natural religion. And when Campbell intermingles with the abstract discussion, as he often does, references to the actual or possible design of a moral Governor in producing the disputed phenomena, he may be censured perhaps for diverging from the line of argument, which he at first intended to pursue; but may be approved for practically acknowledging, that wonders, so great as those recorded in the Bible, must be viewed in some connection with a worthy moral end to be answered by them, or they will not command the full assent of the intellect. Consult, however, on the general subject, Hume's Ess. on Mir., and Campbell's Reply. Erskine on Int. Ev. pp. 110 -129. Brown on Cause and Effect, Notes E. and F. Paley's Ev. (Prep. Consid). Price's Diss. pp. 384-464. Butler's Anal. II. 7. Starkie on Evidence, I. pp. 471-475. Whateley's Rhet. P. I. Ch. 2. § 4, and 3. § 4. Abercrombie on Int. Powers, P. 2. S. 3, particularly pp. 77-86. NOTE B, p. 394. The following explanation of terms, which is taken from Bretschneider's Entwickelung, § 90. pp. 520-524, may throw light upon the phraseology of Ullmann, in this, and in subsequent parts of his treatise. "Sin, peccatum, denotes, in the theological usage, sometimes a property (or attribute) of the free being himself, sometimes a property of his feelings and acts. The former is sin in the abstract; the latter, sin in the concrete. (Cicero, paradox. III. says, “to sin is, as it were, to pass over the lines; the doing of which is cause of blame." Peccare therefore is the same as magaẞaivɛiv. Salmasius derives peccatum and peccare from pecus: "more pecudum, sine ratione agere." Gellius, however, and Isidorus derive it from pellicatus, because adultery was first called sin by the ancients, and the name was afterward extended to all kinds of iniquity.) Sin, in the abstract, is the want of coincidence between the state of free beings and the commands of God, or, which is the same thing, the object for which those beings were created. It is "illegality, or want of conformity with the law," Calov. V. p. 14, or "the want of agreement with the law," Reinhard, Dogm. p. 267. ['He is said to sin,' says Henke, ' who deviates from the divine law either in feeling or in action. The rule of right is the divine law, or the pleasure of God made known to men, concerning that which is to be done or avoided. Bret. Dogm. Il. pp. 5, 6.-TR.] Perhaps, however, the term vitiosity rather than the term sin should be applied to the abstract idea; the term sin being most frequently used in the concrete. [See Note G, following.-TR.] This simple and popular idea is expressed by John, 1st Epist. 3: 4, "sin is the transgression of the law;" and all the terms employed in the Scriptures respecting sin, include the distinctive mark of opposition to the law, over-stepping the rule, or disobedience to the rule. Thus the most usual word, quaprávɛiv means "to miss one's aim," and Suidas explains the word dμapria by the phrase, 1 Illegalitas, aut difformitas a lege. 2 Absentia convenientiae cum lege. failure from moral good, aberration from the right path, from one's aim.' The same is also expressed by the Hebrew N. Other expressions are i, that which is perverted, crooked, deviating from rule;, error, wandering from the right aim and way; 7, naxia, πovníα, that which is wrong in itself, bringing perdition;, making confusion, worthy of punishment. Particularly deserving of notice are the figurative terms denoting a falling away from the law, or a stepping over it, as,,, -5η, παράπτωμα, παράβασις, ἀποστασία, παρακοή, and such like. But sin is not only predicated of acts which are contrary to the law, but also of feelings, as in Matt. 9: 4. Mark 7: 21, and of the whole state of the man, so far as it does not agree with the commands of God; Rom. 7: 17. 5: 12. 6: 1 seq. 1 John 1: 8. John 8: 34. Sin, in the concrete, is every feeling or act of a free being, which is contrary to the known law; "the free motions and actions that are not in agreement with the divine law."3 Doederlein, Inst. Vol. II. p. 99. In a more exact development of the idea of sin, we must distinguish between the material of it, and the formal. The material implies a law given or promulged, (Rom. 4: 15. 5: 3), and a feeling or deed at variance with it. This has also been called objective sin (Doederlein, Inst. 11. p. 100); and to it belong all those feelings and acts, which we exercise or perform while we are not in a state of moral freedom.4 Perhaps this might be called metaphysical sin. The formal consists in the knowledge of the law, and such a deviation from the law, as is made in the exercise of free will, i. e. in a rational state. The formal is subjective sin, which the man must also acknowledge to be sin; or it is moral, such as may be imputed. From the formal originates guilt; reatus, that is "the state of being obnoxious to punishment, or to the suffering which proceeds from fault." (Mosheim, Elem. Theolog. Dogmat. I. p. 589.) This guilt (exposedness to punishment) follows from the imputation of the sin; i. e. " from the judgment, in which we affirm that any one is the author of anything, which was done deliberately," Reinhard, Dogm. p. 291, or the “judgment by which any one is held chargeable with a fault." [For an explanation of this distinction between the material and the formal, see also Bretschneider, Dogm. Vol. II. p. 5. See Rom. 4: 15. 5: 13.-TR.] The opposite of sin is virtue, or the harmonious relation of our feelings and acts to the divine law. It is piety, the fear of God (pietas, evolßɛia, góßos tov vεov), if reverence for God, and desire to please him, which is 1 “Н toù άɣaðοù ảñoτvɣía, aberratio a recto, a scopo. 2 Abnorme. 3 Motus et actus liberi legi divinae haud consentanei. 4 Deren wir uns in einem unfreien Zustande schuldig machen. 5 Obligatio ad poenam, aut, obligatio ad malum sustinendum, quod ex culpa nascitur. • Judicium, quo affirmamus, aliquem esse rei cujusdam, in quam deliberatio cadit auctorem. 7 Judicium quo quis culpae reus habetur. holiness, (ayıoovvn, sanctimonia), if the feeling of the absolute worthiness of virtue and the unworthiness of sin be the ruling motive. In virtue also, as in sin, we may distinguish the matter and the form. This distinction may also be expressed by the words legality and morality, illegality and immorality. Legality is the agreement of our actions with the law; morality is that harmony of our actions with the law, which proceeds from motives that have a moral character. This distinction is designated in the symbolical books by the expressions, justitia civilis, and justitia spiritualis; and also, justitia externa, and justitia interna. By the former term is understood the external decency of the act, according to which it agrees with the law; by the latter, the internal morality of the act, according to which it proceeds from a knowledge of God, and of goodness, and from pure love to both." Though we would not be considered as resting on the authority of Bretschneider, we would simply repeat the substance of his definitions, so far as they affect our present object. It appears, then, that all" subjective sin," all "moral sin," all such sin as can be imputed to the sinner as blame-worthy, consists in 1, an act; 2, a voluntary act; 3, a voluntary act in violation of law; 4, a voluntary act in violation of known law; that all other kinds of sin, such for instance as constitutional tendency, are objective or metaphysical, but not moral, such as its possessor cannot charge upon himself as matter of blame, though it may subject him, as is supposed by some, to punishment. Justice, one would think, must require that the punishment for metaphysical sin be metaphysical punishment; that putative ill-desert be followed by merely putative penalties; or in the words of the schoolmen, " aequum aequo." If all sin consists in sinning, then there may indeed be pain, but there cannot be punishment, without a previous act of the will against known law. NOTE C, p. 395. If the only sin, chargeable upon man, is "a free act which is opposed to the divine law, or which deviates from it," (Knapp, Art. 9. § 73. 1), and if the divine law requires every man to love God with the whole heart, then it is one and the same thing to say, that a man is guilty of no sin, and to say that he perfectly complies with the requisition of supreme love. If the law requires that, at every moment of our moral existence, we have some form of a desire to promote the glory of God, then a man who does not deviate from this law, must always have some form of a holy desire. The nature of a moral being, prevents the possibility of his avoiding a positive compliance, or else a positive refusal of compliance with every known claim of law. If he be supposed to prefer a state of neutrality above a state of decided subjection or rebellion, then, in that very preference, he rebels against the command to be decided for God. If the will of a man be dormant, then the man, considered merely in reference to his state of dormancy, is not a moral being. If the will be in exercise, then its most innocent state is that of choosing to be neither for nor against God, rather than to be against him; and yet to choose, specifically, not to be for him, is as real disobedience as to choose, specifically, to be against him. The two acts of choice are essentially the choice of evil rather than good. "Actual sins are divided into sins of commission, i. e. positive sins, such as are committed against the law forbidding; and sins of omission, i. e. negative, such as are committed against the law commanding. Reinhard, p. 313. Matt. 25: 24-30. 42-45. This division is not accurate, and depends on a difference in the use of language, rather than a difference in the nature of the thing. For every commission of evil is, at the same time, an omission of the good opposed to it; and vice versa. The distinction however, in practice, is a useful one; see James 4: 17." Bretschneider, Entwickelung § 91. 1. a. NOTE D, p. 396. "If it should be impossible for a man to live otherwise than virtuously, or if his virtue should be necessary, it would have no value and no merit. All freedom, in that case, would vanish fand man would become a mere machine. The virtue of Christ, then, in resisting steadfastly all the temptations to sin, acquires a real value and merit, only on admission that he could have sinned:" Knapp's Theol. Art. 10. § 93. 3. B. b. If then the value of holiness in a creature is entirely taken away by the supposition of the creature's absolute inability to sin, why does not the same supposition of necessary holiness in the Creator entirely take away the value of that holiness? Does the impossibility of sinning, ascribed to the Deity in Heb. 6: 18, differ in kind, or only in degree, from the impossibility of doing right, ascribed to sinners in John 6: 44? Are there not, in the Bible and elsewhere, many instances in which God is with propriety represented as being unable, in the figurative sense, to do what he is, by confession of all, able in the literal sense to do? If man, as a moral agent, was created in the image of God, how can he have a power of doing what he certainly will not do, while yet his Prototype has no such power? Which is the more honorable to Jehovah, to suppose that he will always, with infallible certainty, choose, as a free agent, to do right, or that he will do right, because he has no ability to do otherwise? Does not our author in his remarks on the power of acting wrong, which was essential to Christ as a moral agent, seem to overlook that certainty of acting right, which was as infallible in Christ, as if he could not have acted otherwise? Our sentiment of reverence for the Saviour is repelled perhaps by the assertion, that he could have done wrong; but is it not because we associate with the phrase, power to sin, some degree (however small) of reason to suspect that the power will be exercised in actual sinning? And is there anything repulsive in the statement, that every holy being in the universe has a power to be unholy; unless we consider this power as something more than a constituent element of moral agency, as something which involves more or less of a reason to suspect, that what can be, will in fact be? It is perfectly easy, as it should seem, to keep distinct the two ideas of an agent's ability to act either way, right or wrong, and an uncertainty whether he will act in this or that way, right or wrong; it is perfectly consistent to affirm the former, and to deny the latter in reference to the same being; to affirm the one, as an element of his moral nature, and to deny the other, as the excellence of his character. It is from a habit of confounding these two ideas; of supposing that a power to act either way, right or wrong, involves an uncertainty in which way the being will really act, that the assertion of a power in all the holy beings of heaven to become unholy, seems to derogate from the firm and ever undeviating holiness of those beings. The assertion should rather lead us to reverence such exalted natures, as, with all the liberty which moral agents can possess, will choose, will ever persevere in choosing the best course. The last sentence in the paragraph connected with this note, may be translated in the following manner. "Sinlessness only presupposes, that the development, which Jesus made of human (goodness or) virtue, went on without any hindrance or interruption, resulting from his power to choose between good and evil; (or in respect to his choosing between good and evil.") NOTE E, pp. 398, 399. There may be some readers of this treatise, who are not so familiar, as Ullmann would suppose, with the early heathen and Jewish testimony respecting the Messiah. A brief view of it may be, therefore, not entirely useless. The Epistle of Abgarus, King of Edessa to Jesus, and the Rescript of the latter to the former, bave long been considered a forgery. The Acts of Pontius Pilate, and his Letter to Tiberius, have likewise been so considered by many. The Acts now extant are doubtless spurious. That Pilate ever gave to his Government or to his countrymen, a written expression of his opinion concerning the Messiah, rests on no authority, but that of some early christian writers, none of whom assert that they had seen his Acts or Letter. Justin Martyr in his First Apology, about A. D. 140, refers to the Acts of Pilate twice. Tertullian in his Apology, about A. D. 200, says, "Of all these things," i. e. the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, "Pilate, in his conscience a Christian, sent an account to Tiberius, then Emperor." He also makes another statement, the substance of which is contained in the following abstract of a passage in Eusebius. (Eccl. Hist. B. 2. Ch. 2.) This historian asserts, chiefly however on the poor authority of Tertullian, that as it was customary for the Roman Governors to write to the Emperor an account of any remarkable events, which had occurred within their respective provinces, so Pilate wrote to Tiberius an account of the miracles of Christ, and of his death and resurrection; that Tiberius consequently proposed to the Roman Senate to place Jesus among their gods, "as he was already believed by many to be a god;" that the Senate, who exclusively had the power to deify, refused assent to this proposal, their alleged reason being the complimentary one, that Tiberius himself had once |
