Dr. George Duffield on the Doctrines of New-School Presbyterians [pp. 655-675]

658 ~r. ~eor~qe Puffield on t~e [OcTo3ER
as taught in our Confession, and held by Old-school Presbyterians, they stigmatize it as a doctrine of physical depravity,
inherent in our constitution, faculties, nature, as created by
~od. And they denounce the correlate doctrine logically
flowing from this, and taught in the Bible and our standards,
~iz., that regeneration is the removal of this corrupt principle,
~nd the implantation of a new principle of life and holiness, as
"physical" regeneration, a change in the constitutional faculties, &c.; also as being wrought by the exercise of God's mere
"physical" omnipotence. Of this evidence enough will appear
as we proceed.
Now, for our present purpose, it is sufficient to observe, that
the word "nature," ~6acc, and, perhaps, in a less degree, the
word "constitution," as related to these subjects, is used i~ a
threefold sense. First, for human nature unfallen as it came
from the hands of God in the creation of our first parents.
Secondly, for that nature as fallen and morally corrupted in
the fall of our first parents. Thirdly, for those essential faculties and properties which belong to man as such, whether
fallen or unfallen, in the absence of which he is no longer man.
Now when our Confession and Old-school divines speak of
"corrupted nature," or "principle," and use other like phrases,
they mean it not in the first or third, but the second of these
meanings. And they hold that there is such a sinful vitiosity
of nature derived from the fall of the first man to all descending from him by ordinary generation; which nothing but the
Almighty power of God can remove in regeneration. Herein
— they follow the Scriptures, which declare that we are "by
nature, ~i~7"SC, children of wrath;" meaning thereby not our
original nature as made upright by God, nor yet the essence of
human nature as it exists in man fallen and unfallen: but
nature as corrupted by the fall, and dead in sin. Since the
English word "physical" is a derivative from the Greek ~6~(C,
so the older Calvinistic divines have applied it to our original
moral depravity, or inborn sinful dispositions, to indic~fr that
they are by nature, ~6a~, and not merely acquired, nor mere
acts. In like manner, they used the word with reference to
regeneration, to signify that it is a change of this nature,
~u'oc~ ]yi~g back of acts, whereby we are children of wrath;