Free agents have power to choose life or death.

of mind, of free agents, of rational, social, accountable beings, would seem to be indispensable to the highest illustration and expression of the goodness of God.

III. God has actually made free agents who were able in the exercise of their created powers to choose either way-life or death.

This is the doctrine of our Confession and Catechisms. Man in his state of innocency had freedom and power to will and to do that which is good and well pleasing to God; but yet mutably so that he might fall from it.'-Confess. Ch. ix. Sec. 2.

'Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the state wherein they were created, by sinning against God.'-Shorter Catechism, p. 322.

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It is the testimony of the Bible: Lo, this only have I found that God made man upright-but he sought out many inventions.'-Ecc. vii. 29.

It is a part of the recorded history of the intelligent universe, and of God's moral government, that the angels kept not their first estate-and that man being in honor abode not.

Now had Adam, created holy, been free to choose obedience only, and that by a natural, constitutional, unavoidable necessity, so that by the power of natural causation, his choice must be in accordance with his character and constitution of mind, and the constitution of things around him, or the active principle which prevailed in his nature when volition took place; how could he be said to have power to will

The Fall did not destroy the constitutional powers of free agency. that which is good, yet mutably so that he might fall from it, and how could he possibly fall? But he had power to stand and power to fall; and that is the essence of free agency, and was the ground of his accountability.

IV. Nothing is apparent in the nature of the fall from which to infer necessarily the destruction of the constitutional powers of free agency in Adam, or his posterity. It was an overt act-an actual sin. 'In evil hour he put forth the hand and plucked and ate the fruit forbidden.' But does actual sin destroy the possibility of right action? It creates aversionit secures the certainty under law of continuance in evil if unreclaimed by a mediator and almighty power. But does it do this by a constitutional necessity, like the power of a natural cause to its effect? If so, the adulterer, and the drunkard, and the liar, would like to alleviate their remorse and quiet their fearful looking for of fiery indignation, by the consoling information that the more they live after the flesh, the deeper the oblivion of accountability, and crime, and punishment.

But the Bible nowhere teaches, and the Confession expressly denies, that Adam or his posterity lost their powers of agency by the fall, and became impotent to good on the ground of a natural impossibility of obedience.

Did the change of character, then, which the fall occasioned, preclude the possibility of subsequent obedience in Adam? What was the change? It was the utter loss of all holiness, and the prevalence of

Powers of agency requisite to obligation. Possibility of obedience. entire depravity-every imagination of the thoughts of his heart became evil, and only evil continually. But does total depravity render spiritual obedience a natural impossibility? How? Did the perfect holiness of Adam render sinning impossible? How then did he sin? Did God help him? Did the Devil force him? But if perfect holiness does not destroy the possibility of sinning, how should perfect sinfulness destroy the possibility of obedience? Is there not as much in the 'state of man' as holy, 'including all his rational, animal, and moral powers, with the active principle which prevails in him,' to make disobedience impossible to a holy mind, as in the same state of things in an unholy mind, to render obedience impossible? But if perfect holiness does not destroy the natural possibility of sinning, how does perfect sinfulness destroy the natural possibility of obedience? And if the fall did not destroy the natural powers of agency in Adam, which rendered obedience possible, obligatory, and a reasonable service, how should it destroy in his posterity those powers and responsibilities, which it did not obliterate in himself? Has the fall overacted and come down with greater desolation on the represented, than on the federal head and representative of his race?

V. That man possesses, since the fall, the powers of agency requisite to obligation, on the ground of the possibility of obedience, is a matter of notoriety. Not one of the powers of mind which constituted ability before the fall, have been obliterated by that event. All that has ever been conceived, or that can

Obedience a reasonable service.

Nature of choice.

now be conceived, as entering into the constitution of a free agent capable of choosing life or death, or which did exist in Adam when he could and did obey, yet mutable, survive the fall. The intellect, the conscience, the susceptibilities of the soul to pleasure and pain, and the heart, including the will and affections of the soul-all these as certainly exist and as plainly exist as the five senses.

That nothing has been subtracted by the fall from the powers of agency requisite to the possibility of obedience, is strongly evident from the fact, that no one, by the most careful analysis of the mind, has ever been able to detect and name the fatal deficiency. The motive to make such an exculpatory discovery, and throw off hated obligation and feared punishment, has been as powerful as the terrors of eternity; and the effort as constant as the flow of ages-and urged with all that talent, and ingenuity, and learning could apply, and the wisdom from beneath inspire to establish the excusable impotency of man; and to this day the effort has been abortive. To appearance, the powers of the mind, and the law of God, and the glorious gospel, and the providence of God are, as they should be, to render obedience a reasonable service, and impenitence and unbelief without excuse; and where, amid the constitutional powers of agency, the defect lies, has never been discovered what it is, has never been told-or that there is any such defect, proved.

VI. Choice, in its very nature, implies the possibility of a different or contrary election to that which is

Fatality of choice.

Doctrine of the christian fathers.

made. There is always an alternative to that which the mind decides on, with the conscious power of choosing either. In the simplest form of alternative, it is to choose or not to choose in a given way; but in most cases, the alternatives lie between two or many objects of choice presented to the mind; and if you deny to mind this alternative power-if you insist that by a constitution anterior to choice, of the nature of a natural cause to its effect, the choice which takes place can come, and cannot but come into being, and that none other than this can by any possibility exist, you have as perfect a fatality of choice, as ever Pagan or Atheist, or Antinomian conceived. The question of free will is not whether man chooses —this is notorious, none deny it; but, whether his choice is free as opposed to a fatal necessity-as opposed to the laws of instinct and natural causation; whether it is the act of a mind so qualified for choice, as to decide between alternatives, uncoerced by the energy of a natural cause to its effect; whether it is the act of an agent who might have abstained from the choice he made, and made one which he did not. To speak of choice as being free, which is produced by the laws of a natural necessity, and which cannot but be when and what it is, more than the effects of natural causes can govern the time, and manner, and qualities of their being, is a perversion of language. The doctrine of the christian fathers, and of Luther and Calvin, and all the protestant confessions and standard writers, is not merely that men act by volition or choice, the choice being the effect of natural causes, as