ses the nature of
true virtue or saving grace."(93) "We see, in innumerable instances, that
mere nature is sufficient to excite gratitude in men, or to affect their
hearts with thankfulness to others for favours received."(94) "Gratitude
being thus a natural principle, ingratitude is so much the more vile and
heinous; because it shows a dreadful prevalence of wickedness, which even
overbears and suppresses the better principles of human nature. It is
mentioned as a high degree of wickedness in many of the heathen, that they
were without natural affection. Rom. ii, 31. But that the want of
gratitude, or natural affection, is evidence of a great degree of _vice_,
is no argument that all gratitude and natural affection has the nature of
_virtue_ or saving grace."

Here, as well as in various other places, Edwards speaks of gratitude and
other natural affections as the better principles of our nature; to be
destitute of which he considers a horrible deformity. But, however amiable
and lovely, he denies to these natural affections, or dispositions, the
character of virtue; because they are merely natural or concreated
dispositions. They are innocent; that is, they are neither our virtue nor
our vice, but a medium between moral good and evil. Nothing can be more
reasonable than this, and nothing more inconsistent with the logic of the
author. Such is the testimony of Edwards himself, when he escapes from the
shadows of a dark system, and the trammels of a false logic, and permits
his own individual mind, in the clear open light of nature, to work in
full unison with the universal mind of man.

According to the author's own definition of "true virtue," it "is the
beauty of those qualities and acts of the mind that are of a moral nature,
i. e., such as are attended with desert of _praise_ or _blame_." Surely,
Adam could have deserved no praise for the qualities bestowed on him by
the act of creation; and hence, according to the author's own definition,
they could not have been his virtue. In regard to the "new creation" of
the soul, Edwards contends that all the praise is due to God, and no part
of it to man; because the whole work is performed by divine grace, without
human cooeperation. Now, we admit that if the whole work of regeneration is
performed by God, then man is not to be praised for it; that is to say, it
is not his virtue. Here again the author sets forth the true principle;
but how does it agree with his logic in