virtue, are necessary to salvation. But though each of these propositions be true, not one of them contains the whole truth. Christ was man, but he was also God-Christ was God, but he was also man-divine agency is necessary to salvation; but we must work together with the Holy Spirit, or we shall have received the grace of God in vain-belief of the Gospel, and moral virtue, are necessary to salvation; but it is a lively faith in the merits of Christ as our Redeemer, which can alone make our good works acceptable in the sight of God; and that lively faith can never be attained without the co-operation of divine grace. It should be remembered, that all Scripture is given by inspiration, and is written for our learning. Every part of

It is our duty to

it is true, and equally true. read and attend to the whole. The whole Bible is the ground of our faith, and the rule of our life. We are to compare Scripture with Scripture; we must add truth to truth; and, disdaining all partial and narrow views of the Deity and his dispensations, search out "all the counsel of God (k)," as far as it is revealed, if we wish to become wise unto salvation.

In appealing to the Public Formularies of our Church, I shall first notice the Article upon Original Sin, in which it is said, that "man is very (k) Acts, c. 20. v. 27.

far

far gone from original righteousness: " this expression implies, that original righteousness is not entirely lost, that all the good qualities and principles, with which man was at first created, are not absolutely destroyed. That this is the plain and obvious sense of the passage, is evident from the following circumstance: when the Assembly of Divines, in the reign of Charles the First, undertook to reform, as they called it, our Articles according to the Calvinistic creed, they proposed to omit the words, " man is very far gone from original righteousness," and to substitute for them, "man is wholly deprived of original righteousness." It was admitted by both parties, that the two sentences conveyed ideas extremely different ; and the proposed alteration was rejected by those who wished to maintain the ancient and established doctrine of the Church of England, in opposition to the peculiar tenets of Calvin. The Article proceeds to say, that "man is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit. And this infec tion of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated, whereby the lust of the flesh... is not subject to the law of God:" the Article does not pronounce with the Calvinists, that man of his own nature can perform nothing but evil, but that he is inclined to evil; a doctrine fundamentally different, since an inclination, though

strong, may be conquered. The continuance of "this infection of nature," even in those who are baptised, and the constant lusting of the flesh against the Spirit, are here asserted, generally and indiscriminately, without any declaration that either the Spirit or the flesh invariably and necessarily prevails in any particular description of persons. It cannot therefore be pretended that this Article gives any countenance to the Calvinistic notions of sinless obedience and unspotted purity in the elect, and of incorrigible pollution and inevitable wickedness in the reprobate.

Before we dismiss this Article, it may be proper to observe, that the Schoolmen () considered " original righteousness" not as a part of the primitive nature of man, but as an adventitious ornament or additional gift from God to Adam and that the Fall consisted in God's withdrawing this ornament or gift, and in leaving him to his own real unassisted nature. This idea has been adopted by very few of our English divines, by far the greater number maintaining, that the Fall produced a positive depravation of the moral and intellectual powers of man. And indeed the words of the Article seem scarcely reconcileable with the scholastic notion; "Original Sin is the

(1) Scholastici disputant quod justitia originalis non fuerit connaturalis, sed, ceu ornatus quidam additus homini tanquam donum. Luth. Op. v. 6. p. 38.

corruption of the nature of every man; " if human nature was corrupted, it must have been altered, depraved—a change for the worse must have been made in the nature of man, and not merely a superinduced quality removed. If original righteousness, in the opinion of our Reformers, had consisted in a supernatural gift, and the Fall in the removal of that gift, they would have said, " whereby man has lost original righteousness," and not," whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness: " still less would they have said, that, in consequence of the Fall, "man is of his own nature inclined to evil," because, according to the doctrine of the Schoolmen, man at his original formation inclined to evil, and was only restrained by the influence of a superadded quality. "This infection of nature, continues the Article, doth remain:" there was, then, according to the Church of England, an infection of nature at the Fall, that is, the original nature of man became then actually depraved. There is not a single passage in the Old or new Testament, which, in its plain and obvious sense, favours the idea of a superinduced quality, or adventitious aid conferred on Adam prior to the Fall, over and above what really belonged to his nature; and as this opinion seems to militate against the words of the Article, I do not think it necessary

E 3

necessary to discuss the texts which by a forced construction have been made to apply to it (m).

In the Article upon Free-will, it is said, "The condition of man after the Fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God;" that is, A man cannot by his own natural faculties and unassisted exertions, so counteract and correct the imperfection and corruption derived from the Fall of Adam, as to be able of himself to acquire that true and lively faith which would secure his salvation, or to

(m) Whoever wishes to see the arguments urged in favour of this opinion, may read Archbishop King's Sermon on the Fall of Man, and Bishop Bull's Discourse concerning the First Covenant and the State of Man before the Fall. These two are, I believe, the only authors of distinction, who have supported this opinion. The subject is also treated very fully by Gerhardus de Pec. Or. cap. 5, and the opposite opinion clearly established. It ought however to be mentioned, that although Bishop Bull maintained "that our First Parents, besides the seeds of natural Virtue and Religion sown in their minds in their very creation, and besides the natural innocence and rectitude wherein also they were created, were endowed with certain Gifts and Powers supernatural," of which they were deprived in consequence of their eating the forbidden fruit, yet he admitted that the natural Powers of man were vitiated by the Fall: defectus illi omnes atque infirmitates, quæ prorsus necessario profluunt a vitioso humani corporis temperamento primum peccatum consecuto. App. ad Exam, Animad. Sect. 13.

17.