In reading the above, one would suppose that there was nothing wrong at all in the construction of the human mind, and that the whole difficulty consisted in not willing aright—that is, that the depravity is not in a wrong nature, but in the wrong action of a perfect nature. And yet, at the time of this writing, the author was the leader of an effort to oppose this very [pg 225] doctrine, which was supposed to be taught by the New Haven divines.
In a recent work by the chief theological teacher of the leading Baptist Seminary,[17] we find similar contradictory statements. He thus writes:
“Regeneration is not only characterized by the sacred writers as a creative act, by which the subject of it becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus, and a generation from above, by which the soul is brought into new spiritual life; but also a washing, a bathing, effected by the Holy Ghost, by which the polluted soul is cleansed; as an illumination, by which it is filled with the knowledge of God, and qualified to appreciate spiritual things. The eye of conscience is cleared, the desires and affections are renewed and flow into new channels, and the selfish views, prejudices and motives, which formerly reigned in the soul, are superseded by faith, love and hope, resting in Christ, and leading to every good work. The entire spirit is readjusted morally, its aspirations, tendencies and relations to God are rectified, and it enters, so to speak, upon a new life.”
In this passage, regeneration is called “a creative act” changing the conscience, the desires, the views, the prejudices and the motives—so that “the entire spirit is readjusted,” and all its “aspirations, tendencies and relations to God are rectified.” It is not in the power of language to express a change in the faculties and constitutional elements of mind more entirely than this; and yet the very next paragraph reads thus:
“But all this pertains to the moral condition of the soul, affording no evidence that its essence has been changed; that any faculty or constitutive element has been added, any fresh vigor or new principle of existence infused.”
But the most remarkable illustration of self-contradiction among theologians, involved in every attempt to maintain a depraved nature consequent on Adam's sin, is found in the teachings of Dr. Taylor, the leader of the New Haven school of divines.
In his Concio ad Clerum, in 1828, one aim probably was, to meet the charges against himself, of teaching the Pelagian tenet, that man's depravity consists, not in nature, but in action. In reference to this he writes thus:
“Men are entirely depraved by nature. I do not thereby mean that their nature is itself sinful, nor that their nature is the physical or efficient cause of their sinning; but I mean that their nature is the occasion or reason of their sinning—that such is their nature, that in all the appropriate circumstances of their being they will sin and only sin.”
Again—
“It is important to say that sin is by nature, owing to propensities to inferior good, with a difference between Adam's mind and ours—though we can not assert that, in which this difference may consist;—that our propensities are the same in kind, though different in degree from those of Adam; that perhaps this distinction may consist in mental differences, or in superior tendencies, compared with Adam's to natural good, and less tendency to the highest good.”