of men, having on the leaden jacket, to be thrown overboard, and the captain to say to them, "If you will float, you will breathe freely, you will not be choked, and will enjoy the comforts of life; but if you will not float, you will sink, you will be smothered, and perish in a watery grave." Who would not call it bitter mockery? Are we to suppose that God by his prophet thus cruelly mocks those who are sinking into everlasting death?

Here are some passages from Ecclesiasticus which speak for themselves. "God made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. . . . . . He has set water and fire before thee: stretch forth thy hand to which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil: that which he shall choose shall be given him." xv. 14-20. And again," Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish; . who is he, and we will praise him. . . He that could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed, and could have done evil things, and hath not done them." xxxi. 8-10.

Passages without number to the same effect might be multiplied, but we will close with the words of our Lord : — " If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." St. Matt. xix. 17. Are not these words as clear and as concise a refutation of fatalism as can be desired? Do they not necessarily imply that men have the power to keep the commandments if they choose, and that no one is under the invincible necessity of violating them and incurring eternal death? If the reprobate have no power to choose to keep the commandments, if they are borne onward and downward by an irresistible current to perdition, what is the meaning of the exhortation of our Lord? Suppose a philosopher shouting out from the top of his voice to a man tumbling down the Falls of Niagara, "Good friend, if you would save your life, stop the water"; would any refutation of such a philosopher be pertinent, other than physic and good regimen in a lunatic asylum ?

But it is not against the Scriptures only that Presbyterianism makes war. Its doctrine concerning free agency is repugnant to the common sense of mankind. It is the universal conviction of all ages and nations, that crime is imputable to us when we commit it, because we have the power to avoid it, and that it is never imputable when and where this power is wanting. To suppose that this conviction is false would be to suppose that the very Author of our nature has deceived us.

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Even Presbyterians themselves, whatever they may do in theory, dare not assert practically a contrary doctrine. Let the stubborn boy grossly insult his father, call him a liar or a fool, and the father, even though a Presbyterian elder, will, we may presume, without danger of a rash judgment, pounce upon him for good; and if the boy rejoins that he had no power to do otherwise than he did, the elder will show the deep impression such reasoning makes upon him by redoubling the chastisement. Now this, not precisely a fanciful supposition, proves very conclusively that even the Presbyterian does not practically believe the doctrine of fatalism he asserts.

The falsity of this doctrine is evident from the absurd and shocking consequences it necessarily involves. All laws, whether Divine or human, whether religious or civil, are, if Presbyterianism be true, but empty words ; for it is essential to the law that all those for whom it is intended should have the power to obey it. It would be a strange thing indeed to pass laws for horses, pigs, turnips, and cucumbers. What would be thought of the legislature who should decree, that all turnips should grow with the root downwards, or that cucumbers should all grow ready pickled ? Take away free-will from man, and you

reduce him to the rank of brutes and inanimate things, for which laws are not and cannot be made, because their motions are regulated by necessity. In this system moral merit and demerit have no existence. Every punishment inflicted for the violation of law is a flagrant injustice. Is the storm culpable and punishable, because it destroys our ships and occasions the death of their crews and passengers ? Is punishment to be decreed against the eagle for pouncing upon the timid and lovely wren? It is evident from common sense, that, if the wicked cannot avoid committing sin, they can not be blamed or punished for it without gross folly and injustice. What Lucian, the Pagan philosopher, wittily says against the Stoics, the Presbyterians of his day, is strictly to the point. “ If Parca is the cause of all things, then when a man kills his father, it is Parca that is in fault. If, then, Minos would judge justly, he would do better and more equitably to punish Destiny than Sisyphus, Parca than Tantalus. For what injustice is there in them, since they have only obeyed superior orders ?" * Calvinists have nothing to reply to this simple argument of Lucian. They have even made matters worse than the Destiny

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of the Stoics ; for they tell us that both good and bad are in the hands of God as the horse under its rider, as the wheel under him who makes it revolve, as the saw in the hands of the sawyer, as clay in the hands of the potter. When the lord found the man who had not on the wedding-garment, and said to him, “ Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding-garment ? ” we are told the man was silent, and, evidently, because he had no excuse to offer. But if Presbyterianism were true, he might have answered advantageously in the words of Lucian, and we see not what the lord of the feast could have said in return.

According to Presbyterianism, God is the author of sin, and although the Confession is unwilling to admit it, and even positively denies it, with an attempt to mystify the reader by pious words commendatory of God's infinite sanctity, the fact is as we state it. Calvin and his followers have always been justly accused of making God the author of sin, which Presbyterians virtually admit, when they assert that God has from the beginning foreordained every thing that comes to pass, therefore sin, since it is not excepted, -- and say that sin does not happen by his bare permission. But whether they admit it or not in words, they do really and effectually make God the author of sin, by representing the reprobate under the invincible necessity of coinmitting it. When I ride a horse, which is under my control, over a child on the road and trample it to death, it is not the horse, but myself, that is the cause of the murder. Men have always so understood it. If the sinner is under an impossibility of avoiding sin, it is not he, but the necessity he is under, that commits it. Now, Presbyterians say, that it is the decree of God that constitutes this necessity. In vain, then, does Calvin pretend that God is not the author of the sin, because he decrees it from a good motive, to wit, the manifestation and praise of his justice. Besides, this represents God as acting on the principle so often and so falsely attributed to the Jesuits, namely, the end sanctifies the means, - the contradictory of the principle laid down by St. Paul, Rom. iii. 8, that we are never to “ do evil that there may come good.” In vain is it alleged, that, God being bound by no law, there can be no sin for him, a notion which strikes at the eternal distinction between good and evil. God forbids sin because it is bad in itself, and contrary to the eternal law to which he is essentially subjected; for he is essentially order, justice, truth. Seek to disguise it as they may, Presbyterians

do make God the author of sin, and the man who commits it, as his necessary agent, is only executing the orders of the Supreme power, and is entitled rather to praise than to censure.

Presbyterians may throw the blame of the sins of men upon original corruption; but if this corruption impose a real necessity of sinning, there is no more commission of new sins among men than there is among the devils and the damned in hell, who, all admit, can commit no new sin, because they are deprived of free-will. We, however, know that God has not left men in that necessity. The moment he promised that the head of the serpent should be crushed, they were restored to the state of responsible beings, and through his mercy fitted again to obtain the supernatural end for which they were created. The reason assigned by Presbyterians for the necessity of sinning, namely, that the reprobate receive no grace, no help, is manifestly false, and is contradicted by every page of the Holy Scriptures. "I called and you refused." Prov. i. 24. "How often would I have gathered together thy children, and thou wouldst not." St. Matt. xxiii. 37. "What more is there I ought to do to my vineyard that I have not done to it?" Isa. v. 4. "We do exhort you that you receive not the grace of God in vain." 2 Cor. vi. 1. Here are words which clearly show that some receive graces which they reject through the malice of their will.

We conclude from this against Presbyterians, that any regular effect, produced in us without any participation of our freewill, is not sin at all, though it be the consequence of original sin. Bad thoughts or motions arising in us against our freewill are not sin, and assume its character only when they are deliberately entertained. If they were properly sins, the sins so called of ignorance would also be properly sins, for ignorance is one of the effects of original sin; yet they are not sins when the ignorance is in no sense voluntary, as appears from the case of Abimelech, Gen. xx. 6, who through ignorance would have married the wife of Abraham; and, also, from the positive declaration of our Lord to the Jews," If you were blind, you should not have sin [that is, the sin of not believing in me]; but now you say, We see, your sin remaineth." St. John ix. 41. And again, xv. 22,-" If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sinned [the special sin of infidelity]; but now they have no excuse for their sin."

If Presbyterians object, that St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, calls the motions of concupiscence sin, we reply in

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the words of the Holy Council of Trent," Concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin, the Holy Synod declares the Church has never understood to be called sin, because it is truly and properly sin in the regenerate, but because it comes from sin and inclines to sin,- ex peccato et ad peccatum inclinat. If any one maintains to the contrary, let him be anathema.” Session v. 5. This decision explains itself; and who can hesitate between the whole Church, declaring the word sin in some passages of St. Paul does not mean sin properly and truly so called, and a little knot of Presbyterians who are of yesterday, maintaining that it must be taken in its rigorous sense? The meaning of words is determined by common consent. Even Presbyterians themselves depart from their rigorous interpretation of the word sin, when they read, Osee iv. 8, that the priests" eat up the sins of the people"; and, 2 Cor. v. 21, "He hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin." Indeed, if it were admitted that all effects of original sin came through our fault, and are imputable to us, we should blame the man who is born blind, lame, crooked, or otherwise deformed; for this is the effect of original sin. But that this is absurd every body admits, and we are taught as much by what our Lord says in reference to the man born blind, St. John ix. 3, that "neither hath this man sinned nor his parents." If, then, corporeal blindness be not blamable in one who is born blind, so neither is concupiscence, when there is no positive act of our free-will which makes up assent to it.

We have quoted the Council of Trent to show the sense of the word sin in its relation to concupiscence, which St. Paul sometimes calls sin. We quote it further to show the firm and uncompromising doctrine of the Church on free-will. The Presbyterian or Calvinistic doctrine, it is true, is at variance with common sense, with our primary notions of good and evil, and with every page of Scripture; but it receives its final death-blow from the positive and formal decisions of the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and against which the gates of hell cannot prevail, and which if we hear not, we are no better than heathens. The Holy Council condemns Presbyterianism in several canons of its sixth session. Thus, Canon iv.,—“ If any one says that the free-will of man, moved and excited by God, in assenting to God exciting and calling, coöperates in nothing,. . . . . and that it cannot dissent, if it chooses, but is as something inanimate, which does nothing at all, and is merely