The New Divinity Tried [pp. 278-304]

The New Divinity Tried.
all things, and desperately wicked.'" Will the reviewer
have us believe Dr. Dwight taught there was no moral character in this cause of voluntary exercises, which he supposed
the Bible meant, when it speaks of a desperately wicked
heart? Besides, he tells us, the communication of a holy disposition, or relish for spiritual objects, constitutes regeneration-is not the moral character changed in regeneration?
Has that no moral character, the reception of which constitutes a man a new creature in Christ Jesus? Yet this, Dr.
Dwight says, is not a volition, (p. 418. vol. ii.) but "a relish
for spiritual objects," "a disposition which produces virtuous
volitions." Again, the very same objections which the reviewer and other advocates of the New Divinity, urge against
the idea of moral principles prior to voluntary exercises, and
determining their character, Dr. Dwight considers and refutes.
And, finally, the reviewer tells that he and his friends agree
on this point with the advocates of "the exercise scheme,"
the very persons from whom Dr. Dwight most earnestly dissents as to this very point, which, he says, no one but a
friend of that scheme, or of the liberty of indifference, would
think of maintaining. Very much to the same purpose, President Edwards says, that this opinion concerning virtue, (as
entirely depending on choice and agency,) "arises from the
absurd notions in vogue concerning the freedom of the will,
as if it consisted in the will's self-determining power."*
If any thing could be more wonderful than the reviewer's
claiming the authority of Edwards and Dwight, in favour of
the opinion under consideration, it would be his claiming Dr.
Griffin in the same behalf; a theologian who is almost an
ultra on the other side. Our limits and time utterly forbid
our exhibiting the evidence in every case of the lamentable
misrepresentations by the reviewer of the opinions of the
authors to whom he refers. In the case of Dr. Griffin, it is
the less necessary, as his Park Street Lectures are so extensively known, and as he has so recently proclaimed his dissent
from the New Divinity in his sermon on Regeneration. We
refer the readers to these works. In the former, they will
find him speaking of sin as an "attribute of our nature,"
derived from our original parents, "propagated like reason or
speech, (neither of which are exercised at first,) propagated
* Works, vol. ii. p. 410.
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