obedience demanded by the moral law. They dwell much on what they complacently term their inability to obey the whole law, and shield their delinquencies under the pretence that the milder institute of the gospel is satisfied with their sincerity. The worthlessness of this sincerity is ably demonstrated by Edwards in his Treatise on the Will; and the identity of moral obligation under the law and the gospel, is most convincingly shown by our author. Omilting, as we necessarily must, the various reasonings by which he establishes this point, we present the following passage, in which he shows that all religion built on the supposition that the law is not in force, is utterly selfish and without foundation. He is speaking of one whom he denominates a legal hypocrite.

Supposing that the good old law is repealed and laid aside, and that a new law, only requiring sincere obedience, is established in its room, merely from self-love* and for self-ends, he sets about duty, and endeavors to be sincere ; and here on this foundation builds all his hopes of acceptance in the sight of God; for since the law is not repealed, but stands in full force, therefore the religion of such is not that thing which God requires or will accept; and their new law is a whim, and their hopes are all built on the sand. Their whole scheme results from a total ignorance of God, and his law, and the present state of mankind. p. 126.

We have long been convinced that it is owing to an Antimonian, or Neonomian spirit, or to a disposition inspired by both, that revivals of religion are so generally succeeded by long continued apathy and inertness, in the majority of those who profess to be the children of God. In more than one of our churches have we known persons, who upon being tenderly expostulated with for their lukewarmness, and exhorted to awake to righteousness, have repelled these labors of love, and justified their remissness, on the ground of their entire dependence on the Holy Spirit; maintaining it to be useless, if not foolish, to attempt the revival of zeal or effort, until excited by a higher power than their own. But how can this spirit of self-justification,-this utter destitution of a sense of criminality, under these circumstances be accounted for, but upon the principle that the moral law is regarded as being of little or no force? We are aware that few or none of these inert and slumbering professors

Dr. Bellamy here uses the word self-love, as synonymous with selfishness. But though his language is frequently thus ambiguous, nothing can be clearer, than that he never imagined the simple desire of happiness (in which sense the term self-love is now inore commonly used,) to be sinful. He makes (as we have seen above) a "regular self-love" to be the "measure" of our love to those around us. And, in vol. I. p. 203, he describes that other self-love wh ch he represents as sinful, to be "seeking happiness not in God, but in something else." Thus the sin, according to Dr. Bellamy, lies precisely where we stated it to lie, in our remarks on the Means of Regeneration, in preferring some other object (something else") to God, as a source of happiness. Like Edwards, whose disciple he was, Dr. Bellamy assumes it as a fundamental principe in all his writings, that "the will is as the greatest apparent good,” or in other words, that man seeks happiness in every voluntary act.

of religion, would acknowledge themselves to be Antimonians in sentiment, but it cannot be otherwise, than that they are so in feeling. Dr. Bellamy observes,

There is doubtless, many a man that feels, and acts, and lives, as if the law was abated, who yet will not plead for that doctrine. So, doubtless, there is many a man that feels, and acts, and lives, as if the law wholly ceased to be a rule of life, who yet will not venture to say so. The force of education and their worldly interest and credit keep men, many times from showing what they are by an open profession: however, secretly this temper reigns within them; yea, sometimes it breaks out into open light, in their visible conduct. p. 118.

All religious declensions arise from a diminished sense of the obligations of the law. As the essence of religion consists preeminently in the spirit of obedience, it necessarily follows that our spiritual feelings can decline only as the principle of obedience decays. And it is equally clear that this decay is impossible, except as the christian's views of his obligations become indistinct or distorted. The pious members of every church would be uniformly vigilant and active in the cause of their master, and their zeal in well-doing, so visible in a season of revival, would never abate, did they not, in spite of their speculative aversion to Antinomianism, actually degenerate into a state of mind, which approximates far more early than they imagine to that destructive scheme. We could wish, therefore, that every pulpit in our land were earnestly employed in showing the people of God, that it is wholly owing to their criminal indifference or opposition to the eternally binding law of God as given by Moses, that religion has so little influence and lustre in most of our churches; and that the course pursued by multitudes of their members, bears so disgraceful a resemblance to the following picture of lukewarm professors, drawn by the masterly pencil of Mr. Wilberforce. They begin indeed, in submission to the clear prohibitions of religion, by fencing off from the field of human action a certain district, which, though it in many parts bear fruits on which they cast a longing eye, they cannot but confess to be forbidden ground. They next assign to religion a portion, larger or smaller according to whatever may be their circumstances and views, in which however she is to possess merely a qualified jurisdiction, and having so done, they conceive that without let or hindrance they have a right to range at will over the spacious remainder."

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We have said that many who claim to be christians, and who perhaps are such, but in a state of deep declension, are displeased with faithful rebuke, and the presentation of incitements to duty. And yet, would it be thought, not a few of them make great pretensions to spirituality, speak much of their views and feelings and

comforts, and are satisfied with no meeting and no minister that does not excite their passions, and make them feel happy. As there were multitudes of this class in our churches nearly ninety years ago, so there are many now, with some of them we have long been personally acquainted; and although we have rarely found any so extravagantly inconsistent as those who disturbed the churches in the time of Dr. B. yet the resemblance is such as to justify the citation of the following description of an individual belonging to this class, as it will clearly show that the errors of all such religionists arise from wrong conceptions of the moral law.

He understands nothing rightly as to what the law requires; he is neither sensible of his duty to God, nor to his fellow nien; yea, he hates to hear any thing about law or duty. It is all gl, he cries, and tends to kill reIgon, and to wound werk christians, and grieve and dr ve away the spirit of grare; and no preaching suits his taste, but what consists in telling over and commending such experiences as his, and in setting forth the love of God and Christ to such, and calling upon such to believe and rejoice, and never doubt their state again. And in general, those things which tend to strengthen his confidence and increase his joy. he esteems right and good; and all things of a contrary tendency he esteems wrong and bad. This seems to be his only criterion of right and wrong, and the only rule he makes use of in drawing up a judgment, but as for the law, it is of no use with him. p. 117, 118.

For a fuller view of other uses and perversions of the divine law, we must refer our readers to the work itself, of which we can only give a general account.

We have already had occasion in a review of Taylor and Harvey to refer, though very briefly, to the views of Dr. B. respecting the commencement and nature of human depravity. The interest

which this subject is fitted to excite, and the singular fact that his authority has been appealed to by men of directly opposite opinions, together with the nature of our present undertaking, conspire to render it proper that we should state more fully, the sentiments of one, whose characteristic perspicuity is as great in the discussion of this subject, as in his treatment of any other.

The question at issue is, whether man is a sinner antecedently to any wrong volition, or in other words, whether sin exists previously to any unholy preference or choice. After speaking of various affections, which in the unrenewed heart are wholly of a selfish kind, Dr. B. proceeds to say,

These are the earliest dispositions that are discovered in our nature: and although I do not think that they are concreated by God together with the essence of our souls, yet they seem to be the very first propensities of the new-made soul. So that they are in a sense, connatural; our whole hearts are perfectly and entirely bent this way, from their very first motion. These propensities, perhaps, in some sense, may be said to be

contracted, in opposition to their being strictly and philosophically natural, because they are not created by God with the essence of the soul, but result from its native choice, or rather, more strictly, are themselves its native choice. But most certainly these propensities are not contracted in the sense that many vicious habits are; namely, by long use and custom. In opposition to such vicious habits, they may be called connatural. Little children do very early bad things, and contract bad dispositions; but these propensities are evidently antecedent to every bad thing infused or instilled by evil examples, or gotten by practice, or occasioned by temptations. And hence, it is become customary to call them natural, and to say that it is our very nature to be so inclined: and to say that these propensities are natural, would to common people be the most apt way of expressing the thing; but it ought to be remembered that they are not natural in the same sense as the faculties of our souls are: for they are not the workmanship of God, but are our native choice, and the voluntary, free, spontaneous bent of our hearts. And to keep this distinction, I frequently choose to use the word native, instead of natural. p. 201, 202.

Now we see not how any language could express the fact more fully and clearly, that sin commences and wholly consists in voluntary exercises and acts. Dr. Bellamy does not, and how could he decide precisely when sinful exercises commence; though according to him, it cannot be till after the soul is formed, because they "are not concreated" with it; and yet it must be before the soul can be corrupted by extraneous influence, for "these propensities are evidently antecedent to every bad thing infused or instilled by evil examples," etc. There is a space then, in the order of nature, between the creation of the soul and the commencement of depravity. But does he not affirm that evil dispositions are" connatural?" He does; but with this restriction, that "they are, in a sense, connatural." And in what sense, it is the express design of the very next words to show. "Our whole hearts are perfectly and entirely bent this way, from their very first motion." But what can he mean by the first motion of the heart, but its first moral act? He means then, that the inclinations or "bent" of the heart towards evil is not prior to, but coeval with, its first accountable "motion" or act, and that in this sense, its sinful propensities are connatural. But indeed, are this inclination and this act, distinct and separate things? Certainly not. According to our author they are not only coincident in point of time, but identical in their nature. For he says, "these propensities are not created by God with the essence of the soul, but result from its native choice, or rather, more strictly, are themselves its native choice." There is no sin therefore till the soul forms a wrong choice; and that choice when formed, is itself the sin. That we do not misunderstand him, is certain from his own declaration. "They (our first evil propensities) are not the workmanship of God, but are our native CHOICE, and the voluntary, free, spontaneous bent of our bearts."

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But it has been said that his object in the whole passage above cited, was to deny, "that depravity was originally created in man as an essential property of his soul," and not to deny that it exists anterior to any voluntary act of the creature. Why then should he have expressly resolved it into that voluntary act? It must necessarily be the production of the Creator or of the creature; for we know of none who regard it as self-produced. Therefore, denying it to be created by the Almighty, as he was necessitated to do, unless he would represent it as being a physical quality, (which must have utterly destroyed its character, and rendered it as innocent as any other physical attribute of the soul,) there was nothing left him to assert, but the other side of the alternative, namely, that our sinful affections or propensities are "the voluntary, free, spontaneous bent of our hearts." And while he denies that they "strictly and philosophically natural," and chooses to apply to them "the word native instead of natural," he says, "these propensities, perhaps, in some sense may be said to be contracted." But can any thing be contracted by the soul before it acts? If we are not active in the process of contracting propensities, it is difficult to conceive how we can be active in any case. But Dr. B. shows both negatively and positively in what sense they are contracted. They are not contracted in the sense that many vicious habits are, namely, by long use and custom ;" and in the preceding sentence he had said that they "result from its (the soul's) native choice." In another part of this work, vol. I. p. 156, he says, in reply to the common objection that we are depraved by Adam's fall, and therefore cannot be to blame for our early moral corruptions, "it is in vain to make this or any other plea so long as we are what we are not by compulsion, but voluntarily. And it is in vain to pretend that we are not voluntary in our corruptions, when they are NOTHING ELSE but the free, spontaneous inclinations of our own hearts."

We come then, to the unavoidable conclusion, that in the view of our author, human depravity commences with moral agency. And if any of our readers think this latter begins very soon after birth, he has no controversy with them on this point, as we have already intimated. He admits, just after the paragraph which we have extracted, that "these dispositions are, as it were, born within us;" meaning by this quasi form of expression, merely that they exist as early as their subjects are capable of exhibiting any visible indications of them. Hence he observes, " that these dispositions are, as it were, thus born within us, is as evident from experience (observation?) as any thing of this kind can be; for these are the earliest disposi❤ tions that man's nature discovers." How much earlier they exist than they are disclosed to observers, he does not say.