The New Divinity Tried [pp. 278-304]

The New Divinity Tried.
like many other propensities, mental as well as bodily-pro pagated like the noxious nature of other animals." p. 12.
As to poor Augustine and Calvin being represented as hold ing the radical doctrine of Pelagius, we must think it a great
oversight in the reviewer. It destroys the whole verisimilitude
of his story. It forces the reader to suspect the writer of
irony, or to set down his statements with regard to less no torious authors, for nothing. Calvin defines original sin "an
hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused
through every part of the soul, [strange definition of a voluntary exercise,] which first makes us obnoxious to the wrath
of God, and then produces those works which the Scriptures
denominate the works of the flesh." Do not the "works of
the flesh" include all sinful exercises? and is there not here
asserted a cause of those exercises, which has itself a moral
character? Infants, he says, at their birth, are liable to condemnation, "for though they have not at that time produced
the fruits of their unrighteousness, yet they have the seed
inclosed in them; nay, their whole nature is a mere seed of
sin, so that it cannot but be odious and abominable to God."
Institutiones, Lib. ii. Cap. 1. 8. And in another place, he
speaks of men being sinners, "non prav-e duntaxat consuetudinis vitio sed natzure quoqtque pravitate." Is this the
language of Mr. Finney? Could any advocate of the New
Divinity say with Calvin, that the "whole nature" of man,
prior to the production of the works of the flesh, "is odious
and abominable to God?" If not, why quote Calvin as agreeing with them as to this very point, that all sin consists in
voluntary exercises? The reviewer himself represents Calvin
as teaching, that original sin consists in "inherent corruption," a mode of expression constantly employed by such
writers, to indicate moral depravity as distinct from actual
sins, and prior to them.
With regard to Augustine, the case is still more extraordinary. The reviewer quotes from De Moor the following
passage from this father: "Sin is so far a voluntary evil, that
it would not be sin if it were not voluntary," in proof that he
also held, " that a moral character was to be ascribed to voluntary exercises alone." And yet De Moor immediately adds,
in answer to the appeal, which, he says, Pelagians make to
this passage, that Augustine did not wish the declaration to
be understood of original sin, but restricts it to actual sin, and
quotes in proof from his work against Julian, an explicit state
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