view of the divine requirement, to impress its obligation on the conscience.

When too the author maintains the absolute necessity of using the means of regeneration, even of that use of them which he pronounces wrong and sinful, it amounts, in our own estimation, to asserting the absolute necessity of doing evil that good may come ;' to inculcating continuance in sin, as an indispensable preliminary to the performance of duty. That such a necessity should exist under the government of God, is to us incredible. Nor can we reconcile it with the obligation of immediate holiness. For the necessity asserted is a natural necessity, since by such necessity "the love-cannot be exercised until its object be brought before the understanding;" and the necessity that a sinner should sin in bringing the object before the understanding, is, if we rightly apprehend our author, the necessity that an act done from a wicked heart,' should be sinful. In both cases no power to the contrary is supposable, and therefore the necessity of committing sin in order to become holy is a natural necessity, which alike excuses the sin and justifies present disobedience to the divine requirement.

Again, when Dr. Spring confines all the probability of regeneration to the sinful use of the means of regeneration, we think he takes away every reason for any attempt at the immediate performance of duty which can affect a rational being; and that no motive, properly so called, remains to any immediate act or acts, except a sinful use of the means of regeneration. The sinner is assured that no good will in fact result to him from any other course; and what then can induce him to adopt any other? This seems to be presenting not only a powerful motive to sin, but one which will render void, according to the nature of the human mind, every influence to the immediate performance of duty. For why should a man attempt what he knows will not be done until he has first sinfully used the means of doing it?

We have thus frankly stated difficulties with which some of Dr. Spring's positions embarrass the inculcation of immediate holiness on sinners. We do not think that he has made our way clear to the conscience and the heart, with the call to immediate repentance. We regard these embarrassing positions of the author, as inadvertencies into which the mind of a writer is liable to fall, when strongly fixed on some single view of his subject, and which, had he contemplated it under other relations, he would have successfully avoided. These positions are not peculiar to Dr. S. but are to be found in other writers of distinction. We doubt not that if the subject can

be disencumbered of these difficulties, and an unobstructed entrance into the mind of the sinner can be opened to the commands of the Most High, an important service will be rendered to the cause of truth and religion. This we shall venture to attempt, by exhibiting at some length our own views of the general subject.

I. We begin with some explanatory remarks. That the acts and doings of unregenerate men which are designated by Dr. Spring and many others, as those which constitute using the means of regeneration are sinful, we have already expressed our full conviction. That these acts should be accurately described in their principle and their nature, that sinners may have knowledge of their moral quality and condemning power, is also in our view of great practical utility. But the error, the grand error on this subject. as we regard it, is, that these acts and doings which are so obviously sinful, and therefore forbidden by divine authority should be called using the means of regeneration, and be pronounced (as indeed using the means of regeneration must be) of indispensable necessity to regeneration itself. The truth is, as we shall attempt to show. that according to all correct usage of terms these acts of the sinner are not using-they are, and Dr. Spring adopts the designation in one instance, abusing the means of regeneration.

The question then naturally arises, what are the acts which constitute using the means of regeneration? We answer, that by using the means of regeneration we do not understand any acts, which either precede or are to be distinguished from regeneration itself, when this term is used in its more common popular import; but we understand those acts which, together with another act, are in the more popular use of language, included under the term regeneration. Regeneration, considered as a moral change of which man is the subject-giving God the heart-making a new heart-loving God supremely &c., are terms and phrases which in popular use denote a cemplex act. Each in popular use denotes what in a more analytical mode of speaking may be viewed and described as made up of several particular acts and states of mind, or as a series of such acts and states; which are yet so related and connected, that for all ordinary purposes they are sufficiently defined when spoken of in combination and as constituting ONE ACT under one name. Indeed it is of this combination or series of mental acts only, that moral quality can be predicated; since no one act of the process viewed abstractly from the other acts, can be a moral act. The act of the

will or heart viewed abstractly from the acts of intellect, is not moral, nor are the acts of the intellect viewed abstractly from the act of the will or heart. That the preference of God to all other objects of affection may be a moral act, it must be, and in all ordinary speech is assumed to be, an intelligent preference. For the homage of beings who are intelligent as well as voluntary, and who can estimate the comparative worth of objects, is the homage which honors God, and which he claims as a moral governor. Indeed what we are now saying of the words and phrases under consideration is true of all complex words, such as walk, sit, read, write, &c. These words in all ordinary speech and writing, are used to denote one act, and yet this one act includes a process of mental acts, consisting of the perception and comparison of motives, the estimate of their relative worth, and the choice or willing of the external action. Of course the complex act, denoted by a single word may be, it often is, for necessary purposes, analysed or separated into its several parts, and the complex term is applied to one or more of these parts, as the object of the speaker may require. But we shall have occasion to resume this topic hereafter.

In respect to the mode of divine operation in producing a change of heart, we are averse to indulging in speculation. The Scriptures, however, 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. Any views which contravene in any respect either of these positions, we regard as unscriptural. That the influence of the Divine Spirit in regeneration, accords in the mode of it with the laws of moral agency and the nature of moral action, is apparent from the distinct recognition in the Scriptures of this change as the sinner's duty and the sinner's act, as his act done in obedience to the divine will, in view of his obligations and in the exercise of his powers as a moral being.* That the change is through the truth, and implies attention to the truth-the sober solemn consideration of the objects which truth discloses, prior to the requisite act of the will or heart, will not be doubted by the reader of the sacred volume.

We

When however we speak of the priority of these mental acts, we refer rather to the order of nature than of time. are aware that the progress of thought and feeling is often as

* Ezek. xviii. 31. Matt. xxiii. 26. James, iv. 8. Eph. iv. 24. Col. iii. 10. I Peter, i. 22.

rapid as that of light, and we no more intend to affirm any measurable duration between the first and last act in the series, than when we say the sun must exist before it can shine. On this point it is indispensable, if we would not dispute about mere words, to consider the popular looseness of such terms and phrases, as before, after, immediate, as soon as, Sc; and to remember that the degree of definiteness intended, is to be decided not by the mere words, but by the known object of the speaker. Thus in a case in which some unusual precision of thought is required, we should say the sun must have existed before it shone; while in another case, in which the same precision of ideas is not required, we should say with equal truth and propriety, the sun shone as soon as it existed. In the one case the object would require that the priority be noticed by the form of speaking; in the other it would not. So in the present case, when we speak of the priority of certain mental acts to the act of the will, it is because, as we shall show hereafter, our object requires this precision of thought and expression. At the same time we intend by it no such priority as renders it improper or untrue to speak, according to popular usage and the more ordinary purposes of instruction, of the entire series of acts as cotemporaneous, and as constituting ONE ACT under one term, regeneration; or to speak of it as one act, the immediate performance of which is required of the sinner.

Now from this more popular and comprehensive import of the term regeneration, we are obliged by the object in view, to depart when we speak of using the means of regeneration. As we shall have occasion to illustrate the reason and necessity of this departure in another part of the discussion, we would merely remark here, that we suppose the distinction between using the means of regeneration, and regeneration itself, is a theological rather than a scriptural distinction; and that it has been made solely for the purpose of obviating, what would otherwise be a very formidable objection to the performance of immediate duty, in view of the doctrine of the sinner's dependence. This objection we suppose to be founded wholly in a false analytical view of the mode of the sinner's dependence, and that therefore it can be refuted only by a similar method of discussion.

Accordingly when we speak of the means of regeneration, 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 governing affection or purpose of the man, which consecrates him to the service and glory of God.*

In thus confining the term regeneration to the act of the will or heart, when we speak of using the means of regeneration, we do not intend to decide any minute questions respecting the precise thing done by the agency of the Spirit; nor whether his interposition does or does not influence other acts beside that of the will or heart. All that our present object requires us to say on these topics is, that regeneration in the popular import of the term is an event which depends on the interposition of the Holy Spirit ;-that it so depends on this interposition, that whatsoever part of that process of mental acts and states which, in the popular use of the term, constitute regeneration, is produced by this divine interposition, some part of the process is preliminary to such interposition, and preliminary also to that which, in the limited use of the word, may be called regeneration; and that whatever acts be regarded as thus preliminary, they are to be regarded and spoken of either as using the means of grace, or as using the means of regeneration. Allowing these things to be so, we have no controversy here with any who may prefer to include more than the act of the will or heart in the term regeneration, when they speak of using the means of regeneration.

Applying the word regeneration then in some limited import, not precisely defined, we affirm that there are and must be certain mental acts and states, which in the order of nature at least precede regeneration; or which precede, as we propose to use the term regeneration, that act of the will or heart, in which God is preferred to every other object. Of these mental acts and states, our object does not require, that we give an accurate analysis. It is sufficient for our purpose, to show that there are such acts and states, and that we so far discribe them, that it may be understood, what class of mental acts we designate' as preliminary to regeneration, and as constituting using the means of regeneration. We proceed to say then, that before the act of the will or heart in which the sinner first prefers God to every other object, the object of the

* We are aware that some writers have excluded from the word regeneration, the moral change of which man is the subject. Dr. Hopkins uses the term to denote simply the operation of God, in distinction from the effect, which he calls conversion. This however, we think is not the most common import of the term regeneration. It is certainly not its import when we speak, as almost all theological writers do, of the nature of regeneration, of the author of regeneration, of the means of regeneration, &c. In its ordinary import, it denotes a moral change in man produced by the Holy Spirit, and we have designed to use the word in this sense in every instance.