own declaration, man became as Himself, and those whom He addressed, to know good and evil, it is not easy to comprehend. God said, "Man is become as one of us ;" and therefore if the conclusion of the divines be just, they must have conceived that God and those whom He addressed were "wholly defiled."

So far from exciting the idea that the moral condition of man became worse, the above declaration leads us to the direct conclusion that it was greatly improved. The change was evidently from a lower to a higher state of Intelligence; from a state of unconsciousness of right and wrong, to a perfect knowledge of both; from a state of irresponsibility to one of responsibility.

There is a matter connected with corruption, and on which divines insist, viz., that man at his creation was not subject to death. This opinion we may shortly examine. God said to the man, in reference to the forbidden fruit, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." It may be asked, if man was not previously subject to death, how could he die? As the history tells us that, notwithstanding the threat, he did not die, the contradiction is attempted to be got rid of by supposing it was meant the man should become subject to death. There appears nothing in the history to justify this supposition, but the contrary. Let us read the whole of the twenty-second verse of the third chapter, part of which has been already referred to. "And the Lord God said, And behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever; therefore," &c. This appears to draw a clear distinction between what the condition of man was, and what it would have been had he eaten of both fruits. The one changed his mental state, and the other would have changed his corporeal state. Death was the punishment threatened; but is not announced to have been the consequence of the disobedience. The conse

quence is clearly announced in the words, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." And lest he should have approached still nearer to the divine nature, he was removed from the tree of life, and made to continue mortal.

There are other reasons for denying the supposition that man was not subject to death at his creation. Following the Mosaic history as our guide to matters of fact, we find it written in the twenty-eighth verse of the first chapter of Genesis, " And God blessed them; and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." This was said before the forbidden fruit was eaten. Now supposing that man had not been subject to death, the question arises, what time would elapse in

the progress of multiplying, before the earth was replenished? It is obvious that, man being supposed immortal, a time would soon come when there would not be standing room for him on the earth. To get rid of this difficulty another hypothesis became necessary, but for which there is no warrant, viz., that after man had multiplied to a certain extent, a proportion would be taken away, and transferred to another region, to heaven. That this supposition is unwarranted, appears from what we learn from the twenty-ninth verse of the first chapter, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which there is the fruit of a tree yielding seeds, to you it shall be for meat." Why were these given for meat? The natural answer is, to support life. But is a being not subject to death under any necessity to support life? Those who advocate the notion, that man was not subject to death, must show that an immortal being requires sustenance, else the hypothesis appears absurd.

From what has been advanced, appealing to the record itself, there does not appear to be any rational foundation for the invention of the doctrine of the corruption of man's nature, in consequence of his having eaten the forbidden fruit. On the contrary, there is good reason, supposing the history true, and not fabulous, for believing that man passed into a higher scale of being, becoming a moral being. The inventors, however, have quoted, in the Confession of Faith, all the detached texts they could find as likely to corroborate the doctrine, and some of these it is but justice to examine, lest in any of them we should find reasons more powerful in favour of it than those we have advanced against it. We find these texts appended as notes to the second article of chapter sixth. We shall take some of them in the order in which they are set down.

Genesis iii. 6.-" And when the woman saw the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave unto her husband and he did eat.'

Here the facts are simply stated, and with perfect distinctness. That the first pair did eat of the fruit, is one simple fact. But one of the reasons why the woman ate of it, because "she saw the tree was to be desired to make one wISE," is too important to be slightly passed over. If she had been wise in her original condition, she could have had no desire to become so. Her desire to eat of the fruit was excited on account of her anxiety to become, what she was not before, wise. This, then, adduced as a proof of the doctrine, which assumes that man was in a more perfect state before, than after the fruit was eaten, flatly con

tradicts that assumption. It confirms, in a remarkable manner, what we have endeavoured to show must have been the original moral condition of man, if the Mosaic history be credited by the supporters of the doctrine.

iii. 7.-" And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons." As already remarked, God had named the tree that of the knowledge of good and evil. God is likewise stated to have said, that the consequence of the man and woman having eaten of the fruit, was no other thing but their "becoming as one of us, knowing good and evil." In the verse just quoted as one of the grounds for the doctrine of corruption, the effect is confined to the discovery of their being destitute of clothing. What then was their state of intelligence before they knew this? It must have been that they had no sense of modesty. If to have acquired a sense of modesty be to be wholly defiled," it is a kind of corruption in our nature of which few theologians, if moral men, would wish man to be devoid.

iii. 8.-" And they heard the voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, amongst the trees of the garden." This is quoted as a proof of total defilement. It would have been but fair to have added the reason why they hid themselves, which is stated in a subsequent verse. "I was afraid, because I was naked." So it appears that the acquirement of a sense of modesty was defilement in the eyes of the divines.

These are all the facts that could be found in the history of the first pair, on which the doctrine is founded. We shall now consider others.

Ecclesiastes vii. 29.-" So, this only have I found, that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." There are two distinct statements in this verse. The first, God hath made man upright. This is given as an accurate translation, not of the language of the historian of creation, but of another writer who appeared long after Moses. The words make no allusion to the state of man originally, as connected with a second state. Had the writer said, God made the first man originally upright, there might have been a definite meaning, to which the supporters of the doctrine might have appealed. The expression, however, refers to the idea of the writer respecting the condition of man, as it was when he was created-as naturally upright; but as swerving afterwards from uprightness, on account of having sought out many inventions; not on account of his having eaten of the forbidden fruit.-We may here

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introduce from another part of scripture, what appears conclusive of this being the proper meaning of the words of Ecclesiastes, and of the erroneousness of the doctrine. It was said by Jesus Christ, "that joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance." We infer from these words, that persons denominated just, did exist in the world. If this had not been the case, the comparison could not have been made; or if made, could not have been comprehended. Admitting the fact on such authority, it contradicts the doctrine; because, if all the descendants of Adam were, "wholly defiled in all the faculties, and parts of soul and body," it is impossible to conceive that any of them could be just, and need no repentance. Apostle Paul says, "for when the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts." Here the Apostle who is chiefly appealed to in the concoction of the doctrine, confirms what Christ said, in a most remarkable manner. He tells us that, by nature, some men fulfil the law; that is, that they are just persons. The divines who composed the collection of doctrines in the Confession of Faith, tell us that at his creation, man had the law written in his heart, and power to fulfil it," as the grand distinction between his perfect first state, and his corrupted second state. But St. Paul tells us plainly that, in his time, men existed who also "had the law written in their hearts," and who fulfilled it. The conclusion from these statements is most decidedly against the doctrine.

Ecclesiastes, as quoted above, is right in declaring that God made man upright; and we consider him also correct in his theory of man having become otherwise," but he has sought out many inventions." He has been led away into the abuse of what is intrinsically and originally good, not in consequence of having acquired a knowledge of good and evil, (which has been given him to keep him from the latter,) but of having neglected the fact of his having been made part of a system, conformable to it, and bound to obey its laws as soon as he discovers them, and equally bound to search for them.

Now let us return to the supposed proofs of the doctrine in question.

Romans iii. 23.-" For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." We have no disposition to deny this. For even just persons, such as the apostle describes, can scarcely affirm that they have not in some respect or other sinned. But we affirm, that if St. Paul, in the above sentence, alludes to

man's nature having become defiled, in the sense of the doctrine of corruption, he flatly contradicts what he himself had previously written, and what Christ said. If all had sinned and come short of the glory of God, in consequence of the first pair having eaten of the forbidden fruit, no one could be blamed for this, since it was an unavoidable consequence, to remove which Christians believe Christ to have appeared. But that sin was not the consequence, and that man had the power to walk uprightly, and was liable to punishment, if he did not so walk, is clear from the denunciations against wickedness, which we find dispersed through the histories in the Bible. God never could have spoken by His prophets, threatening judgments for that which He Himself had brought about, and which He, according to another Christian doctrine, was anxious to undo, and after reflecting during some thousands of years, at length devised the plan, to satisfy His own conscientious scruples, of sending Jesus Christ into the world. The mission of Christ, however, does not appear to have undone the curse, for man continues to sin, certainly in no less a degree, though it may be in a manner more refined. It would be well if Christian teachers, and those who are taught, were to keep before them the attributes they ascribe to God, and avoid holding Him forth as acting in opposition to them. Men, it is to be feared, are too apt to imagine themselves the pattern, and that God would act just as they would do. But if they would keep in mind a saying by which churchmen often try to evade argument, that God's ways are not as our ways; if they would first lay down a rule of morality which could not be departed from by a wise and good man; if they would but take the guidance of common sense, when they set about the invention of doctrine, it is probable that the great bulk of mankind would agree in matters of religion, come to see their true interests resting on justice, truth, and moderation of desire, and that the religion taught by Jesus Christ, when divested of the fable, the mystery, and the doctrine, that the cunning of men has wrapt around it, was the true religion of the One God, whom he called his Father, and who is our Father also. Even over this pure and simple religion, which the Jews had the great merit of preserving amidst the grossest idolatries and superstitions, much unnecessary obscurity has been thrown, even by the Jews themselves, who, like the rest of mankind, through ignorance of the constitution of man in relation to external things, and the laws which bind him to all nature, have fallen into error. Among the Jews, knowledge has been increasing; and while they have differed among themselves in reference to the light in which some of the