him, as might result in his giving his heart to God,
1 Christian Spectator, vol. i. New Haven, 1829, pp. 16-19. 2 Ibid. p. 21.
14 PART in. Ch. XV. — REGENERATION.
without grace The act of giving God the heart must
take place in perfect accordance with the laws of moral agency and of voluntary action. If the interposing grace violate these laws, the effect cannot be moral action ; and it must violate these laws, if it dispense with the class of mental acts now under con- sideration. Whatever, therefore, be the influence which secures a change of heart in the sinner, the change itself is a moral change, and implies the exercise of all the powers and capacities of the moral agent, which in the nature of things are essential to a moral act." 1 On a previous page it had been said, " The Scriptures authorize us to assert, generally, that the mode of divine influence is consistent with the moral nature of this change as a voluntary act of man ; and, also, that it is through the truth, and implies attention to truth on the part of man." 2 " Cannot," Dr. Taylor asks, " He who formed the mind of man, reach it with an influence of his Spirit, which shall accord with all the laws of voluntary and moral action ? Because mo- tives, without a divine interposition, will not secure this moral change in sinful man, and because they have no positive efficiency in its production, must God in producing it dispense with motives altogether ? Must the appropriate connections between motives and acts of will, or between the exercise of affections and the per- ception of their objects, be dissolved, and have no place ? Must God, if by his grace He brings sinners to give Him their heart in holy love, accomplish the change in such a manner that they shall have no prior perception or view of the object of their love ; and know not what or whom they love, or wherefore they love Him, rather than their former idols ? Does a consistent theol- ogy thus limit the Holy One, and oblige Him to accomplish the veriest impossibilities, in transforming the moral character of sin- ful man ? " 8 This may be a correct account of the process of conversion, with which this system confounds regeneration. Con- version is indeed a voluntary turning of the soul from sin to God. From the nature of the case it is produced proximately by appro- priate motives, or it would be neither rational nor holy. But this proves nothing as to the nature of regeneration. The most accurate analysis of the laws of vision can throw no light on the way in which Christ opened the eyes of the blind.
Remarks. It is plain that these views of regeneration are mere philosoph- ical theories. Dr. Emmons assumes that such is the dependence
1 Christian Spectator, 1829, p. 223 2 Ibid. p. 17. « Ibid. p. 489
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