he was created, indeed, with "knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness." But these ideas are derived from any source rather than the sacred record. It seems more likely that his condition, so far as his intellectual and moral nature was concerned, was more that of childhood. With the exception of ferocity and depravity, his condition is more likely to have resembled that of the naked savage, than any other of which we can conceive. Without experience, without traditionary knowledge, without arts or science, what could his condition have been, but that of a mere animal, or rather, an infant with the powers of rationality only, but without the full development of reason. Knowledge comes by time, and the use of the senses, observation and reflection. Righteousness is right conduct, according to a rule. How can a man acquire righteousness before he has acted in correspondence to a rule? Holiness is freedom from sin, when the power of sinning is possessed. How then could he be superabundantly either righteous or holy, who sinned and fell the very first opportunity, in the first trial to which he was subjected?

But it is concluded that he was peculiarly formed in holiness and righteousness, because he is said to have been made in the image of God. It is said, this image was a moral likeness, and that sin destroyed this image. It is quite as likely that this image of God means the intellectual as the moral nature, that which gives him a dominion

over the creatures. For in the first place, neither man nor any other being can be made with any positive moral qualities. He may have capacities. But capacities are neither holy nor unholy, till they have been exercised rightly or wrongly. Holiness and righteousness, as well as sin, cannot, in the nature of things, precede moral action. In the second place, the image of God could not mean moral character, because, according to the theory we are opposing, that image must have been lost at the fall. And long after the fall, we find God forbidding murder on this ground, that man is made in the image of God. If innocence and righteousness constituted that image, then after the fall that reason ceased to exist. It was no worse to kill a man than a beast, so far as that reason was concerned, that he was made in the image of God.

Where then is the ground for supposing the great superiority of Adam to his posterity? Has not that very labour to which he was condemned, been the means of perfecting his nature, and cultivating all his virtues? Is not industry the frame-work of all there is great and good in man? Consider the state of those nations whose condition approaches to that of Adam in ease and abundance, compared with those who are nearest to his state when driven from Paradise into a bleak and barren world. Who does not know, that the balance of intellectual and moral perfection, happiness and virtue, is altogether on the side of the laborious, the sufferers from this very curse of eating bread by the sweat of the face?

Compare with theirs the condition of a pair at the present degenerate day commencing life together. Let them have been educated in all that the experience and ingenuity of man have accumulated, of wisdom, of moral and intellectual discipline. Let them have even a moderate share of the conveniences and comforts of life, let them have the endearments of society, the delights of literature, and the daily gratification of learning what is going on this wide world. Would they consider it a great elevation, privilege, and exaltation to be transported to some solitary island, though filled with all that is represented to have blessed and adorned the garden of Eden? Just commensurate with that exaltation was the fall of Adam, according to the sacred record. When you come to strip this transaction of the colouring which imagination has thrown over it, there is nothing in the state of Adam in comparison with ours to envy, with the exception of his innocence, and that he lost quite as soon after his creation, as man ordinarily does in the state of infancy and childhood.

The very trial, to which he is represented as having been subjected, is one suited rather to a being in infantile weakness and imbecility, than a state of strength, of maturity, and enlarged intellectual action.

But it is urged that the actual corruption of mankind proves their original corruption, the corruption of their nature. How happens it, that all sin as soon as they have an opportunity? There must

have been an evil inclination, which preceded the first act. That evil inclination was original sin. If actual sin proves an evil inclination, and an evil inclination proves original sin, a constitutional inherent defect, then Adam never fell at all, for he too, must have been created with original sin. If the first sin in every human being proves a corrupt nature, so the first sin in Adam proved a corrupt nature in him. And if his first sin is consistent with original innocence, so is the first sin of every one of his descendants. If there is necessity to suppose original corruption in order to account for our first transgression, so there is just as much necessity to suppose original corruption in Adam. And if this original corruption and fault of nature deserve God's wrath and curse in us, before moral action, it must likewise have deserved it in him before his fall. Besides, those who hold this doctrine, likewise believe that there is a class of fallen angels, with Satan at their head, who were once innocent, but rebelled, and sinned against God. Now if sin proves original disposition, and corruption of nature, as is alleged in man, and if this disposition and corruption of nature before any actual sin deserve God's wrath and damnation, as is said in the case of man, then the angels. who really fell, : must have deserved damnation ages before they did any thing amiss. If it is possible to account for the first sin of the fallen angels without original corruption, then it is just as easy to account for the first sin of every human being without original sin.

But it may be asked, is it not according to the analogy of God's actual dealings with men, that all mankind should be in worse outward condition, and have a more depraved disposition in consequence of Adam's sin? Do we not see the outward condition of children made worse by the vices of their parents? Do we not see them inherit bad dispositions and vicious propensities from their parents? Do not we see them sinners apparently because their parents were? Hear what God says on this subject, in the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel. He denies that there is any effect of this kind, which affects moral agency. He says what must be true, that the vices of parents have the nature of warnings as well as evil examples. "Now lo, if he beget a son that seeth all his father's sins which he hath done, and considereth and doeth not such like, he shall not die for the iniquity of his father?" "Yet, ye say, why doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, nor the father the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." Here is an explicit denial, both of the doctrine of original sin, and of that close connection between the character of the father, and the character of the son. We see it in the world. There is the utmost