system of moral government, in which he has an important station to fill and high duties to perform. We find him placed in certain relations to a great moral Governor, who presides over this system of things, and to a future state of being, for which the present scene is intended to prepare him. These two parts of his mental constitution we perceive to be remarkably distinct from each other. The former may be in vigorous exercise in him who has little feeling of his moral condition; and the latter may be in a high state of culture in the man who, in point of intellectual acquirement, knows little beyond the truths which it most concerns him to know,-those great but simple principles which guide his conduct as a responsible being.'

VII. There is, also, an adaptation in the mental powers of the soul to be operated upon by the Spirit of God, in the production of this change. This adaptation belongs also to the means employed by the Spirit. For there is certainly a suitableness in the rational nature of man to be operated upon by the force of truth; or no additional guilt * Abercrombie on the Moral Feelings, pp. 15, 16.

could be incurred by a rejection of the gospel. If no such adaptation existed, the gospel might as well be preached to stocks and stones. Its proclamation would not be "the wisdom of God in a mystery;" but the mere arbitrary will of God. It would be in its nature the same as though God should command his ministering servants to go daily and water pebbles, expecting them to grow; or sow seed on the naked surface of a rock. Therefore the "simple external demonstration of the divine word ought, indeed, to be fully sufficient for the production of faith, if it were not obstructed: by our blindness and perverseness."+ "Faith has a perpetual relation to the word, and can no more be separated from it, than the rays from the sun, whence they proceed." Our opponents may here be called upon to inform us how they account for the powerful effects, which it is well known the word frequently, produces upon a natural conscience? To what principle or cause do they refer that mighty energy of the word upon a natural man, which almost persuades some to become Christians, causes some to tremble, and drives others to.

* Calvin's Inst. B. 3. C. 2. S. 33:

+ lb. S. 6.

despair? How do they reach the conscience of the sinner, by the proclamation of the gospel, if there be no adaptation in his intellectual powers to be operated upon by the word of truth? If their view be correct, on what principle will it be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom, Tyre and Sidon, than for Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin? Does not their doctrine represent God as punishing men for their abuse and rejection of means which had no suitableness to their intellectual powers as rational, and therefore accountable agents? But this is not Christianity. It is not the doctrine of the Reformers. It justifies the Arminian caricature of Calvinism. That moral disease of our nature which is the opposite of regeneration is depravity; and under whatever degree of disability natural men may now lie, it is in the first instance the effect, not the cause of depravity. Hence it is, that a high degree of scriptural knowledge may consist in a natural state equally with ignorance. "Nor do we agree with those, who so inconsiderately assert, that man is no more disposed for regeneration, than a stone or an irrational animal; for there are naturally such faculties in the soul of man as render him a fit subject of re

generation, which are not to be found in stones and brutes. Thus a man can be regenerated, but a brute or stone cannot."*

VIII. The same truth is also discovered by a comparison of the moral qualities of regenerated persons with those which belong to men in a natural state. The knowledge of the one is saving; John xvii. 3; that of the other is brutish, Jude 10. The one are wise to do evil, Jer. iv. 22; the other are wise unto salvation, 2 Tim. iii. 15. The one make choice of the world, Luke xii. 19, the other prefer God, Ps. cxiii. 5. The one choose to obey their own will, Jer. xliv. 17; the other take the will of God for their rule, Acts ix. 6. The one love the world, 1 John iii. 15; the other love God, Ps. xviii. 1. The one desire to be free from the restraint of the divine law, Ps. ii. 3; the other desire to keep the law, Ps. cxix. 5. The one delight in the service of Satan, Eph. ii. 2, 3; the other in the service of God, Ps. xxvii. 4. In all these points of difference between the righteous and the wicked the understanding, will, and affections are the same, the agent is the same, only acting in a different manner, from different principles and motives. This is Witsius, Vol. 2. p. 53.

a farther proof of the doctrine laid down in the preceding section. For if there be no adaptation in the soul to be operated upon by the word, in the regenerating act, it is surely necessary, in order to regeneration, that a new soul should be given to men. This point is the more insisted upon, because,-1. It has been denied. 2. If there be no such adaptation, then of course there can be no instrumental suitableness in the word. 3. The objection brought against Calvinists, that they hold the doctrine of a physical change of the mental faculties, would be well founded. It is indeed, true that depravity is an ingrained quality, diffusing itself into all the faculties; still it is a moral quality, not a mental faculty. It neither changes the soul's essence, nor paralyzes the exercise of its faculties. It only pollutes them, and destroys their right exercise. To be spiritually dead, is to be dead in trespasses and sins, Eph. ii. 1. Consequently, the graces of the Spirit infused in regeneration also become ingrained qualities in the soul, restoring the faculties to right exercises.

IX. Still the Spirit does not at once wholly eradicate depravity. This is only done at the