d of walking in the clear open day, this has been, it
seems to us, because we have neglected the wise admonition of Barrow, that
logic, however admirable in its place, was not designed as an instrument
"to put out the sight of our eyes."

It shall be our first object, then, to pull down and destroy "the invented
quibbles and sophisms" which have so long darkened and confounded the
light of reason and conscience in relation to the nature of moral good and
evil, to dispel the clouds which have been so industriously thrown around
this subject, in order that the bright and shining light of nature may,
free and unobstructed, find its way into our minds and hearts.

We say, then, that there never can be virtue or vice in the breast of a
moral agent, prior to his own actings and doings. On the contrary, it is
insisted by Edwards, that true virtue or holiness was planted in the bosom
of the first man by the act of creation. "In a moral agent," says he,
"subject to moral obligations, it is the same thing to be perfectly
innocent, as to be perfectly righteous. It must be the same, because there
can no more be any medium between sin and righteousness, or between being
right and being wrong, in a moral sense, than there can be a medium
between straight and crooked in a natural."(88) This is applied to the
first man as he came from the hand of the Creator, and is designed to show
that he was created with true holiness or virtue in his heart. According
to this doctrine, man was made upright, not merely in the sense that he
was free from the least bias to evil, or that he possessed all the powers
requisite to moral agency, but in the sense that true virtue or moral
goodness was planted in his nature by the act of creation. If this be so,
the doctrine of a necessary holiness must be admitted; for surely nothing
can be more necessary to us, nothing can take place in which we have less
to do, than the act by which we are created.

This then is the question which we intend to examine: whether that which
is concreated with a moral agent, can be his virtue or his vice? Whether,
in other words, the dispositions or qualities which Adam derived from the
hand of God, partook of the nature of true virtue or otherwise? Edwards
assumes the affirmative. To establish his position, he relies upon two
arguments, which we shall proceed to examine.

The first argument is designed to show, that unless true virtue, or moral
goodness, had been planted in