equal to four. The decisions of the intelligence, then, are not free acts; indeed, they are not acts at all, in the proper sense of the word. They are passive states of the intellect. They are usually called acts, it is true; and this use of language is, no doubt, one of the causes which has given rise to so many errors and delusions in regard to moral and accountable agency. With every decision or state of the intelligence, with every per ception of truth by it, there is intimately associated, it is true, an act of the mind, a state of the will, a volition, by which the attention is directed to the subject under consideration; and it is this intimate association in which the two states or mental phenomena seem blended into one, which has led so many to regard the passive susceptibility, called the intelligence, as an active power, and its states as free acts of the mind. A more correct analysis, a finer discrimination of the real facts of consciousness, must prevail on this subject, before light can be let in upon the philosophy of free and accountable agency. The dividing knife must be struck between the two phenomena in question, between an active state of the will and the passive states of the intelligence, and the obstinate association be severed in our imagination, before the truth can be seen otherwise than through distorting films of error.

As every state of the intelligence is necessitated, so God may act upon this department of our mental frame without infringing upon the nature of man in the slightest possible degree. As the law of necessity is the law of the intelligence, so God may absolutely necessitate its states, by the presentation of truth, or by his direct and irresistible agency in connexion with the truth, without doing violence to the laws of our intellectual and moral nature. Nay, in so acting, he proceeds in perfect. conformity with those laws. Hence, no matter how deep a human soul may be sunk in ignorance and stupidity, God may flash the light of truth into it, in perfect accordance with the laws of its nature. And, as has been well said, "The first effect of the divine power in the new, as in the old creation, is light."

This is not all. Every state of the sensibility is a passive inpression, a necessitated phenomenon of the human mind. No matter what fact, or what truth, may be present to the mind, either by its own voluntary attention or by the agency of God,

or by the coöperation of both, the impression it makes upon the sensibility is beyond the control of the will, except by refusing to give the attention of the mind to it. Hence, although truth may be vividly impressed upon the intelligence, although the glories of heaven and the terrors of hell may be made to shine into it, yet the sensibility may remain unaffected by them. It may be dead. Hence, God may act upon this, may cause it to melt with sorrow or to glow with love, without doing violence to any law of our moral nature. There is no difficulty, then, in conceiving that the second effect of the divine power in the new creation is "a new heart."

Having done all this, he may well call on us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for God worketh in us to will and to do of his own good pleasure." We have seen that the state of the will, that a volition is not necessitated by the intelligence or by the sensibility; and, hence, it may "obey the heavenly vision," or it may "resist and do despite to the Spirit of grace." If it obey, then the vivifying light and genial shower have not fallen upon the soul in vain. The free-will coalesces with the renovated intelligence and sensibility, and the man "has root in himself." The blossom gradually yields to the fruit, and the germ of true holiness is formed in the soul. This consists in the voluntary exercise of the mind, in obedience to the knowledge and the love of God, and in the permanent habit formed by the repetition of such exercises. Hence, in the great theandric work of regeneration, we see the part which is performed by God, and the part which proceeds from man.

This shows an absolute dependence of the soul upon the agency of God. For without knowledge the mind can no more perform its duty than the eye can see without light; and without a feeling of love to God, it is as impossible for it to render a spiritual obedience, as it would be for a bird to fly in a vacuum. Yet this dependence, absolute as it is, does not impair the free-agency of man. For divine grace supplies, and must supply, the indispensable conditions of holiness; but it does not produce holiness itself. It does not produce holiness itself, because, as we have seen, a necessary holiness is a contradiction in terms.

Is it not evident, then, that those who assert the impossibility of a divine influence, on the ground that it would lestroy the

free-agency of man, have proceeded on a wonderful confusion of the phenomena of the human mind? Is it not evident that they have confounded those states of the intelligence and the sensibility, which are marked over with the characteristics of necessity, with those states of the will which inevitably suggest the ideas of freedom and accountability? But, strange as it may scem, the philosophers who thus shut the influence of the Divine Being out of the spiritual world, because they cannot reconcile it with the moral agency of man, do not always deny the influence of created beings over the mind. On the contrary, it is no uncommon thing to see philosophers and theologians, who begin by denying the influence of the Divine Spirit upon the human mind, in order to save the freedom of the latter, end by subjecting it to the most absolute dominion of facts, and cir cumstances, and motives.

SECTION III.

The Augustinian Platform, or view of the relation between the divine agency and the human.

The doctrine of Augustine, like that of Pelagius, was developed from the individual experience and consciousness of its author. The difference between them was, that the sensible experience of the one furnished him with only the human element of religion, which was unduly magnified by him; while the divine element was the great prominent fact in the consciousness of the other, who accordingly rendered it too exclusive in the formation of his views. The one elevated the human element of religion at the expense of the divine; the other permitted the majesty of the divine to overshadow the human, and cause it to disappear.

The causes which induced Augustine to take this sublime but one-sided view of religion may be easily understood. In the early part of his life, he abandoned himself to vicious excesses; being hurried away, to use a metaphor, by the violence of his appetites and passions. His conscience, no doubt, often reproved him for such a course of life, and gave rise to many resolutions of amendment. But experience taught him that he could not transform and mould his own character at pleasure. He lacked those views of truth, and those feelings of reverence

and love to God, without which true obedience is impossible. Hence he struggled in vain. He felt his own impotency. He still yielded to the importunities of appetite and passion. Of a sudden, however, he finds his views of divine things changed, and his religious sensibilities awakened. He knows this marvellous transformation is not effected by himself. He ascribes it, and he truly ascribes it, to the power of God; by which he has been brought from a region of darkness to light. Old things had passed away, and all things become new.

But now observe the precise manner in which the error of Augustine takes its rise in his mind. He, too, as well as Pelagius, confounds the passive susceptibility of the heart with a voluntary state of the will. The intelligence and the sensibility are the only elements in his psychology; the states of them, which are necessitated, constitute all the phenomena of the human mind. Holiness, according to him, consists in a feeling of love to God. He knows this is derived from the divine. agency; and hence he concludes, that the whole work of conversion is due to God, and no part of it is performed by himself. I know, says he, that I did not make myself love God, by which he means a feeling of love; and this he takes to be true holiness, which has been wrought in his heart by the power of God. "Love is the fulfilling of the law; but love to God is not shed abroad in our hearts by the law, but by the IIoly Ghost." He is sure the whole work is from God, because he is sure that the intelligence and the sensibility are the whole of

man. How many excellent persons are there, who, taking their stand upon the same platform of a false psychology, proceed to dogmatize with Augustine as confidently as if the only possible ground of difference from them was a want of the religious experience of the Christian consciousness, by which they have been so eminently blessed. We deny not the reality of their Christian experience; but we do doubt the accuracy of their interpretation of it.

Thus, the complex fact of consciousness, consisting in a state of the sensibility and a state of the will, was viewed from opposite points by Pelagius and Augustine. The voluntary phase of it was seen by Pelagius, and hence he became an exclusive and one-sided advocate of free-agency; the passive side was beheld by Augustine, and hence he became a one-sided and

exclusive advocate of divine grace. If we would possess the truth, and the whole truth, we must view it on all sides, and give a better interpretation of the natural consciousness of the one, as well as the supernatural consciousness of the other, than they themselves were enabled to give. Then shall we not instinctively turn to one-sided views of revelation. Then shall we not always repeat with Pelagius, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," nor always exclaim with Augustine, that "God worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure;" but we shall with equal freedom and readiness approach and appropriate both branches of the truth.

SECTION IV.

The views of those who, in later times, have symbolized with Augustine.

Those divines who have adopted, in the main, the same leading views with Augustine, have generally admitted the fact of free-agency; but, because they could not reconcile it with their leading tenet, they have, as we have seen, explained it away. The only freedom which they allow to man, pertains, as we have shown, not to the will at all, but only to the external sphere of the body. They have maintained the great fact in words, but rejected it in substance. Though they have seen the absurdity of rejecting one fact because they could not reconcile it with another, yet their internal struggle after a unity and harmony of principle has induced them to deny, in reality, what they have seemed to themselves to preserve and maintain. We have seen, in the first chapter of this work, in what manner this has been done by them; it now remains to take a view of the subject, in connexion with the point under consideration.

The man who confounds the sensibility with the will should, indeed, have no difficulty in reconciling the divine agency with the human. If the state of the mind in willing is purely passive, like a state of the mind in feeling; then to say that it is produced by the power of God, would create no difficulty whatever. Hence, the great difficulty of reconciling the human with the divine agency, which has puzzled and perplexed so many, should not exist for one who identifies the will with the sensibility; and it would exist for no one holding this psychology,