Archive for February 9th, 2011
Fuller:
1)
SECTION II.
ON NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY.
On this subject I find it difficult to collect the real sentiments of P[hilanthropos]. Sometimes, he seems to admit of the distinction, and allows that I have written upon it with”perspicuity.” (p. 63.) At other times, he appears utterly to reject it, and to reason upon the supposition of there being no difference between the one and the other; and that to command a person to perform any thing with which it is not in the power of his heart to comply, for this, he must know, is the only idea we have of moral inability, is as unreasonable, unless grace is bestowed, as to “command a stone to walk, or a horse to sing.”(p. 44.) If this is indeed the case, the distinction ought to be given up. Be that, however, as it may, whether there be any real difference between natural and moral inability, in point of blame-worthiness, or not, P. knows that I suppose there is: by what rule of fair reasoning, therefore, he could take the contrary for granted, is difficult to determine.
But, passing this, from the whole of what P. has written on this subject, I observe there are three things, which, somehow or other, either severally or jointly, are supposed to constitute even a moral inability blameless. One is, men could not avoid it; they were depraved and ruined by Adam’s transgression; another is, its being so great in degree, as to be insuperable; and the last is, if grace is not given, sufficient to deliver us from it.”If,”says he,”men could never avoid it, and cannot deliver themselves from it, and the blessed God will not deliver them; surely they ought not to be punished for it, or for any of its necessary effects.”(p. 67.)
The first two of these suppositions, be it observed, are admitted by P. as facts. Men are, he acknowledges, born in sin, and”their inability to do things spiritually good is real and total.”(pp. 44. 57.) They cannot love God, nor keep his holy law. Now, these facts either do excuse mankind in their want of conformity to the law, or they do not. If they do not, why are they produced? If they do, there is no need for what respects the last supposition. There is no need, surely, for grace to deliver men from a state wherein they are already blameless. The justice of God, one should think, would see to that, and prevent the innocent from being condemned. But let us give each of these subjects a separate consideration.