bility], when the heart is totally
corrupt and wholly opposed to obedience.... No man can act contrary to
his present inclination or choice. But who ever imagined that this
rendered his inclination and choice innocent and blameless, however wrong
and unreasonable it might be." SAMUEL HOPKINS: Works, I. 233-235.
"Moral inability" is the being "unable to be willing." EDWARDS: Freedom
of the Will, Part I, sect. iv. "Propensities,"--says a writer very
different from those above quoted,--"that are easily surmounted lead us
unresistingly on; we yield to temptations so trivial that we despise
their danger. And so we fall into perilous situations from which we might
easily have preserved ourselves, but from which we now find it impossible
to extricate ourselves without efforts so superhuman as to terrify us,
and we finally fall into the abyss, saying to the Almighty, 'Why hast
Thou made me so weak?' But notwithstanding our vain pretext, He addresses
our conscience, saying, 'I have made thee _too weak to rise from the
pit_, because I made thee _strong enough not to fall therein_." ROUSSEAU:
Confessions, Book II.]

[Footnote 2: Romans vii. 9-11.]

[Footnote 3: Some of the Schoolmen distinguished carefully between the
two things, and denominated the former, _velleitas_, and the latter,
_voluntas_.]

[Footnote 4: MILTON: Paradise Lost, IV. 23-25; 35-61.]

THE ORIGINAL AND THE ACTUAL RELATION OF MAN TO LAW.

ROMANS vii. 10.--"The commandment which, was ordained to life, I found to
be unto death."

The reader of St. Paul's Epistles is struck with the seemingly
disparaging manner in which he speaks of the moral law. In one place, he
tells his reader that "the law entered that the offence might abound;" in
another, that "the law worketh wrath;" in another, that "sin shall not
have dominion" over the believer because he is "not under the law;" in
another, that Christians "are become dead to the law;" in another, that
"they are delivered from the law;" and in another, that "the strength
of sin is the law." This phraseology sounds strangely, respecting that
great commandment upon which the whole moral government of God is
founded. We are in the habit of supposing that nothing that springs from
the Divine law, or is in any way connected with it, can be evil or the
occasion of evil. If the law of holiness is the strength of sin; if it
worketh wrath; if good men are to be delivered from it; what then shall
be said of the law o