and never be interrupted. But no man thus begins, and no man
thus continues. "The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray
as soon as they be born, speaking lies" (Ps. lviii. 3). Man comes into
the world a sinful and alienated creature. He is by nature a child of
wrath (Eph. ii. 3). Instead of beginning life with holiness, he begins it
with sin. His heart at birth is apostate and corrupt; and his conduct
from the very first is contrary to law. Such is the teaching of
Scripture, such is the statement of the Creeds, and such is the testimony
of consciousness, respecting the character which man brings into the
world with him. The very dawn of human life is clouded with depravity; is
marked by the carnal mind which is at enmity with the law of God, and is
not subject to that law, neither indeed can be. How is it possible, then,
for man to attain eternal life by a method that supposes, and requires,
that the very dawn of his being be holy like that of Christ's, and that
every thought, feeling, purpose, and act be conformed to law through the
entire existence? Is it not _too late_ for such a creature as man now is
to adopt the method of salvation by the works of the law?

But we will not crowd you, with the doctrine of native depravity and the
sin in Adam. We have no doubt that it is the scriptural and true doctrine
concerning human nature; and have no fears that it will be contradicted
by either a profound self-knowledge, or a profound metaphysics. But
perhaps you are one who doubts it; and therefore, for the sake of
argument, we will let you set the commencement of sin where you please.
If you tell us that it begins in the second, or the fourth, or the tenth
year of life, it still remains true that it is _too late_ to employ the
method of justification by works. If you concede any sin at all, at any
point whatsoever, in the history of a human soul, you preclude it from
salvation by the deeds of the law, and shut it up to salvation by grace.
Go back as far as you can in your memory, and you must acknowledge that
you find sin as far as you go; and even if, in the face of Scripture and
the symbols of the Church, you should deny that the sin runs back to
birth and apostasy in Adam, it still remains true that the first years of
your _conscious_ existence were not years of holiness, nor the first acts
which you _remember_, acts of obedience. Even upon your own theory, you
_begin_ with sin, and therefore you cannot be jus