widely in the article of respectability. The concealment, it is true, annihilates every claim to personal respect; but if you should think his arguments worth your notice, he is convinced that your manner will be worthy of yourself, and consistent with that high regard for your merits entertained by

A LAYMAN.

LETTER II.

Calvinistic Doctrine of Original Sin, or Total De-
pravity, stated.
Not consistent with Scripture.

No evidence in the Sacred Writings, that Adam
was created with a perfect Nature, or that the sin-
ful Propensities of his Posterity were derived from

him.

SIR,

As the preceding letter was principally devoted to the examination of your arguments, and proving the insufficiency of the mode you have adopted to defend the doctrine of hereditary depravity, it has unavoidably assumed the appearance of a personal attack, which cannot be pleasing to yourself, nor is it to the author, who contends not for victory, nor wishes to irritate, but sincerely aims at your conviction. Confiding in the liberality of your disposition, and in the accuracy of your judgment in cases where you dare

to exercise it, he is not without hopes that the observations already suggested will not only have explained, in a satisfactory manner, the cause why you cannot possibly convince the skeptic of the futility of his reasoning, but dispose you to doubt the validity of your own. He flatters himself also, that if you will accompany him through a more minute review of the doctrine you so warmly espouse, than you may hitherto have taken, it will appear in every point of view totally unworthy of your patronage. This expectation is encouraged by several symptoms, which indicate your dissatisfaction at a tenet you think it is your duty to embrace and enforce. Your efforts to suppress the exercise of reason could only have been made, in consequence of your perceiving something unreasonable in the doctrine itself. You obviously consider such a suppression as a sacrifice due to a revealed truth; as a species of auto de fe, the severity of which you very sensibly feel. You frankly allow, that "unbelieving doubts are ever springing up in the heart." Could you but entertain the idea, that these unbelieving doubts proceed from the understanding rather than from the heart, instead of suppressing, you would think it right to encourage them. Or, if you choose to ascribe them to the heart, conceive that they may be seated in the best of its affections, its benevolence and its love of rectitude, and you will be prepared to suspect, that there must be something essentially wrong in your hypothesis, which can be

inimical to feelings like these. Such circumstances strongly indicate, that you are open to conviction, and that you would gladly renounce the doctrine, did you not believe it to be of divine authority.

It is, good Sir, so painful for a sensible, conscientious man to hold a faith, which is at variance with his judgment, that it becomes an office of charity to endeavour to relieve him from his embarrassment, by collecting incontestible proofs, that such sentiments cannot be true, and that it is the duty of every reasonable being to dismiss them from his creed.

The strong objection which was the subject of animadversion in the former letter, is by no means the only one to be proposed to the doctrine which you have unfortunately espoused; and had you been more successful in your attempts to confute it, your victory would have been incomplete. There are many other objections, which you have passed over in silence, that deserve your most serious attention; and these shall be considered in the present and some following letters.

In order to do justice to the subject, it will be requisite to state the doctrine of original sin, not in the partial and delicate manner, which your regard for its character has induced you to pursue, but as it is boldly expressed in the creeds and confessions of those, who have enforced it with synodical authority.

That no suspicion may be entertained of exaggeration, or of a design to "set down aught in malice,"

the catechism composed by the assembly of divines shall be our guide. In that summary of christian faith the subject is thus treated.

"God created man in his own image; in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness; with dominion over his creatures. When God created man, he entered into a covenant with him upon condition of perfect obedience, forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death.

"Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God.

"Sin is any want of conformity to, or a transgresson of the law of God.

"The sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created, was the eating the forbidden fruit.

"The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in the first transgression.

"The fall did bring man into a state of sin and misery.

"The sinfulness of that state whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all the actual transgressions which proceed from it.

"All mankind, by the fall, lost communion with God; are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever. This constitutes the misery of that estate whereinto man fell.

"God, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer; and thus God did not leave all mankind to perish in a state of sin and misery."*

Although the doctrine of original sin, as it is taught in most of the protestant churches in Europe, is essentially the same, yet they indulge to a variety in their amplifications. The Walloon churches, or those of the French protestants, for example, enlarge considerably upon the moral incapacity of man in consequence of Adam's fall. Thus to the question; "Are all our works so reprobated that they cannot merit any favour before God?" the answer is, "All the works performed by the natural man (de notre propre nature) are vicious in themselves, consequently they must displease God, and be condemned by

* Had these letters been privately conveyed to Mr Wilberforce, so large a portion of the Assembly's Catechism would not have been transcribed; but as they are submitted to public inspection, some reader may possibly be gratified with being introduced to an acquaintance with an article of faith he has been professing all his life, without paying the least attention to its nature.

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