works upon the human mind." p. 66. That the removal of the effect is by the removal of the cause, I allow; but what authority had Mr. E. for making ignorance and unbelief the cause of spiritual death? Spiritual death consists in ignorance and unbelief, no less than in disinclination. It consists in sin;* and if ignorance and unbelief are sins, they are of the essence of spiritual death. It is true they are productive of other sins, and may be considered as growing near to the root of moral evil; but unless a thing can be the cause of itself, they are not the cause of all evil.-Before we ascribe spiritual death to ignorance, it is necessary to inquire whether this ignorance be voluntary, or involuntary? If involuntary, it is in itself sinless, and to represent this as the cause of depravity is to join with GODWIN in explaining away all innate principles of evil, and indeed all moral evil and accountableness from among men. If voluntary, the solution does not reach the bottom of the subject; for the question still returns, what is the cause of the voluntariness of ignorance, or of the sinner's loving darkness rather than light? Is this also to be ascribed to ignorance? If so, the same consequence follows as before, that there is no such thing as moral evil or accountableness among men.

Mr. M'LEAN has stated this subject much clearer than Mr. ECKING. He may elsewhere have written in a different strain, but in the last edition of his Dissertation on the influences of the Holy Spirit, he attributes ignorance and unbelief to ha

* Eph. ii. 1.

tred, and not hatred to ignorance and unbelief. Our Lord (he says) asks the Jews, why do ye not, understand my speech? And gives this reason for it, even because ye cannot hear my word—that is, cannot endure my doctrine. Their love of wordly honor, and the applause of men is given as a reason why they could not believe in him. John v. 44. He traces their unbelief into their HATRED both of him and his father." John xv. 22, 24.*

Nothing is more evident than that the cause of spiritual blindness is in the scriptures ascribed to disposition. "Light is come into the world; but men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. They say unto God, depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy waysBeing alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, BECAUSE OF THE BLINDNESS, (hardness or callousness) OF THEIR HEART—. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word." But if, as the scriptures teach, as Mr. M'LEAN acknowledges, the cause of both ignorance and unbelief is to be traced to hatred; and if, as Mr. ECKING says, "effects are removed by the removal of the cause," I scarcely need to draw the consequence-that though in a general sense it be true that we are regenerated by believing the gospel, yet in a more particular sense it is equally true that we are regenerated in order to it.

It is somewhat extraordinary that Mr. M'LEAN after allowing pride and aversion to be the great

* Works, Vol. ii. p. 110.

John iii. 19.-Job, xxi. 14.-Eph. iv. 18.-John viii. 43.

obstructions to faith, should yet deny the removal of them to be necessary to it. He will allow some sort of conviction of sin to be necessary to believing in Christ; but nothing that includes the removal of enmity or pride, for this were equal to allowing repentance to be necessary to it: but if enmity and pride be not removed, how can the sinner, according to our Lord's reasoning in John viii. 43, and 44, understand or believe the gospel? If there be any meaning in words, it is supposed by this language that in order to understand and believe the gospel, it is necessary to endure" the doctrine, and to feel a regard to "the honour that cometh from God." To account for the removal of pride and enmity as bars to believing by means of believing, is I say very extraordinary, and as inconsistent with his own concessions as it is with scripture and reason: for when writing on spiritual illumination he allows the dark and carnal mind to be thereby rendered spitual, and so enabled to discern and believe spiritual things.*

Yours, &c.

* Reply, p. 7.

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137

LETTER VIII.

An inquiry whether the principles here defended af fect the doctrine of free justification by faith in the righteousness of Christ.

You are aware that this subject has frequently occurred in the foregoing letters; but being of the first importance, I wish to appropriate one letter wholly to it. If any thing I have advanced be inconsistent with justification by faith alone in opposition to justification by the works of the law, I am not aware of it; and on conviction that it is so, should feel it my duty to retract it. I know Mr. M'Lean has laboured hard to substantiate this charge against me; but I know also that it belongs to the adherents of the system* to claim the exclusive possession of this doctrine, and to charge others with error concerning it on very insufficient grounds. You may remember, perhaps,

* I do not mean to suggest that Mr. M'LEAN's system is precisely that of Mr. SANDEMAN. The former in his Thoughts on the Calls of the Gospel, has certainly departed from it in many things, particularly in respect of the sinner's being justified antecedent to any act, exercise or advance" of his mind toward Christ; and on which account Mr. S. would have set him down among the popular preachers. But he has so much of the system of Mr. S. still in his mind, as often to reason upon the ground of it, and to involve himself in Bumerous inconsistencies.

*See Letters onTher, and Asp. vol. II. p. 481, Note.

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that Dr. GILL was accused of self-righteousness by Mr. SANDEMAN on the ground of his being an anti-pædobaptist!

A large part of that which Mr. M'LEAN has written on this subject is what I never meant to oppose; much of what he imputes to me is without foundation; and even where my sentiments are introduced, they are generally in caricature.

I have no doubt of the character which a sinner sustains antecedent to his justification, both in the account of the lawgiver of the world and in his own account, being that of ungodly. I have no objection to Mr. M.'s own statement, that God may as properly be said to justify the ungodly as to pardon the guilty. If the sinner at the instant of justification be allowed not to be at enmity with God, that is all I contend for; and that is in effect allowed by Mr. M. He acknowledges that the apostle "does not use the word ungodly to describe the existing character of an actual believer."* But if so, as no man is justified till he is an actual believer, no man is justified in enmity to God. He also considers faith, justification, and sanctification as coeval, and allows that no believer is in a state of enmity to God. It follows that as no man is justified till he believes in Jesus, no man is justified till he ceases to be God's enemy. If this be granted, all is granted for which I contend.

If there be any meaning in words, Mr. SANDEMAN considered the term ungodly as denoting the existing state of mind in a believer at the time of his justification: for he professes to have been at