dent of the College." By what expedient, however, his system on these points is to be reconciled with that of Dr. Dwight, whose views are the exact reverse of his, or how the hypothesis that God's plan has no reference to the agency of his creatures, is compatible either with the belief that his purposes extend to all events, or with the doctrine of election, he has not thought proper to inform his readers.

Such are some of the chief doctrines of his theological system and their relations to each other and the word of God. If we turn from these to the methods of teaching them, which he has chosen, and the expedients to which he has resorted for their defense, they will be seen to be equally peculiar and extraordinary.

The most important of his views were at first ostentatiously put forth as recent discoveries and improvements that were adapted to produce important changes in theology. Representations of this kind were not only uttered in private, and suggested to the pupils of the seminary, who universally seem to have been led to regard the system as widely differing from that of the orthodox, but are distinctly set forth in most of his discussions on the subject. He says of the theory, which it is the object of his note to state and sustain, that it exhibits the only refutation, of which he has any knowledge, of the objection which it is intended to overthrow, and that it "presents the moral government of God, as no other theory in the view of the writer does present, in its unimpaired perfection and glory, to deter from sin and allure to holiness his accountable subjects."

Intimations of a similar nature are also given in his review on the Means of Regeneration, and repeated in his reply to Dr. Woods.

"He has discarded the dogma, that sin consists in any thing dis tinct from, or antecedent to moral action. He has maintained that sinners never truly use the means of regeneration, except at the moment of regeneration itself. He has called in question the theory "that sin is the necessary means of the greatest good; and demanded the proof of an assumption on which this theory confessedly rests." p. 576.

These claims, however, to originality, have at other times been essentially modified or retracted, according as the pressure has been felt of the new objections which his scheme has been called to encounter, or as its ultimate influence on his reputation has presented itself under "another aspect." Though a portion of his sermon was employed in endeavoring to show that his having adopted its peculiar views, could not with any fairness be ascribed to sinister motives; thus assuming that its doctrines were essentially unlike those of his hearers; yet when it was found that they had excited a deep distrust of his orthodoxy, he declared in the preface to the sermon, that he had "no reason to believe that the views it contains are in any essential respect diverse from those of his brethren who heard it," that he had "no doubt," "that the general proposition" would "meet with the approbation of all who hold the fundamental doctrines of the gospel ;" that "in regard to some of the more specific statements, he" supposed "that there is in some limited degree a SEMBLANCE of controversy, rather than real diversity of opinion," and that he was not “aware of any change in his own views, on these points, since he entered the ministry; nor of any departure in any article of doctrinal belief from his revered instructor in theology, the former President of the College." And when he had become aware with what total amazement and distrust these

declarations were received, so inconsistent with the apologies contained in the sermon itself, for his adoption of its doctrines, he sent forth his Inquiry for the purpose of showing how he imagined it could be made out, that he was fully "justified in disclaiming a departure from Dr. D. in any article of doctrinal belief." The object in like manner of his review of Dr. Bellamy, is to show that "his theory respecting the reasons of the admission of sin into the divine kingdom, instead of owing its origin to himself, as he had intimated in the note to the sermon in which he first gave it publicity," was taught by that writer before him! Whether it would have been thought necessary to utter any of these protestations, or resort to any of these efforts to vindicate himself from the suspicion of having abandoned the orthodox faith, had his system been welcomed by the clergy and churches, as an essential improvement, and as entitling him to "the praise which our admiration confers on the highest intellectual attainments," the reader must judge.

How the statement that "he has discarded the dogma that sin consists in any thing distinct from, or antecedent to moral action," is to be interpreted, it is not easy to see. If the meaning is, that after having himself held and taught the doctrine of physical depravity for many years, he has at length discarded it from his system; how is it to be reconciled with his statement, "that he is not aware of any change in his own views on these points since he entered the ministry?" If the meaning is, that he was the first to discard that doctrine, and teach that there is no sin except in volitions, how is it to be reconciled with the fact that this latter doctrine had been taught in Yale College, and was held by at least most of the class of theological students

who left that institution one or two years before he began to change his views on the subject? a fact well known to the officers and graduates connected with the College at that period, and perfectly well known to himself. Or how is it to be reconciled with the fact that it had been for near half a century, though in a different connexion, a prominent article in the theological system taught in New-England, which is usually denominated the exercise scheme?

What however after all, does his rejection of the doctrine of physical depravity amount to? Nothing of the least significance beyond a mere change of phraseology. He has simply spread the term "moral action" back over the scheme of a constitutional and permanent cause of sin, and left that cause itself in existence, in all its strength and activity, as a universal attribute of human nature; and has added to this theory, moreover, the dogma of an innumerable multitude of permanent volitions in the mind, that possess all the power and exert the agency which were ascribed by Dr. Dwight and President Edwards to the constitutional cause or disposition from which, according to their theory, volitions flow, and derive their moral character. These are all the "more accurate distinctions," that he has introduced into this subject. The rejection of the dogma of physical depravity is not among the improvements to which he has given birth, nor is the adoption of the doctrine that sin is an attribute of actions only, in the sense in which it has been advanced in the pages of this work. His representations are as widely variant from that, as is the doctrine of physical depravity itself. And they who simply reject this latter theory, and adopt the doctrine that sin is an attribute of voluntary actions only, no more become thereby the disciples of his system, than they do of the scheme of di

vine efficiency, or any other dogma with which that theory has no necessary connexion.

His discussions have been marked from their commencement to their close, with a singular absence of every thing like proofs, especially from the scriptures, of the truth of his system. That nothing like a demonstration of any of the erroneous dogmas which are wrought into his speculations, has been presented by him, was indeed a matter of necessity. It might however have been expected that one who had so thoroughly persuaded himself of their truth, as to offer them to the public as the dictates of reason or revelation that are more happily fitted than any others to disentangle the subject from "distressing perplexity," and " exhibit the moral government of God in its unimpaired perfection and glory," would have been able to advance something in the shape of reasons for its support. He has scarcely however done as much even as that. The most efficient claims which he has offered in its favor, are founded on the alleged ignorance of those whose views he has assailed, and these claims themselves, as has been seen, and as he indeed admits, are nothing but the "objections" of mere "ignorance" which he has himself pronounced utterly "incompetent" to the task which he has employed it to perform.

in

His views seem not only to have been adopted without any sufficient evidence of their accuracy, but also to have been put forth with but very inadequate apprehensions of the principles on which they are founded, and conclusions to which they are adapted to carry him, and consequently with but a very sufficient preparation for the objections with which they have had to contend. And such has been also very obviously at every step of his progress, and still is the fact. No other supposition can explain the extraordinary want of consistency which has characterized his discussions.