§ 8. Proof Texts.
1. A text often cited is Genesis 6:5,—the reason given for destroying the human race, in the time of Noah, by the deluge: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” But this seems to be a description of the state of the world at that particular time, not of its character in all ages. It is not a description of man's natural condition, but of an extremely degenerate condition. If the state of the world here described was its natural state, it would rather be a reason for not having created the race at first; or, if it was a reason for destroying it, it would, at best, seem to be as strong a one against creating it again. If a man plants [pg 148] a tree in his garden, whose nature he knows is to produce a certain kind of fruit, it would seem hardly a good reason for cutting it down, that it produced that kind of fruit: certainly it would not be a good reason for cutting it down, and planting another of precisely the same kind in its place. The reason why the race of men was destroyed was, that it had degenerated. But there were some good even then; for in the ninth verse we are told that “Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generation, and walked with God.”
2. There is another passage, in the fourteenth Psalm which is quoted by Paul in Rom. 3: “There is none righteous; no, not one: there is none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God. They have all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good; no, not one. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
This passage is relied on to prove total depravity. But we may reply, that—
This also is a degenerate condition, not a natural one. It was a condition into which men had fallen, not one in which they were born. “They have all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable.” It does not, therefore, apply to men universally, but to men in those particular times.
It was not true of all, even at that particular time. It was not true of David himself, that he did not seek after God, or have the fear of God before his eyes; or else other passages in the same book are not true, in which he says the contrary. “O God! early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee; my flesh longeth for thee.” He also frequently speaks of and to those who fear the Lord, and says, “I am a companion to all those that fear thee.”
The “all” is not to be taken strictly. It means people generally at that time. Just so it is said, “There went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round [pg 149] about Jordan;” which does not imply that no one staid at home.
“But,” it may be said, “does not Paul teach that this is to be taken universally, when he quotes it, and adds, ‘Now we know that what the law saith, it saith to those under the law, that every mouth be stopped, and all the world guilty before God’ ”? We think he means to say, that, as this is said to Jews, it proves that Jews, as well as Gentiles, are very guilty. He is addressing the Jews, who boasted of their knowledge of the law. Chap. 2: “Behold, thou art called a Jew,” &c.
3. Jer. 17:9. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”