merely to walk across the floor; that their faculties constitute a natural ability, that is, a full power to love and serve God IF their hearts were well disposed; [according to the common expression, You can if you will;] leaving nothing in the way but a bad heart, for which they are wholly to blame if there is any blame in the universe; that sin can rest no where but in the heart, and that if you drive it beyond the heart you drive it out of existence; that they alone create the necessity for God to conquer them, and to decide whether he will conquer them or not; that it is an everlasting blot on creation that God has to speak a second time to induce creatures to love him, much more that he has to constrain them by his conquering power, &c." That if was intended to express just what it does in the common phrase, You can if you will; namely, to throw all the blame upon the heart: and it was so explained. It was intended to wrest from the sinner the plea of inability, by telling him that he would find power enough on hand as soon as he should attempt the work with a right temper. And if you say, this right temper is the very thing to be accomplished; no matter this form of presenting the subject is calculated to bring it home to the sinner that nothing is in the way but that for which he is wholly to blame. And if any thing, in the form of motives, can tend to his conviction and humiliation, it must be this. Lay the question of efficiency aside: we both hold to the use and necessity of motives. And when motives of such a tendency are brought forward, let it never again be said, in proof of their inutility and nonsense, that the good temper is the very thing to be accom

"You

plished, and, what is the power where the temper is wholly dependent on God? This is constantly said, in different forms, by our brethren of this school. The reviewer makes definition of ability to amount to this, my have full power to make yourselves new hearts-if they were already new.' ""* No definition of power will satisfy them but that which excludes divine efficiency. My if, I allow, belonged rather to familiar than to philosophical language but the whole paragraph expressed the highest natural ability that ever was or could be held by a believer in divine efficiency,-the highest that ever was dreampt of by the mass of New-England divines. And yet the reviewer, full indeed of courtesy and grace of style and proofs of mind, makes his appeal—but hear him. "We cannot in this connexion pass over a very remarkable passage in Dr Griffin's Letter, App. p. 159, in which the nature of man's inability and dependence on the influences of the Spirit, is stated in a manner which we had never expected from the author of the Park-street Lectures. Their, [sinners'] faculties constitute a natural ability, that is, a full power to love and serve God IF their hearts were well disposed.' [Why did his quotation stop there?] Now we ask, is this the natural ability' of New-England divines? Is it on the ground of possessing such power merely, that sinners have been exhorted to give God their hearts at once, have been told that they were able to do it and were utterly inexcusable for a moment's delay ?-This statement of Dr Griffin is followed by another, which brings him, as far as we can see, directly on the ground of Evangelical *.38.

Arminians. They, [sinners,] are bound to go forth to their work at once, but they are not bound to go alone : it is their privilege and DUTY to cast themselves instantly on the Holy Ghost, and not to take a single step in their own strength.' App. p. 161. Now it is not possible, we apprehend, to invent any statement more directly contradictory than this to the fundamental principle of NewEngland Calvinism. That principle is, that man is in himself a free agent, [and who said he was not?] and not made such by the influence of the Spirit; that he is bound as a free-agent to go forth at once to the work of obeying God, in the exercise of power conferred in creation and not superinduced by grace, that is, to go ALONE; that, as a complete moral agent in himself considered, he is bound to obey God in his own strength, this being made in the law the very measure of his obedience.-Upon all these points Dr Griffin has explicitly contradicted his brethren and taken sides with their opposers." In a note he introduces the younger Edwards as saying that a man can remove his moral inability, and has "power to the contrary act in every instance of choice," and can choose in opposition to what at present is the greatest apparent good.* This is only saying that a sinner, while he hates and while sin appears the most attractive, has power to love. Now if you mean by power a full and proper basis of obligation, I shall be the last to deny that; for otherwise the sinner could not be bound or blamed or punished. But if you mean by power an ability that works without divine efficiency, I hope I shall be the last to believe that. And I

* 37-40.

know that the younger Edwards held to no such thing. He was my preceptor in theology, and he taught a very different system. And every body knows that the mass of New-England divines from the beginning have acknowledged no such doctrine.

There is no difference between me and the reviewer about natural ability, except that I place it in the faculties of a mind dependent on God for holiness, and he places it in faculties that move themselves to holy action without divine efficiency. And with this essential departure from the track of New-England divines, he makes this daring appeal to them against their own known doctrines and dialect. I should not have noticed this in a writer with a manner in all other respects worthy of imitation, had I not observed the same thing in many instances of late. It is a common practice with writers of this school to make confident appeals to Edwards and Smalley and Dwight and the New-England divines at large as their coadjutors, when they are as far from these divines as Arminianism is from Calvinism. Is this fair? is this honest? It may serve a purpose, but is it right? It is far from my heart to wish to cast any reflections, but as an humble individual I do entreat that this practice may be discontinued. Let there be no wrapping up of errour under orthodox terms. Let none be afraid or

There is a radical

ashamed to speak out on either side. division in our churches, and let it appear. Concealment, for the sake of holding together, will only corrupt the whole rass. Whatever it costs, let every man speak the truth, the whole truth, and leave the event with God.

In regard to going alone, my opinion is, that every unregenerate man, without the least delay, ought to cast himself upon the strength of God, like an infant falling into its mother's arms, and to go on in holiness from that moment, saying as he goes, "My soul, wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him." Is this language new to the land of the Pilgrims? It has been in it as long as the voice of prayer. Is it a late thing in NewEngland to caution men against depending on their own strength? It has been the common dialect from the days of Cotton and Hooker. It must be the dialect of all who

"Wait on

believe in divine efficiency. But this language is no denial of natural ability, as consisting in faculties which are the proper basis of obligation. When we speak of casting ourselves on the strength of God, we do not mean in order to help out our natural ability, but to obtain moral power. Have not good men in all ages cast themselves on God for moral strength? How was it in the days of David and Isaiah? "It is God that girdeth me with strength and maketh my way perfect." the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thy heart wait, I say, on the Lord." "My strength and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee." "Surely, (shall one say,) in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." "The Lord is my strength and song, and is become my salvation.” "Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." And do not Christians cast themselves on God for moral strength every time they pray for sanctification?

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