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as the necessary means of self-preservation. man choose virtue for its own sake, or from a desire to glorify and enjoy God, he would in this volition have evidence of being a renewed person. The pious choose virtue for the present, and will to choose it in future; but the ungodly, when afraid of hell, will, purpose, intend, determine, or choose, as a matter of direful necessity, to have a choice of it, at some more convenient season. This is a matter of daily experience: it is nothing like having a volition before we have it, and in order that we may have that identical volition.

That the Deity is the sole efficient cause of the existence of all substances is undeniable. Of course, he is the maker of every human soul and body, with all their constituent faculties. He has ordained all our modes of mental operation; as infallibly as all modes of physical operation. Yet should we advance still further, and affirm that the Deity is the efficient cause, the producer, the author of all human volitions, we should, in our own esteem, make God the only sinner in existence. We deeply regret, that Dr. Edwards should have been of the opinion, that God efficiently causes all sinful volitions, and think he has not exonerated his Maker, according to his own theory, from deserved blame, by allèging, that all virtue and vice, desert of praise and blame, consist not in the cause of volitions, but in the acts themselves. Any mental operation contrary to the moral law is a vice; any one conformable to it, is a virtue: and any being who is the performer, the producer, the efficient, the doer of any one of these, is blamable or praiseworthy according to the nature of the operation performed. This is the language of common sense, and of the Bible. The divine law blames, censures and condemns those persons who produce any moral evil, for their criminal efficiency in the matter: so that the criminal author of any mischief is the being censured by God. Could he, then, excuse himself, were he to produce, or efficiently cause every rebellious thought, feeling, volition, and action? May the Lord preserve us from charging all, or any of our sinful mental actions, and voluntary external conduct, upon Him, who cannot look upon sin without abhorrence.

Moral Disquisitions and Scrictures on the Rev. David Tappan's Letters to Philalethes, by the Rev. Samuel Spring, D. D. require a little attention. The edition from which we quote was printed at Newburyport, in 1789. Dr. Spring tells us that man's intellectual exercises are no more depraved than his finger nails; for, they are not of a moral kind. Exercises of reason, judgment and conscience, he says are not moral exercises. p. 9.

"Mere desires to enjoy pleasure and to escape misery are natural exercises, and not moral." "Natural gratitude, sympathy and natural affection,-are not of the moral kind," "That sin consists in self-love it is evident from this p. 10. consideration, that it is impossible for it to consist in any thing else. Sin, every one grants, whatever be the nature of it, is inseparable from volition. It is a wrong choice or volition.' "Sin is nothing but self-love in some shape or other; for it cannot possibly be any thing else. That all sin consists in selflove, it is evident from this consideration, that self-love is the only exercise which is opposed to disinterested love. As disinterested love, therefore, is holiness, self-love is sin." p. 16, 17. "It is impossible to prove that sin is not a volition: and it is equally impossible to prove that there are any volitions which are neither selfish nor benevolent." p. 39. "The term motive denotes not only an object of choice, but it denotes the choice of an object." p. 51. "These are the two senses in which the term motive is frequently used, by those who write and speak with propriety. And, if the word be used properly in a third sense, I wish to see it pointed out and exemplified. Motives are objective and subjective." "In one word, motive sometimes means the object of volition, and sometimes the volition itself. p. 52.-What is a moral action? A moral action is the exercise of the will, or heart of man. For the heart of man is the only source of moral exercise." "In other words, a moral action is the volition of a moral agent: and not any animal, intellectual, visible, or external motion." "Moral actions and motives are the same thing." p. 54." For there is no difference between moral actions and motives."

p. 55.

In the foregoing extracts we have the following doctrines:-That the heart and the will of a man are the same thing that every operation of the heart is a volition that love as well as choice is a volition :-that a motive is an act of the will, or a volition :-and that nothing in man is either morally good, or morally evil,

but acts of volition. It is needless, after all we have formerly written concerning the heart, the will, and motives, to expose the inaccuracy of Dr. Spring. His attempt to simplify mental science, by reducing every mental act of a moral nature to a volition, produces nothing but confusion. He is the only writer we have ever read, that ever called a volition a motive. A motive to volition cannot be the volition itself, unless a thing can exist before it exists. If we take his term volitions, however, to denote not only volitions, properly so called, but also all of our affections and passions, it will not be true, that nothing is either morally good or morally evil, but "exercises of the will," or the "volitions" of man. We refer for the proof of our assertion to the word of God. "The thoughts of the righteous are right," says the author of the Book of Proverbs. xii. 5. Now thoughts are distinguished in the Bible from volitions and feelings. If some thoughts are right, in a scriptural sense, they must be morally right; they must be holy. Yet Dr. Spring says, nothing is morally good or evil, but "the volition of a moral agent." A thought is an intellectual operation of a moral agent, and the Bible tells us, that thoughts are good or bad, holy or sinful; but Dr. Spring insists upon it, that no intellectual operation of a moral agent can be either holy or sinful any more than a man's "finger nails." This is Hopkinsianism.

"The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord." Proverbs xv. 26. Such thoughts, as well as such volitions, affections, and passions as the law of God requires, are morally good; while any mental operation that is forbidden by the law of God is morally evil. This is a doctrine of Calvinism.

Dr. Spring, to be consistent, would no doubt say, that thoughts are volitions. In short, all mental operations are volitions, according to his theory; for it is as easy to show, that perceiving, understanding, reasoning, judging, memory, consciousness, and conscience, are volitions, as that love, hatred, fear, hope, desire, and disgust, are acts of choosing. But the Hopkinsians are the metaphysicians! No doubt of it! For they assert that they are metaphysicians; and how can they, in profound disinterestedness, misjudge concerning their own talents and acquisitions?

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ARTICLE V.-1. Christian Baptism. A Sermon, preached in the Lal Bazar Chapel, Calcutta, on Lord's Day, Sept. 27, 1812. By Adoniram Judson, A. M. Reprinted in Boston 1817. pp. 71. 8vo.2. A Treatise on the Mode and Subjects of Christian Baptism. In Two Parts. Designed as a Reply to the Statements and Reasonings of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, Jun. as exhibited in his Sermon, &c. By Enoch Pond, Pastor of the Congregational Church in Ward, Mass. Worcester, 1818. pp. 104. 8vo.

MR. JUDSON informs his readers, that he "was, by education and profession, a pædobaptist. In the spring of 1812 he was sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to India. On his passage thither "he began to doubt the truth of his former sentiments. After his arrival in" India, "and before he communicated the exercises of his mind to any of the Baptist denomination, he became convinced, that the immersion of a professing believer, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is the only Christian Baptism." To exhibit "the reasons of his present belief," and particularly to furnish "his distant friends in America with a more full and satisfactory statement of the reasons of his change, than could be made in private communications," Mr. Judson has published the sermon.before us. In it he enquires, "What is baptism? and To whom is baptism to be administered?”

We have Mr. Judson's authority for it, that the Greek words Barr and Barriga always signify a complete immersion; that there are no instances in the New Testament that require any different interpretation of these words; that "the circumstances attending the instances of baptism, recorded in the New Testament, plainly indicate immersion;" for "John babtised in the river Jordan, and in Enon, because there was much water there :" " that the idea of immersion is the only one, which will suit all the various connexions, in which the word is used in the New Testament;" that BarTi must mean nothing but immersion, because the Greek church immerses in baptism; and that "the whole christian world, for the space of thirteen hundred years, practised immersion, as the only valid baptism." To confirm his own high authority

Mr. Judson quotes from Mr. Booth's Padobaptism Examined, his many learned quotations, to show that Pædobaptists in all ages have admitted immersion to be baptism. And thus he proves, to his own satisfaction, that baptism is immersion, and can be nothing but immer

sion.

Now, then, for the second Inquiry! To whom is baptism to be administered? Why, to believers, who profess faith; because the commandment of Christ on which Christian baptism is founded requires that we should "teach all nations, baptizing them." The Apostles were required, he says, by teaching to "make disciples, from among all nations, and then baptize them." For infant baptism, he says, we have neither command nor apostolical example in the New Testament; for he sees no reason to think there were any young children in the households of Lydia, Stephanas, and the jailer.

Thus we have analyzed the twenty-five first pages of Mr. Judson's sermon. The remaining forty-six pages are devoted to a refutation of the argument for infant baptism, from the nature of the Abrahamic covenant, and the oneness of the visible church of God in all ages of the world, since its first constitution. Of the nature of the Abrahamic covenant Mr. J. seems to have no just conceptions. The present church of Christ he thinks founded on the covenant of grace, which he, and most of our New England brethren, believe to be a covenant, between God and each individual believer, distinct from the covenant of redemption. This covenant of grace, Mr. J. informs us, is distinct from the covenant made with Abraham; while Mr. Pond insists, that they are substantially the same. Both Mr. J. and Mr. P. admit, however, that, by the covenant made with Abraham, all persons born of Jewish parents, and all proselytes with their families, were members of the church of God, from the circumcision of that patriarch, until Christ was offered a sacrifice. Mr. Pond correctly maintains, that the covenant made with Abraham is still in force, and is, strictly speaking, an everlasting covenant. Mr. Judson will have it, that everlasting, when predicated of the Abrahamic covenant, means, that the covenant shall last so long as the Hebrew nation shall possess the tempoNo. 1.

VOL. II.

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