Of the spiritual part of man it is more difficult to form just conceptions. You compare the soul to the body, and each faculty to some one member. Then you suppose that each faculty can act independently. You say that the will, considered as disjoined from the understanding, chooses. I affirm that a man can no more choose without mental discernment and thought, than the arms can move, or the legs walk, without some connexion, through the spinal marrow, with the brain.

Arm. Let him read his dissertation, and then, if you please, give your own extemporaneously. You are fond of preaching without notes.

Hop. "The exercise system supposes man to be constituted of body and spirit. Nothing appertaining to the body is of a moral nature, or can be either holy or sinful. Every thing purely animal in us, is as innocent as in the irrational creatures of God."

Cal. When you was a young man, and formed this system for yourself, you must have been either more or less than a man.

You do not pretend to be an angel: and I think the soul either wanted fire, or the veins blood, or the heart animal heat, or the eye the capability of beholding beauty, or, you would have exclaimed with Paul, when conscious of vile animal passions, and oppressed with what he calls a vile body. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death;" from this damning body?

Hop. "The spiritual part of man is constituted by the intellect, the will and conscience. Of these one only is a power of moral agency. The intellect is capable of separate action; but to perceive, think, compare, combine and remember, are not moral exercises. The conscience has its local residence in the animal heart, the intellect in the brain.* This conscience is natu

Emmons' Ser. p. 178.

ral, and not moral. In feeling, at the heart, that one thing is fight and another wrong, there is neither holiness nor sin. The will only is absolutely essential to constitute man a moral agent. Man must have a choice, before he can be holy or sinful. All those actions which include choice, however that choice may be caused, or rather every mental choice, is good or bad; is conformed to the moral law, or opposed to it.* These are moral actions, and because they consist in willing, are called, from volo, (I will,) VOLITIONS. "My son, give me thy heart," or thy volitions. Choose what is right. Love what you ought.

No new power or principle is required. It is simply love to God. In the very moment in which the sinner first has a right exercise, he is regenerated, turned about, or converted. From that time he who had no holy exercises now begins to have holy exercises, and consequently is the subject of partial sanctification. According to this system, each moral action is either a good or a bad one; a holy one or a sinful one. There is no mixture in the exercises. In the act of love to God, there is no hatred of God. There is no fellowship between light and dark

This doctrine of choice is not of modern invention; neither can its first publication be attributed to the advocates of a divine revelation. The infidel HOBBS taught, that "though the will be necessitated, yet the doing what we will is liberty. He is free to do a thing, who may do it if he have a will to do it, and may forbear, if he have the will to forbear, though the will to do the action be necessary, or though there be a necessity that he shall have a will to forbear. He who takes away the liberty of doing according to our wills, takes away the nature of sin: but he that denies the liberty to will doth not do so. The necessity of an action doth not make the law that prohibits it unjust; for it is not the necessity, but the will to break the law, that makes the action unjust, and what necessary cause soever precedes an action, yet if that action be forbidden, he that doth it willingly, may justly be punished." See Whitby on the five points, p. 360 and 361.

Another infidel, COLLINS, contended, that man's liberty consisted in choice, or in doing what we will, while destitute of the power of willing. In this manner virtue and vice are made to exist, while all things are fixed fast in fate. Clark's remarks on Collins, p. 14. HUME said that actions not proceeding from a permanent fixed cause, are neither virtuous nor vicious. Of course, man is not capable of moral good or evil.

Hume's Essays, Vol. 3. p. 149, 150,

ness, moral good and evil, Christ and Belial, the service of God and the service of Satan. We cannot, in the same single desire or intention, serve two masters. We cannot partly serve God and partly mammon, in the same mental action. So far as the believer loves God, he is holy. And so far as he loves him not in his exercises, that is, hates God, he is sinful. This leads us to show in what the mixed character, or the imperfection of the renewed person consists. According to the exercise scheme, the Christian's character is mixed, because he has some holy and some unholy exercises. His imperfection arises from the inconstancy of his holy exercises. If he was always loving God, he would be free from sin; he would be holy as the spirits of just men made perfect, are holy. It is absolutely certain that believers sin; and they cannot sin without having some desire or feeling, which is contrary to the divine law and pleasure.

This is the scheme of doctrine which we think is taught by the apostle Paul. He represents sin as a person, and calls sin "an exceeding sinner."* This is evidently a figure of speech, for sin literally is no person, but a thing of which a person is guilty. He speaks of sin as a person, and says that sin "taking opportunity under the commandment, wrought effectually in him, all strong desire," and "slew him." Once Paul had no spiritual knowledge of the law of God, and then he lived a selfrighteous Pharisee. "I was alive without law once; but when the commandment came, sin lived again, and I died." When he comprehended the extent and spirituality of the law, he died as a self-righteous man, for he saw that he was carnal, and subject to sin. "The law indeed is holy; and the commandment holy and just and good." "We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, being sold under sin. For what I thoroughly work, I do not approve. For I practise not that which I incline; but what I hate that I do. And if I do that which I incline not, I assent to the law that it is good."* the law to be holy, and himself sinful. of grace he hated sin, and this proved, that the law was good. Even when a converted person, he sometimes did, what he at

When converted he saw

When in the exercise

* Macknight's Translation.

other times hated, and disapproved. Under the influence of sin, he did what he wished not to do, when in the exercise of gracious affections. He could not do what he hated to do, while doing it, for in such a case he must at the same time have willed to do it, and not to do it; which is an absurdity.

"He could not at the same time hate and love, for that would be the same as to hate and not hate, which is impossible. Now, then, when I sin, "it is no more I who do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." I do not act as a converted person, but as an unconverted person. I do not act like the apostle Paul; but like Saul of Tarsus. I do not act from the influence of grace, but sin. It is sin, this exceeding sinner, which disobeys God. When I sin I do not obey my conscience, but yield to the inclinations of selfishness. I am tempted by my members, by my eyes, my ears, my sense of feeling, by this body of death, or, this mortal body, and yield to that very sin which I hate, when I am in the exercise of love to God. I purpose to be holy; I resolve to do good; but when the time comes in which I intended to do some good thing, then I find evil is present with me. Through the whole of this description the apostle seems to convey the idea, that he had a succession of holy, and unholy exercises. He does not say, that each exercise was partly a love and partly a hatred of what he did. But through the temptations to which his body subjected him, he was often blinded, and led captive by sin, when he did what his soul, in the exercise of love to God, perfectly hated. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit,” so that the Christian cannot do, when under the influence of sinful affections, what he would, when his desires are right with God. DR STRONG,* in his 2d vol. of sermons, page 260th says, concerning Paul, "In him there was holiness and unholiness alternating in exercise." Better words could not be chosen to represent the imperfections of Christians. I might cite the opinions of multitudes, and prove that the greater part of believers admit the imperfection of saints to consist in their having sinful exercises, when every exercise ought to be holy. But opinions are not arguments; and time will not admit of such citations.

NATHAN STRONG, D. D. of Hartford, Con.

"If any one object, that according to the last scheme a believer

may

fall from a state of grace: we reply; "this is not a consequence." Every one who has become a new man in Christ, shall persevere unto the end, shall not fail of salvation. Every one who has a little faith shall grow in faith and love. Every one, who has the beginning of a holy life, shall go on unto perfection, The four first schemes suppose that there is something in the nature of grace, or in the new heart, which ensures the saint's perseverance but the last relies upon the promise of God to keep his people unto the day of salvation. God has promised that although his children slide, yet they shall not utterly fall away. Where he has begun a good work he promises to carry it on unto perfection The promise and power of God we deem better security for final perseverance, than any thing in the new heart."

Arm. It certainly follows, from what you have said, that a good man may, or may not, persevere unto the end, and be saved. You have taught, that when a bad exercise is in being there is no holiness in the believer, and that when a good exercise is in being there is no sin in the agent. I am happy to learn, that the Hopkinsian and Arminian views of SANCTIFICATION harmonize.

Cal. Have you concluded your dissertation?

Hop. I have done show your opinion at large; for I am open to conviction.

Arm. I say, a saint to-day; a sinner to-morrow; or a friend this week, and perhaps an enemy the next; but these new fashioned Calvinists go beyond me. They say, sin and holiness are perpetually alternating in exercise; and a friend now, but in the twinkling of an eye, an unreconciled enemy. The only difference between us seems to be this; that I think the alternations of holy and sinful exercises may be somewhat longer than they will allow. They seat the sinner upon a short board, made fast on a pivot in the center, and like a child astride some fence, he rises or sinks alternately, to the ground while I produce a lever, as long as the father of mathematicians desired, on which the