"The moral characters of men originate in their perceptions. As there are no innate perceptions or ideas, there are no innate principles.-The moral qualities of men are the produce of the impressions made upon them, and THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN ORIGINAL PROPENSITY TO EVIL." Book I. Chap. III. Again: "Vice is nothing more than error and mistake reduced to practice.-Acting from an ill motive is acting from a mistaken motive. Under the system of necessity, (that is, as held by him,) the ideas of Guilt, crime, desert, and accouNTABLENESS, HAVE NO PLACE." Book IV. Chap. IV.—VI. pp. 254. 314 Again: "Virtue is the offspring of the understanding.—It is only another name for a clear and distinct perception of the value of the object.-Virtue, therefore, is ordinarily connected with great talents. Cæsar and Alexander had their virtues.-They imagined their conduct conducive to the general good.-The devil, as described by Milton, also WAS A BEING OF CONSIDERABLE VIRTUE!!! Why did he rebel against his maker? Because he saw no sufficient reason for that extreme inequality of rank and power which the Creator assumed.-After his fall, why did he still cherish the spirit of opposition? From a persuasion that he was hardly and injuriously treated. He was not discouraged by the inequality of the contest?" Book IV. Chap. IV. App. No. 1. p. 261. Allowing this writer his premises, I confess myself unable to refute his consequences. If all sin be the effect of ignorance, so far from its being exceeding sinful, I am unable to perceive any sinfulness in it. It is one of the clearest dictates in nature, and that which is suggested by every man's conscience, that whatever he does wrong, if he know no better, and his ignorance be purely intellectual, or as Mr. M'Lean calls it, simple; that is, if it be not owing to any neglect of means, but to the want of means, or of powers to use them, it is not his fault. The intellectual powers of the soul, such as perception, judgment, and conscience, are not that to moral action which the first wheel of a machine is to those that follow; but that which light and plain directions are to a traveller, leaving him inexcusable if he walk not in the right way. : But I shall be told, that it is not natural, but spiritual knowledge, for which Mr. M'Lean pleads, as the cause of holy disposition. True but he pleads for it upon the general principle of its being the established order of the human mind that disposition should be produced by knowledge. Morever, if spiritual knowledge should be found to include approbation, it cannot, with propriety, be so distinguished from it as to be a cause of which the other is the effect for to say that all disposition arises from knowledge, and that knowledge includes approbation, is to reason in a circle, exactly as, in the case just supposed, Matthew reasoned on all sin arising from ignorance, which ignorance included aver sion. That spiritual knowledge includes approbation in its very nature, and not merely in its effect, appears evident to me from two considerations. First: It is the opposite of spiritual blindness. 2 Cor. iv. 4-6. Ephes. v. 8. But spiritual blindness includes in its very nature, and not merely in its effect, an aversion to the truth. Mr. Ecking (whose Essays on Grace, faith and Experience, have been reprinted by the friends of this system, as containing what they account, no doubt, an able defence of their principles) allows the inability of the sinner to consist in his loving darkness rather than light, and his disinclination to depend upon a holy sovereign God, and not in the want of rational faculties. Describing this inability in other words, he considers it as composed of " error, ignorance and unbelief," in which he places the "disease" of the sinner, "THE VERY ESSENCE OF THE NATURAL MAN'S DARKNESS ;" and the opposites of them he makes to be "truth, knowledge, and faith, which being implanted," he says, "the soul must be renewed." pp. 66, 67.* If Mr. E. understood what he wrote, he must mean to represent spiritual light as the proper opposite of spiritual darkness; and as he allows the latter, "in the very essence of it to include aversion," he must allow the former in the very essence of it to include approbation. Secondly: The objects perceived are of such a nature, as to be * I have only the first Edition of Mr. E's Essays, and therefore am obliged to quote from it. known only by a sense of their divine excellency, which contains in it more than a simple knowledge, even an approbation of the heart. Those who have written upon the powers of the soul, have represented "that whereby we receive ideas of beauty and harmony, as having all the characters of a sense, an eternal sense.’ And Mr. Ecking, after all that he says against a principle of grace in the heart antecedently to believing, allows that "we must have a spiritual principle before we can discern divine beauties." But the very essence of scriptural knowledge consists in the discernment of divine beauties, or the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. To speak of faith in Christ antecedent to this, is only to speak at random. The reason given why the gospel report was not believed is, that in the esteem of men, the Messiah had no form or comeliness in him, nor beauty, that they should desire him. To say we must have a spiritual principle before we can discern divine beauties, is therefore the same thing, in effect, as to say, we must have a spiritual principle before we can believe the gospel. I will close this letter by an extract from President Edwards's Treatise on the Affections, not merely as showing his judgment, but as containing what I consider a clear, scriptural, and satisfactory statement of the nature of spiritual knowledge. "If the scriptures are of any use to teach us any thing, there is such a thing as a spiritual supernatural understanding of divine things, that is peculiar to the saints, and which those who are not saints have nothing of. It is certainly a kind of understanding, apprehending, or discerning of divine things, that natural men have nothing of, which the Apostle'speaks of, 1 Cor. ii. 14. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can they know them, because they are spiritually discerned. It is certainly a kind of seeing or discerning spiritual things peculiar to the saints, which is spoken of, 1 John iii. 6. Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither know him, 3 John 2. He that doeth evil hath not seen God. And John vi. 40. This is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the son, may have everlasting life. Chap. xiv. 19. more, but ye see me. and believeth on him The world seeth me no * Chamber's Dictionary, Art. Sense. + Essays p. 67. Chap. xvii 3. This is eternal life, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Matt. xi. 27. No man knoweth the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. John xii. 45. He that seeth me, seeth him that sent me. Psa. ix. 10. They that know thy name will put their trust in thec. Phil. iii. 8. I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Verse 10. That I may know him. And innumerable other places there are all over the Bible, which show the same. And that there is such a thing as an understanding of divine things, which in its nature and kind is wholly different from all knowledge that natural men have, is evident from this, that there is an understanding of divine things which the scripture calls spiritual understanding; Col. i. 9. We do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. It has already been shown that that which is spiritual, is the ordinary use of the word in the New Testament, is entirely different, in nature and kind, from all which natural men are, or can be the subjects of. "From hence it may be surely referred, wherein spiritual understanding consists. For if there be in the saints a kind of apprehension or perception, which is, in its nature, perfectly diverse from all that natural men have, or that it is possible they should have, till they have a new nature; it must consist in their having a certain kind of ideas or sensations of mind, which are simply diverse from all that is, or can be, in the minds of natural men. And that is the same thing as to say, that it consists in the sensations of a new spiritual sense, which the souls of natural men have not; as is evident by what has been before, once and again observed. But I have already shown what that new spiritual sense is, which the saints have given them in regeneration, and what is the object of it. I have shown that the immediate object of it is the supreme beauty and excellency of the nature of divine things as they are in themselves. And this is agreeable to the scripture: The Apostle very plainly teaches, that the great things discovered by spiritual light, and understood by spiritual : knowledge, is the glory of divine things, 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them; together with verse 6. For God who com manded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: and Chap. iii. 18. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the Lord. And it must needs be so, for, as has been before observed, the scripture often teaches that all true religion summarily consists in the love of divine things. And therefore that kind of understanding of knowledge which is the proper foundation of true religion, must be the knowledge of the loveliness of divine things. For doubtless that knowledge which is the proper foundation of love, is the knowledge of loveliness. What that beauty or loveliness of divine things is, which is the ject of a spiritual sense of mind, was showed under the last head insisted on, viz. that it is the beauty of their moral perfection. Therefore it is in the view or sense of this, that spiritual understanding does more immediately and primarily consist. And indeed it is plain it can be nothing else; for (as has been shown) there is nothing pertaining to divine things besides the beauty of their moral excellency, and those properties and qualities of divine things which this beauty is the foundation of, but what natural men and devils can see and know, and will know fully and clearly to all eternity. proper and immediate ob From what has been said, therefore, we come necessarily to this conclusion, concerning that wherein spiritual understanding consists; viz. that it consists in a sense of the heart, of the su preme beauty and sweetness of the holiness or moral perfection of divine things, together with all that discerning and knowledge of things of religion, that depends upon, and flows from such a sense. Spiritual understanding consists primarily in a sense of heart of that spiritual beauty. I say, a sense of heart; for it is not |