§ 2. The four Moments or Characters of Evil. The Fall, Natural Depravity, Total Depravity, Inability.
Orthodoxy [pg 131] answers the question, “What is man?” by saying, “Man is a sinner;” and this answer has these four moments:—
1. Man was created at first righteous and good.
2. Man fell, in and with Adam, and became a sinner.
3. All now born are born totally corrupt and evil;—
4. And are utterly disabled to all good, so as not to have the power of repenting, or even of wishing to repent.
These four ideas are,—
First, that of The Fall, or Inherited Evil.
Second, of Natural Depravity.
Third, of Total Depravity.
Fourth, of Inability.
These points are fully stated in the following passage from the “Assembly's Confession of Faith,” chap. 6:—
“1. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit; having purposed to order it to his own glory.
“2. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness, and communion with God; and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.
“3. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed, to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation.
“4. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.
“5. This corruption of nature during this life doth remain in those that are regenerated; and although it be, through Christ, pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin.
“6. Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression [pg 132] of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal.”[13]
We assume the “Assembly's Catechism” as almost the standard of Orthodoxy. It was prepared with the concurrence of the best minds in England, in an age when theological discussion had sharpened all wits in that direction. Thoroughly Calvinistic, it is also a wonderfully clear and precise statement of Calvinism. Framed after long controversies, it had the advantage of all the distinctions which are made only during controversy. It is a fortress made defensible [pg 133] at all points, because it has been attacked so often that all its weak places have been seen and marked. It is a masterpiece of statement.
Now, it is very easy, and what has often been done, to stand on the outside and show the actual error and logical absurdity of this creed; to show that men are not by nature totally depraved, and that, if they were, this would not be guilt; that, if they have no power to repent, they are not to blame for not repenting; and that God, as a God of justice even (to say nothing of mercy, of love, of a heavenly Father), cannot condemn and punish us for a depraved nature inherited from Adam.
It is easy to say all this. But it has often been said; and with what result? Unitarians have been, by such arguments, confirmed in their Unitarianism; but the Orthodox have not, by such arguments, been convinced of the falsity of their creed. Let us see, then, if we cannot find some truth in this system,—some vital, experimental truth,—for the sake of which the Orthodox cling to these immense and incredible inconsistencies. Let us take an inside view of Orthodoxy, and see why, being unreasonable, it yet commends itself to so many minds of the highest order of reason.