temptuous; between our love and hatred of his excellence, our gratitude and unthankfulness for his goodness, our desire of and indifference to his favour, is a supposition alike contradictory to his perfections, irreconcilable with reason, and revolting to our moral sensibilities. It is not only certain therefore that he has a preference respecting our conduct, but inconceivable, compatibly with his attributes, that he should not make that preference distinctly and authoritatively known. Such manifestations of his wishes are accordingly furnished in his works themselves, and in his providential administration over us, and they are clearly developed in his word, and accord in rectitude and goodness with the grandeur and benevolence that mark his agency as creator and preserver.

9. The objection sometimes offered to the universal providence of God over his works, on the ground that they are unworthy, from their insiguificance, of his perpetual care, is seen from these views to be unfounded.

It proceeds on the assumption that they exist subsequently to their creation, independently of his upholding agency, and fulfil their various functions by the mere virtue of their constitutions--an assumption implying, therefore, that his agency is not only not necessary to give effect to their laws, but could only embarrass them in their operations. As that assumption, however, is erroneous,-as, in place of existing in that manner, they are upheld by his perpetual volition, and are what they are solely because he wills them to be, they clearly are objects to him, in all their elements, powers, circumstances, and operations, of perpetual attention and interest; an attention and interest as ceaseless and perfect as his universal providence can be supposed to involve. The supposition, therefore, that they are not of sufficient importance to render it befitting his infinite attri

butes to make them objects perpetually of his providential care, thus contradicted by his creating and upholding agency, is wholly false.

it

10. As his cotemporaneous volition is the sole cause, through each moment, of our existence, there obviously can be no other ground to us of an absolute certainty that we are to continue to exist for ever, but a revelation from him of a purpose for ever to sustain us in being. It is clear also that no such revelation is made to us, except in the volume of inspiration. As that volition is, and is ever to be, the sole ground of our existence, there can be no certainty to us of our continued being, but by our becoming certain of the continuance of that volition; and as the perpetuity of that volition cannot be demonstratively inferred either from our nature, or the fact that God has created us, no certainty of it can be gained by us except through the testimony of the Most High himself respecting it; and that testimony, is equally clear, is no where presented to us, except in the volume of inspiration. Arguments on other grounds, in support of our immortality, only raise it to the rank of a mere probability, and advance it to that rank only by the disclosure of indications that it is the will of the Most High to uphold us for ever in existence. A great proportion accordingly of the reasonings respecting it, both of moderns and the ancients, are wholly inapplicable to the subject; and most that are not obnoxious to that charge, are entirely inconclusive; as they proceed on the false assumption, that the reason of the mind's continued existence lies in itself, in place of the will of its creator; and are arguments from its real or supposed nature and operations in its present state, to its future existence, instead of reasonings from those or other grounds, to its author and upholder's purpose.

PROFESSOR MCCLELLAND'S

DISCOURSES ON SPIRITUAL RENOVATION

CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF MEANS.

I HAVE taken occasion, in several former articles, to allude to the important influence which the theoretical views of human nature, entertained by religious teachers, are accustomed to exert, both on their estimate of our obligations, and the impressions respecting them, which they convey to others. The effect of their speculations on these subjects on their treatment of the impenitent, and on the influence of their ministry, has recently been very fully exemplified in the churches in this country, and is replete with instruction.

The theory generally prevalent until within a few years, was that substantially of the Reformers, President Edwards, Dr. Dwight, and Dr. Griffin, which contemplates human nature as fraught with a specific taste or relish for sin. This scheme was productive of two evil effects. Its advocates were led to regard regeneration as the implantation of a constitutional relish for holiness, and thence to exhibit the Holy Spirit as employing his renovating agency in changing the mind's physical nature, in place of simply leading it to exert its affections in a new manner, and consequently to

deny that "the means of grace have any instrumentality in that work." Their hearers also were very generally perplexed by these representations respecting their obligations to obey the divine requirements, and the utility of attention to means which were held to be necessarily wholly inefficacious. It was the experience of these pernicious effects that first drew my inquiries to the subject, and led me to the adoption of substantially the views respecting it I at present entertain; and a wider observation of them in others, that induced me to offer to the public the first number of this work, the object of which was to disprove the doctrines of physical depravity and regeneration, to show that the mind possesses, antecedently to its renewal, all the powers and susceptibilities that are requisite to obedience, and to demonstrate that the moral change it undergoes at that period, is simply a change in its agency from transgression to obedience, that is wrought by the Spirit of grace by the communication of those apprehensions of divine things, and excitement thereby of the involuntary emotions, which are its conscious reasons for the exertion of its first holy act ;-a theory which I still regard as accordant with fact, and as wholly avoiding the embarrassments of the former scheme, by exhibiting the powers and susceptibilities of the mind as essentially the basis and measure of its obligations, and ascribing to moral means an instrumentality coincident at once with experience and with the requirements and representations of the scriptures. Those who have adopted these views, with a just appreciation of their relations to the other great truths of the gospel, have, I believe, found themselves freed by them from the perplexities, and their ministry from the impediments by which they had before been embarrassed. They have not deemed it necessary to make them a theme of per

petual declamation to their people, as though no other subject had any claims to their attention, nor often to introduce them controversially into the pulpit, but have found it to be generally sufficient to obviate the evils to which the inculcation of the opposite doctrine had given rise, to discontinue the repetition of it. Satisfied of the correctness of their present views, they have gone forward in the work of their office, preaching the great doctrines of the gospel, and enforcing the obligations of men, with a conviction of the consistency of the different branches of their instructions, very much as though no discussion had ever arisen, nor different theories been entertained on the subject. Happy had it been had all who have rejected, or professed to reject, the doctrine of constitutional depravity, followed a similar course. Many of them, however, essentially misapprehending the relations of the subject, have run into greater theoretical errors, and given rise to worse practical evils, than those which they were endeavouring to avoid.

Thus, the Theological Professors at New-Haven, and others who concur with them-when they have succeeded in keeping clear of the theory, that the reason of the mind's sinning is wholly constitutional, which they have by no means uniformly done-have, in conjunction with the doctrine that men possess all the powers and susceptibilities that are requisite to obedience, taught that the mind is prompted, in all its choices, supremely by a regard to its happiness, and thence exhibited the aim with which it acts in obedience and transgression as precisely the same, and the moral difference of its agency as lying in its choosing God as the source, or his service as the condition of happiness in the one case, and the world as the means of it in the other. This conception of the nature of obedience has proved a fruitful source to them of other mistakes. They