able to the Apostle's representation of moral slavery. Speaking to the Romans in respect to the bodily appetites, he says: "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness." The intemperate man, who yields up his reason and conscience to the dominion of his appetites, is in complete bondage under sin, and liable to every species of iniquity. Hence intemperance is a parent sin, and the source of all kinds of vice and immorality. What may not men do, or what have they not done, under the influence of wine and strong drink? No vice can be mentioned that they have not committed. They have stole, robbed, and murdered, not only others but themselves, in their state of intoxication. This vice is a moral leprosy, which spreads out into innumerable natural and moral evils, that are so many aggravations of its extreme malignity and criminality. Besides, it rises in guilt above all other crimes, because it produces not only transient, but more extensive and permanent evils. Though theft and robbery be great and heinous crimes, yet they produce only small, temporal, natural evils, which injure but a few persons for a short time; but intemperance is a slow, imperceptible, epidemic disor der, which destroys both the souls and bodies of men, both in time and eternity. It produces the most dreadful effects, which are unlimited in extent and permanency. It is a fashionable vice, and spreads its destructive influence by example. Who ever became a thief or a robber, by the influence of example, or from the motive of becoming more respectable in the eyes of the world? These and other vices are generally infamous. But intemperance is very reputable among the rich, the great, and noble; and thousands and thousands are led into intemperance by the example of the rich and great, more than by any personal gratification. Nothing has a more quick and extensive spread than fashion. It will almost instantaneously extend its influence through a whole nation. This we know to be the nature and tendency of the fashionable vice of intemperance, which by example, more than in any other way, has spread its baneful influence through all the United States. The principal source of this most criminal and destructive vice is to be found among those in high life, who presume to stand at the head of the world; and from them it descends down to all the lower ranks and classes of the people. View intemperance in any and in every attitude, and it must appear the most odious, the most malignant, the most destructive, and of course the most criminal vice that ever existed in the world.

3. It appears from the nature and tendency of intemperance, that it is of all vices the most difficult to prevent or restrain. There are two things which plead powerfuly in favour of intemperance. One is, the natural love or appetite which mankind generally, if not

universally have for wine and strong drink. Young children, almost without exception, love wine and every species of intoxicating liquor; and when they are allowed to drink it freely, they scarcely ever fail of having a strong habitual inclination for it when they grow up. The natural appetites, whether strengthened by habit or not, are very powerful and clamorous. They loudly call for the objects which are suited to gratify them. In this respect they dif fer from natural passions. The natural love of food is a very strong and powerful natural appetite. Nothing but food will gratify it. And though no food be set before a hungry man, his appetite still calls for it, with increasing importunity and ardor, until it is gratified. But passions do not call for their gratification, and are excit ed only by the presence or view of the objects of gratification. A man who loves his friends, feels no appetite to see them, but their actual presence instantaneously awakens his friendly feelings. Appetites do not wait for their objects, but call for them. Hunger calls for food, and thirst for drink. The intemperate man, who has a thirst for ardent spirits, feels a peculiar uneasiness and painful appetite for drink, whether it be present or absent. And since this natural appetite for spirituous liquors is common to mankind, they must conquer it, in order to avoid intemperance themselves, or restrain it in others. But who have courage, resolution, and self-denial enough to attempt and perform the arduous task of subduing or restraining one of the strongest and most ungovernable appetites in human nature? The natural appetites of men throw one great and almost insurmountable impediment in the way of avoiding and restraining the enormous vice of intemperance. The other greatest impediment in the way of avoiding and suppressing this fashionable evil, is the natural pride or ambition of mankind. They all wish to stand high in each others' opinion. The poor wish to stand high in the opinion of the rich; the rich wish to stand high in the opinion of the great; and the great wish to stand high in the opinion of both rich and poor; and for this reason they wish to set examples to all below them. The great mean to stand at the head of the world, and to distinguish themselves by setting examples for others to follow. The rich mean to stand next to the great, and to distinwish guish themselves by following their example. And the poor to stand as near to the rich and the great as they can get, and mean to distinguish themselves by following their example possible. It is this vain and sinful ambition which has the greatest tendency to spread the pernicious evil of intemperance in every place. We all see the corrupting influence of example in respect to intemperance. Why do one family constantly keep ardent spirits in their house? Is it not because another family keep ardent spirits in their house? The poorest as well as the richest, the lowest as well as the highest, are ashamed not to be able to treat their friends

as much as

or visitors with wine or strong drink. And if they may treat their friends and visitors so, they may naturally conclude that they have a right to treat themselves in the same manner. Now, while this fashion prevails, how is it possible to suppress intemperance? This difficulty of suppressing intemperance, arising from fashion, grows greater in greater towns, and in grand and opulent cities. The strong appetites of mankind for ardent spirits, and their strong desire to be highly respectable, render intemperance, of all vices and immoralities, the most difficult to prevent and to restrain.

4. It appears from what has been said, that in order to prevent and suppress intemperance in any place, the people must unite their exertions to promote the desirable and important purpose. Union gives courage, resolution, strength and zeal in carrying on any great and difficult undertaking. To prevent and suppress the growing and fashionable vice of intemperance, is a very great, difficult, selfdenying work. Men find it hard to avoid this destructive and seductive evil in themselves, and much harder to suppress it in others. It has often been attempted, but with little success. Individual persons and individual families alone, can do but little to check this wide spread evil. If the wise and prudent in any place only unité their efforts and act in concert, whether by verbal or written obligations, they have ground to hope, that they shall be able, in some good measure, to check and restrain some, at least, from gross intemperance. It is in vain to attempt and expect to bring about a total and universal disuse of ardent spirits. It is impossible to make all men believe that it is not proper and salutary to use ardent spirits, at certain times, on certain occasions, and under certain circumstances. But it seems as though it would not be very difficult to convince all sober, rational men, that drinking to excess and intoxication is always to be despised, condemned, and restrained. This is the great and destructive evil, which some of the first men in this land have united their counsels, their examples, and their exertions to suppress, and called upon others extensively to unite with them in their noble and benevolent design. What if it does require great courage, resolution, zeal and self-denial, to suppress such a growing and fashionable evil, can this afford any valid excuse for neglecting to use all proper means to suppress it? To reform the grossly intemperate is almost hopeless; but to restrain those who have hitherto avoided drinking to excess, requires nothing more than the proper and united exertions of those whose duty it is to check and restrain the growing and destructive evil.

2

SENEX.

FOR THE HOPKINSIAN MAGAZINE.

LETTER

TO THE STUDENTS IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AT NEW

HAVEN, (CON.)

[Concluded from page 308.]

We have now arrived to the consideration of the second absurd hypothesis, viz. "that God could have prevented all sin, or at least the present degree of it, in the moral system." The ground taken to refute this error is, that God could not have prevented the sin taht has existed, without destroying the nature of things, the nature of moral agency, and the nature of sin and holiness.' Aware that some persons might be "startled" at this view of the subject, as derogating from the Divine Omnipotence; the Dr. very judiciously labours to do away their fears. This he does by disclosing the following very curious discovery, viz. that it no more destroys the Divine Omnipotence to suppose that God cannot prevent sin, than to suppose " he could not secure the greatest good, without the existence of sin." Let no Hopkintonian quibbler insinuate that this is a "prostrate begging of the question;" until he can prove that it is so. For admitting that the introduction of sin was the best means of securing the greatest good, as the assumption supposes, still who cannot see that the supposition that God could not promote the best system without the best means, destroys his omnipotence as really as to suppose he could not have prevented sin without making men machines? But there are other arguments still. In the language of our author," All evidence of the truth of this assumption, [that God might have prevented sin] must be derived either from the nature of the subject, or from known facts," No one can suppose that the bible is of any authority on such subjects as this. And since "all moral agents must have the power to sin," it is evident from the nature of the subject, that nothing can prevent their sinning, without destroying their moral agency. And this may be argued still further from the remarkably obvious fact, that "we know of no creature of God, whose holiness is secured without that influence which results either directly or indirectly from the existence of sin and its punishment. To what purpose is it then to allege instances of the prevention of sin under this influence, to prove that God could prevent it without this influence?" Who cannot see that it will be in vain to refer to the angels before the fall of Lucifer; seeing we know not how long they had "kept their first estate,” before some of them fell, and thus occasioned a moral influence that has kept the others from falling? Hence we arrive to the conclusion of the whole matter. "Had creatures done what they could, then indeed there had been more holiness and less sin," or a

system un

1

speakably better than the present one, which however is the best that the only living and true God could possibly devise and execute!

Now then for the interesting advantages of this scheme. The first hint we have in the sermon is, that all sin will be the fault of the sinner alone. There is with this view of the subject, no involuntary sinful nature to ease our consciences, and in the language of Dr. Bangs, "no horrible decree of reprobation to stop the sinner's path."* How easy it is to make such a view of the gospel "touch the secret place of tears." O with what resistless power can a preacher with these views come home to the hearts of even depraved beings, and constrain them to adopt a religious course. Or in the more emphatic language of our author's sermon, "What child of wrath, will not trust in such a God to save him." Let God be only divested of his resistless power, inflexible sovereignty, and ultimate design in making "all things for himself, yea even the wicked for the day of evil," which Moses and the prophets, Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and creation and providence, have, according to Hopkinsians, ascribed to him, and man be made to believe that he possesses the awful power of acting without his causing agency; and "on such noble terms, every man on the face of the earth, is, by nature, willing and ready to close the controversy with his Maker, at any moment."

Hence, 2d, we see the importance of this view of man's character and condition, in comparison with any other, " in its bearing upon a preached gospel." How can we preach the gospel successfully, "if we tell mankind, and they believe us, that their sin is something which God creates in them, or something done by Adam thou sands of years before they existed. It matters not what it is called, taste, disposition, volition, exercise; if it be that which cannot be, unless God creates it, and cannot but be, if he exerts his power to produce it, can we fasten on their spirit the forebodings of a merited damnation?" If we tell mankind in plain and unequivocal language, that God works in them to will and do of his own good pleasure, that he causes some to walk in his statutes, and makes others to err from his ways,' that their hearts are in his hand, and he positively turneth them whithersoever he will, even turning the hearts of some "to hate his people, and to deal subtilely with his servants, and that he absolutely "worketh all in all," as somé strange preachers do; in the language of the sermon, "Can they be induced to make an effort to avoid sin which is thus produced in them, or to perform duties which must with the same passivity on their part be produced in them?" Do not stubborn facts now testify that but comparatively few can be brought by human instru