Consubstantiality

“ How to Confound Gods, and the Governments Friends and Enemies, so as to make the Common People take One for T'other. Now This can be no way done, but by setting-up the Counterfeit of Religion, Law, and Conscience, against the Genuine, and Authentique Original; and by making Evil, to be Good, and Good, to be Evil. ”

“ And custom, which has made you taste bondage and unreasonable care, is fostered by vain opinion; and ignorance, which has proved to the human race the cause of unlawful rites and delusive shows, and also of deadly plagues and hateful images, has, by devising many shapes of demons, stamped on all that follow it the mark of long-continued death. Receive, then, the water of the word; wash, ye polluted ones; purify yourselves from custom, by sprinkling yourselves with the drops of truth. The pure must ascend to heaven. ”

“ We must own the corruption of our nature: Acknowledge thy iniquity, the perverseness and irregularity of thy nature. (2.) We must own our actual sins: " That thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, hast affronted him and offended him." (3.) We must own the multitude of our transgressions: "That thou hast scattered thy ways to the strangers, run hither and thither in pursuit of thy idols, under every green tree. Wherever thou hast rambled thou hast left behind thee the marks of thy folly." (4.) We must aggravate our sin from the disobedience that there is in it to the divine law. ”

“ We stand amid the jar and conflict of a thousand natural laws, to us inexplicable, and which every hour threaten us in ourselves or those dearer than ourselves. We stand often in no less perplexity of moral law in ways where the path of duty and right is darkened and beset. ”

“ But we are not sinners because of this natural selfishness, or these inherited proclivities to evil. Sin, he says, consists in the conscious violation of some acknowledged law or rule of right—in acting contrary to some known moral precept, or some perceived and acknowledged moral obligation. ”

“ Our own secret souls, and that divine gospel which confirms all their sincere decisions, alike declare that my sin cannot be your sin; that by no compact, even by no miracle, can any exchange of responsibilities, or transfer of moral qualities, be effected. What indeed is guilt in its very nature, but a violation of some venerated rule of action,—a contravention of our own sentiments of equity, truth, purity, or generosity? and what is the guilty mind, but a system or habit of desire, which successfully resists the control of reason and conscience? ”

“ Grant it; but why should good things in nature be used as types of evil things in the mind? If the thorn and the brier be good and a part of the original and beautiful order of creation, with what propriety can they be taken as emblems of what is evil and disorderly in the mind of man? ”

“ Similarly, if a doctrine obviously lays itself open to grave abuse, or presents strong temptation to the infirmities of human nature, you begin to doubt whether it is so heavenly in origin as it pretends to be. ”

“ For if a nature is the cause of an evil will, what else can we say than that evil arises from good, or that good is the cause of evil? And how can it come to pass that a nature, good though mutable, should produce any evil—that is to say, should make the will itself wicked? ”

“ The image of God may be darkened, but the impress is deep as ever. The capacity of sin equally implies the capacity of holiness; transgression implies the knowledge of a law, inspired or revealed; the violation, therefore, of moral injunctions includes the high capability of moral perception. Whence but from the greatness of our nature is the deep misery of sin—whence, I might say, but from its holiness?—whence but from its adaptation to goodness, are the ruin and the dislocation which guilt can work in our whole inward frame and constitution? ”

“ He gives, too, a characteristic explanation of that human attribute commonly known as Original Sin, the quality, in fact, which makes men yield to base desires against and in spite of their sense of what is right. ”

“ The state of subjection which the woman was reduced to, represents that loss of spiritual liberty and freedom of will, which is the effect of sin. The dominion of sin in the soul is compared to that of a husband, Rom. 7. 1..5; the sinner's desire is towards it, for he is fond of his slavery, and it rules over him. 3. The curse of barrenness which was brought upon the earth, and its produce of briers and thorns, are a fit representation of the barrenness of a corrupt and sinful soul in that which is good, and its fruitfulness in evil. ”

“ One in accordance with the good which is implanted in us, which clearly he calls the law of the mind. One the law which arises from the assault of evil, and which often draws on the soul to lustful fancies, which, he says,” wars against the law of the mind.” [23] And the third, which is in accordance with sin, settled in the flesh from lust, which he calls the “law of sin which dwells in our members;” [24] which the Evil One, urging on, often stirs up against us, driving us to unrighteousness and evil deeds. ”

“ Now, we must bear in mind that Evil is not a principle, but a perversion: it amounts merely to a denial, a limitation, a corruption of good, not to the dignity of its abstract antagonism. Familiarly, but fallaciously, we talk of the evil principle, the contradictory to good: we might as well talk of the nosologic principle, the contradictory to health ”

“ Now God saw that all this, the whole thereof was evil—— contrary to moral rectitude; contrary to the nature of God, which necessarily includes all good; contrary to the divine will, the eternal standard of good and evil; contrary to the pure, holy image of God, wherein man was originally created, and wherein he stood when God, surveying the works of His hands, saw them all to be very good; contrary to justice, mercy, and truth, and to the essential relations which each man bore to his Creator and his fellow creatures. ”

“ Answering this question, I say, first of all, that with respect to the privative evil — which consists in the soul’s being deprived of God — this is wrought wholly, and can only be wrought, by the voluntary desires, which are of the matter of mortal sin; for they deprive the soul of grace in this life, and of glory, which is the possession of God, in the next. ”

“ Is it possible, do you think, for it to exist, and in the virulent condition we find it, and not poison the blood of our whole community? Moral and spiritual laws are as unvarying in their action, out of natural sight though they be, as physical laws. Evil and good are as positive entities as fire, and destroy or consume as surely. ”

“ Admitting this maxim for truth, that the transgressions or sins of mankind are to be estimated by their heinousness, by the dignity and infinity of the divine nature, then it will follow that all sins would be equal, which would confound all our notions of the degrees or aggravations of sin ”

“ How could there be an evil act which did not proceed from an antecedent evil principle or disposition? What becomes of the great common notion of mankind, on which his demonstration is erected? But we must allow the author to contradict himself, since he has now come around to the truth, that an evil act of the creature may and must have preceded the existence of moral evil in the world. ”

“ Now, in the investigation of this subject, we must, I think, inquire according to a logical method whether there be in us human beings, who are composed of soul and body and vital spirit, some other element, possessing an incitement of its own, and evoking a movement towards evil. ”

“ Accordingly the privation of original justice, whereby the will was made subject to God, is the formal element in original sin; while every other disorder of the soul's powers, is a kind of material element in respect of original sin. ”

“ Where then, in the economy of nature, is there room or use for the doctrine of total depravity? A doctrine so pernicious, that in the mouths of its advocates, it has done more than aught else, to destroy the confidence of mortals, in the wisdom and justice of the Divine plan of the universe. ”

“ Such is the condition of our nature, that we cannot mortgage either our moral or our physical energies so as always to repel the accusations of our own hearts, which are sure, eventually, to reprove us for evils committed. ”

“ In my preaching of the word, I took special notice of this one thing, namely, that the Lord did lead me to begin where the word begins with sinners; that is, to condemn all flesh, and to open and allege that the curse of God by the law doth belong to and lay hold on all men as they come into the world, because of sin. Now this part of my work I fulfilled with great sense; for the terrors of the law, and guilt for my transgressions, lay heavy on my conscience. ”

“ No! we. hold the conviction—and it is a view sustained, we think, both by Revelation and reason, and uncontradicted by science—that noxious, destructive, and malignant things in nature, whether in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, were not created in the beginning, but are effects consequent upon, and derived from, the existence of moral evil in man. How,—it will now be asked—could such effects be produced? It is not impossible to see how they might be produced, if we go back to first principles. What in fact Is the material world, but an outbirth from the spiritual world? ”

“ Every result has its cause, and it is surely our duty, as far as observation and reason can guide us, to discover the causes which operate against us. The great majority of the afflictions and misfortunes which befall us are punishments for the breakage of some law, the committal of some sin physical or moral, and this being the case, it behoves us to find out what law has been transgressed, what the nature of the sin committed. ”

“ Why do they flee to this fatal brand, with which they shall be burned, when it is within their power to live nobly according to God, and not according to custom? For God bestows life freely; but evil custom, after our departure from this world, brings on the sinner unavailing remorse with punishment. ”

“ This objection may be answered by applying the principle to the case of Evil in the Soul; the Evil, the Vice, will be a Negation and not anything having a separate existence; we come to the doctrine which denies Matter or, admitting it, denies its Evil; we need not seek elsewhere; we may at once place Evil in the Soul, recognizing it as the mere absence of Good. ”

“ Yea, that, if left to ourselves, we shall only wax worse and worse, sink deeper and deeper into sin, offend God more and more, both with our evil works and with the evil tempers of our carnal mind, till we fill up the measure of our iniquities, and bring upon ourselves swift destruction? And is not this the very state wherein by nature we are? To acknowledge this then, both with our heart and lips, that is, to disclaim our own righteousness, the righteousness which is of the law, is to act according to the real nature of things, and consequently is an instance of true wisdom. ”

“ Thus, man that was made pure, in the image of his Maker, that could stand proudly erect as the representative of God, pure, and uncontaminated, is debased, fallen, corrupt, diseased, and sunk below the brute creation ”

“ We know that the wicked angels appointed laws conformable to their own wickedness, in which the men who are like them delight: and the right Reason, [11] when He came, proved that not all opinions nor all doctrines are good, but that some are evil, while others are good. Wherefore, I will declare the same and similar things to such men as these, and, if need be, they shall be spoken of more at large. ”

“ In moral Decisions, the whole Circumstances and Relations must be antecedently known; and the Mind, from the Contemplation of the Whole, feels some new Impression of Affection of Disgust, Esteem or Contempt, Approbation or Blame. ”

“ The study of human nature suggests this awful truth, that, as in the trials to which life subjects us, sin and crime are apt to start from their very opposite qualities, so there are no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion of the understanding to which they may carry their slaves. ”

“ Nature always spoke in Him, convention never. In His treatment of sin it is always the voice of Nature that we hear triumphing over the verdicts of convention. The sins which convention regards as inexpiable are sins of passion; the sins which it excuses are sins of temper, such as greed, malice, craft, unkindness, cruelty. ”

“ Such is indeed the only present word for us finite minds about many of the shadows of seeming evil that we have to behold in the world of the apparently external facts. Such however is not the last word for us about the only evil that has any immediate moral significance, namely, the evil that we see, not as an external, shadowy mist, but as a present fact, experienced in us. ”

“ As to himself, a sinful condition is a wasteful condition. How many of the good gifts both of nature and Providence does one sinner destroy and make waste of—good sense, good parts, good learning, a good disposition, a good estate, good meat, good drink, and abundance of God's good creatures, all made use of in the service of sin, and so destroyed and lost, and the end of giving them frustrated and perverted! He who destroys his own soul destroys much good. (2.) As to others, what a great deal of mischief may one wicked man do in a town or country! ”

“ They are not condemned, thirdly, for inward sin, even tho’ it does now remain. That the corruption of nature does still remain, even in those who are the children of God by faith, that they have in them the seeds of pride and vanity, of anger, lust and evil desire, yea, sin of every kind, is too plain to be denied, being matter of daily experience. ”