moral precept in the scriptures is a proof that man has naturally a power of obeying it, and of insuring the reward annexed to the observance of it. Now moral precepts, with express sanctions of rewards and punishments, abound in the scriptures; and men are even expostulated with, in the most earnest manner, and persuaded to the practice of their duty, by the most solemn assurances, that God is not willing that any should perish, and by repeated warnings, that their destruction will lie at their own door; the general tenor of the preaching of the old prophets being, turn ye, turn ye, from your evil way, why will ye die, O ye house of Israel. Also, every thing that is of a moral nature in the New Testament is uniformly delivered in the same strain.

Notwithstanding this, it hath been imagined that all these representations are to be accommodated to a system, according to which, the whole race of mankind received so great an injury by the fall of Adam, that from that time none of his posterity have been capable even of forming a good thought, and much less of doing all that God requires of them; and moreover, that they are all so far involved in the consequences of his fall, and his sin is considered as so much their own (he being their representative, standing in their place, and acting for them) that they are even properly punishable for it and liable on that account to everlasting torment, though they had never sinned themselves.

It is be

lieved, however, that God hath been pleased to save certain individuals of mankind from this general ruin, but that it was not from any respect to the better character or conduct of such individuals, but of his mere free and arbitrary grace. It is also part of the same system, that every good thought and purpose, in the hearts even of those who are thus elected, is immediately inspired by God, and that without this continual assistance, to which they give the name of grace, no man has any choice but of evil, from the moment of his birth to his death.

It is not easy to imagine, a priori, what could have led men into such a train of thinking, so evidently contrary to the plain dictates of reason, and the most natural interpretation of scripture. There is, indeed, an appearance of humility in ascribing every thing that is good to God; but to ascribe to him, as all men must do, those powers by which we are enabled to perform good works, comes, in fact, to the same thing. What have we, as the apostle says, that

we have not received? How then are we the less indebted to God, whether he works all our works in us, and for us, by his own immediate agency, or does it mediately, that is, by means of those powers which he has given us for that purpose? With respect to the character of the Divine Being, it certainly loses more by the idea of the predestination of the greatest part of mankind to inevitable destruction, than it can gain by the belief of an arbitrary interference in favor of a few. The whole scheme, therefore, certainly tends to make the divine character and government appear less respectable, indeed execrable.*

In fact, it is probable that such a scheme as this, would never have entered into the mind of any man, who had been left to his own speculations on the subject, or to his study of the scriptures. Accordingly, we find that the principal parts of this system were first suggested in the heat of controversy; and when the mind was once prepossessed in favor of some of the maxims of it, the rest were gradually introduced to complete the scheme; and the scriptures as in all other cases, were afterwards easily imagined to favor the preconceived hypothesis.

Indeed, the more amiable part of the system, or that which ascribes every thing that is good immediately to God, without respect to second causes, has considerable countenance from the piety of the sacred writers; but their language on this subject, will appear to be as just as it is pious, when it is rightly interpreted. Many persons, no doubt, will be more easily reconciled to the doctrine of election by previ ously imagining that they themselves are in the number of the elect; and while they can thus fancy themselves to be the peculiar favorites of heaven, they can bear to consider the rest of mankind, as abandoned by the same being to a severer fate. Also, in general, all men are sufficiently inclined to look off from the dark and most objectionable side of any scheme of principles which they adopt.

With respect to the fall of Adam, all that we can learn from the scriptures, interpreted literally, is that the laborious cultivation of the earth, and the mortality of his race, were the consequence of it. This is all that is said by Moses, and likewise all that is alluded to by the apostle Paul, who says, that by one man sin entered into the world, For

* Appendix I,

what he adds all have sinned can only mean that all are involved in that death, which was the consequence of his sin. If, indeed, this be interpreted literally, it will imply that all are involved in his guilt as well as in his sufferings. But this is so unnatural an interpretation, and so evidently contrary to sense and reason (sin being in its own nature a personal thing, and not transferable) that the text was never understood in this sense till the system, the history of which I am writing, was so far advanced, as to require it, and to have prepared the minds of men for it. In like manner, the words of our Savior, this is my body, were always understood to mean a memorial of his body, till the minds of men were gradually prepared to bear a literal interpretation of them; and then that interpretation was made use of to support the doctrine which suggested it.

In like manner, there is a predestination spoken of by the apostle Paul; but, in general, it means the good will and pleasure of God, in giving certain people peculiar privileges, and especially the knowledge of the gospel, for the improvement of which they were answerable. If he does speak of future glory, as the consequence of this predestination, it was upon the presumption, that they improved those advantages, and by that means made themselves the proper subjects of future happiness. Or, possibly, in some cases the apostle considering God as the ultimate and proper author of every thing that is good, and of all happiness, might overlook the immediate means and steps, and with this sense of piety, and comprehension of mind, might speak of future glory itself, as the gift of God, and therefore might make no difference in his mind, at that time, between predestination and foreknowledge. But the tenor of all his writings shews, that it was far from being his intention to représent future glory as given by an arbitrary decree of God, without any respect to the good works which alone can fit men for it; which good works are as much in a man's power, as any other action of which he is capable.

Having premised these general observations, I now proceed to show by what steps these principles of the utter inability of man to do the will of God as derived from the fall of Adam, the imputation of his sin to all posterity, and the arbitrary predestination of some to eternal life, and the consequent rejection, or reprobation, of the rest of mankind, by which they are devoted to certain and everlasting de

struction, were first introduced, and at length got the firm establishment they now have in the creeds of almost all christian churches.

SECTION I.

OF THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE, &C. BEFORE THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY.

Ir is remarkable that we find hardly any trace of what are now called the doctrines of grace, original sin, or predestination, before the Pelagian controversy, which was near the end of the fourth century. I believe all the moderns are agreed, that it was clearly the opinion of all the ancient Fathers, that God has left it entirely in the power of every man to act well or ill. Basnage, who was himself sufficiently orthodox in the modern sense of the word, acknowledges, that though the fathers in general thought that we are indebted to the grace of God for all our virtues, yet they say that the beginning of salvation is from man, and that it depends entirely upon himself. It is not denied, however, but that they might believe an internal influence upon the mind on extraordinary occasions; but, as Vossius observes, none before Augustine supposed that there was an immediate concurrence of divine grace, necessary to every good thought or action.

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God," says Justin Martyr, "has not made man like the beasts, who can do nothing from choice and judgment; for he would not be worthy of reward or praise, if he did not of himself choose what was good, but was made good; nor, if he was wicked, could he be justly punished, as not having been such of himself, but only what he had been made.” In support of this he quotes Is. i. 16.—Wash ye, make ye clean, &c. Basnage says, that the ancients maintained free will with much warmth, granting men an entire power to be converted or not. Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, he says were the head of this party.

It is remarkable that Augustine himself, before he engaged in the controversy with Pelagius, held the same

opinion concerning free will with the rest of the Fathers who had preceded him, and he was far from denying this. In particular, he acknowledges, that before this time he had been of opinion, that faith, or at least the beginning of faith and a desire of conversion, was in the power of man. It was a saying of his, "If there be not grace, how should God save the world, and if there be not free will, how can he judge the world? No man," says he, "can be justly condemned for doing that which he was not able to resist." Citing a passage in the son of Sirach, viz. God left man in the hands of his council, he placed life and death before him, that that which he pleased should be given him, he says, "Behold here is a very plain proof of the liberty of the human will, for how does God command, if man has not free will, or power to obey?" He also proves, that it is in our power to change the will, from these words of our Savior, Make the tree good and the fruit good, &c.

We have almost the same unanimous opinion of the ancients, concerning the effects of the sin of Adam, as concerning the natural capacity of man with respect to virtue and vice, and they had occasion to speak to this subject very early, in consequence of the opinion of the Gnostics in general, and the Manicheans in particular; who held that the souls of men were originally of different ranks, and sprung from different principles, good beings having produced some of them, and bad beings the rest; on which account they said some were naturally carnal and others spiritual. Accordingly, they had taught that sin arose not from the free will of man, but from the substance of matter, which they held to be the only source of evil; so that some souls were wicked not by choice, but by nature.

In opposition to this, Origen maintained, that all souls were by nature equally capable of virtue or vice, and that the differences among men arose merely from the freedom of the will, and the various uses of that freedom, that God left man to his liberty, and rewarded or punished him according to the use he made of it.

It is evident, however, that Origen must have maintained, according to his known philosophical principles, that perfect freedom with respect to virtue and vice was only enjoyed by man in his pre-existent state. For he, with oth er Platonists, maintained that the souls of men had sinned in heaven, and therefore were united to such bodies as were