Depravity

John Elias (1774-1841)

There is a disposition in some to confuse and darken by their carnal reasons and improper expressions, subjects that are clear and manifest in the Holy Scriptures. Some do this in order to shew that the state of man, by the fall, is better, and less miserable than it is set forth in the Bible, and to depreciate the wonders of grace in the plan of saving sinners; and others under the appearance of attempting to answer the objections of natural and erroneous men against Gospel truths,–sometimes by using human reason (they say) to shew the consistency of one doctrine with another. There is much confusion respecting man’s ability, or inability, though the Scriptures are clear on the subject. In order to shew the truth on this point, I will make some observations on what the Scripture states respecting man’s weakness, in consequence of sin, to spiritual and holy things, and then on the nature of his inability.

The Holy Scriptures plainly declare, that man, in his fallen state, is WEAK, or without strength for spiritual things, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly,” Rom. v. 6. So the Father viewed sinners, when he gave his son and sent him to redeem them; so Christ considered men, by coming to live and die for them: and so the Holy Ghost finds them, when he calls sinners to Christ, and applies salvation to them. For what things are they then incapable? They can do many things as men; yet there are some things, and those of the greatest importance, yea all the things that belong to their peace, which they cannot do.

They cannot be subject to the law of God; they cannot give that obedience which he requires, to love him with all their heart, and obey him at all times and in all things. So it is evident they cannot please God; for none can please him, without being subject to his law. Rom. viii. 7, 8. And as they cannot please God, they cannot be saved; for those that displease him, are under his wrath and indignation. Rom. viii. 3; Ps. xxii. 29; vii. 11. Though God did, in his infinite mercy, send his Son to die for sinners, so that whosoever believeth in him, shall not perish, yet none can go to Christ, and believe in him, and receive life. John iii. 16; 1 Tim. i. 15; John vi. 44. They cannot understand the Gospel, or the things of the Spirit; neither can they think correctly of the things of God, however correctly explained; the “natural man cannot know them.” 1 Cor. ii. 14. 2 Cor. iii. 5. They cannot either turn or change themselves, neither believe nor repent. In a word, man, without Christ, can do nothing holy; he is as incapable of acting in a holy manner, as body without soul is in a natural manner. Jer. xiii. 23; Act. v. 31; xxvi. 18; John v. 25; 2 Tim. ii. 25; Eph. i. 19, 20; Phil. i. 29; John xv. 5. Man, under the fall, is as incapable to apply salvation to himself, as to plan and to accomplish it. There is as much need of the Spirit to apply salvation, as of the Mediator to work it out; though he became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him. Heb. v. 9. Yet no one will nor can obey him, except the Spirit, in his infinite and overcoming power, works in him. The grace of God appears as clear in turning man, giving faith and repentance to him, as in redeeming him on the cross. Man is not only incapable of, but opposed to, the application of salvation. He as no inclination to come to Christ, nor to live under his government; incapable and unwilling to be made willing and obedient, John v. 40; Ps. lxxxi. 11; Math. xxiii. 37; Luke xix. 14, 27. We cannot shew man’s miserable state, without setting forth his inability to all spiritual things; for there is a great degree of man’s misery in this. And we cannot, without this, exhibit the glorious plan of salvation, by grace, especially the work of the Spirit in applying it. Though salvation is so free and complete, and so clearly set forth in the Gospel; and though it is preached in the most gifted, clear, and winning manner, and though the danger of neglecting it, and the misery of those that reject it, be set forth in a most lively and awakening way; yet, man will not, neither can he, of himself, receive or use it!

Now we will make a few observations on the NATURE of man’s inability to holy and spiritual things. There has been much said and written on this subject; and many obscure and improper words have often been used, as it too much the case in controversy. I do not understand that it is requisite that we should give a philosophical description of man’s inability; there is no need of knowing or saying more on this subject, than the Scriptures make known. We do not want unscriptural expressions or delineations on this point, or words that belong to human arts and sciences, such as philosophy and metaphysics; the expression of God are the best. Let us beware, on the one hand, lest we should, by dwelling on the inability of man, set him forth as a stone or wood, or unreasonable creature that is unaccountable to God for his conduct; and let us take care that we do not think that man’s inability is any excuse for his disobedience, or that the fault of his inability is at all connected with God. Let us be cautious, on the other hand, lest by endeavouring to explain the nature of man’s inability by human skill, we should lower the necessity of the Spirit’s work in his infinite grace, to convince man of sin, to bring him to Christ, to change him, sanctify, lead, support, comfort, and qualify him for eternal glory. However we may make the following observations:–

Though man fell awfully in Eden, by disobeying and breaking God’s covenant, yet he did not cease to be man; he still has the essential properties of man though he fell, the body and all its members and senses; the soul and all its faculties: he is, as a reasonable creature, yet accountable to God for all his conduct. The Lord did not give up his right to require obedience from man, and his obligations to obey God, did not cease.

But, when man broke the covenant, he lost the peace of God, and he lost his holy image also, and in this he lost the principle and holy disposition, the root of good works, so that there is in no man under the fall, the nature, principle, or disposition to do any spiritual good; there is no principle, a holy operation, within him; so he is dead in sin. Eph. ii. 1. Col. ii. 13. Not only man is destitute of a nature, principle, and a disposition to act in a holy manner–but “his heart is fully set in him to do evil; the carnal mind is enmity against God.” The soul is under the dominion of a nature and disposition that is sinful and hostile to God and every good. Eccles. viii. 11; Jer. xvii. 9; Gen. vi. 5; Rom. viii. 7; i. 30.

The moral inability is not less because there is no want of natural ability, members, senses, or faculties in man; the need of a nature, principle, and disposition to act in a holy manner, is as great an inability to it as if there was a want of members of faculties to operate in a natural manner. As the body cannot act without the soul, so the soul cannot do any thing that is holy without the divine nature. 2 Peter i. 4. As the eye cannot behold any thing without the humour, so the soul cannot act in a holy manner, though possessed of all the faculties, without a holy principle and disposition to do so. A spiritual life is as necessary to act in a holy manner, as natural life is for its actions. There is no spiritual life but in Christ, “He is our life, without him we can do nothing.” Col. iii. 4; John xv. 5.

All the faculties of the soul are unable to act in a holy manner, the one as well as the other, and entirely opposed to everything that is godly. The understanding is dark, it cannot perceive the things of God; the will is obstinate, so man will not come to Christ; the affections are earthly and carnal–the conscience is corrupt. 1 Cor. ii. 14; John v. 40; 2 Tim. iii. 4; Tit. i. 15. So a man must be regenerated, risen, yea created anew, in order to act and live in a holy manner. John iii. 3; 2 Cor. v. 17; Eph. ii. 1. For he has entirely lost all power to spiritual and divine things. It is not the ceasing of action to holy things, as it is with men in sleep; and it is not the absence of strength in some part, as with men in complaints; but the man is altogether without strength and inclination to perform holy things in a spiritual and godly manner; he is dead! He is unable to be willing, and unwilling to be able to do what is good. The godly man has experienced his inability to holy things; there is no need to say much to prove this to him. But the natural man does not feel his weakness, neither does he receive the things the Spirit declares respecting him.

There is great danger to hear, read, and converse, in an unfeeling and unsuitable manner, on human inability. There is a danger of mistaking, or drawing INFERENCES from this doctrine, respecting man’s weakness to holy things.

We ought to be on our guard, lest we think that man’s inability should make him excusable in his sin, or in neglecting his duties, or the great salvation. He, by his inability, does not become unaccountable to God. The Lord’s authority to demand obedience from man, and man’s obligations to obey his Maker, are the same. Our disobedience is not less sinful, because we are naturally sinners; and our sins are not less aggravating, on account of our strong inclination to sin; and our vileness is not less evil, because of our strong opposition to be holy. Let us beware lest we imagine that it is not sinful for us to be sinners. We should also beware that as man is unable to change his nature, he is therefore excusable in living in his sin; it is no excuse whatever to him, neither does it lessen his fault at all,–for he delights in his sin, and hates to be kept from it. He does not like to live a godly life, nor to be made willing and able. He contends with his Maker, opposes his Spirit, and rejects his invitation. Gen. vi. 5; Acts vii. 51; Prov. i. 24, 25.

We ought to take care, on the other hand, lest, by proving that it is not the need of members, senses, or faculties, in man’s inability to act in a spiritual manner, we should set forth that weakness as something small, and that man may remove it by some endeavour of his own; or that ministers may overcome it by strong reasons, awful, alarming threatenings, and winning, captivating invitations; and by that disregard and lose sight of the truth respecting the Spirit’s work in man’s salvation. There is danger lest ministers and people should fail in observing the need of the Holy Ghost working by his grace and infinite strength in man’s salvation. There is as much need of his applying it, as of the Son’s accomplishing it, as already observed. There is room to fear that preachers and hearers grieve the Holy Spirit, by losing sight of this; and are, consequently, left destitute of his powerful influences and operations, because they do not seriously consider, nor humbly acknowledge, the necessity of the Spirit working powerfully by the ministry of the Word for man’s salvation.

We should always bear this in mind, that God, in his infinite wisdom and grace, did forsee the sinful weakness of man, as well as other things, in his miserable circumstances; and provided, in his plan of salvation, deliverance out of it. As he contrived a way to pay the debt of sinners, to remove their guilt; so he planned a way to quicken, create anew, dispose, and strengthen them, to every godly and holy work. “It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure;” “working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight,” Phil. iii. 13; Heb. xiii. 21. So that the application of salvation is as entirely of God as its plan; it is all of God, and the glory altogether belongs to him for ever, and he shall have it from the redeemed most freely throughout eternity.

(From: “Elias’s Letters, Essays, and other Papers” )

Ralph Erskine (1685-1752)

The cursed state and condition of unbelievers

What a fearfully cursed state and condition are we all in by nature; lying under the cursed rubbish of the old building the covenant of works? When our first parents ate the forbidden fruit the fabric of the old covenant fell down, and the foundation thereof was overturned; and so great was the fall thereof that they and all their posterity are buried under the ruins of it, under a heap of sins, miseries, plagues, death, and damnation. For on that day that the covenant of works was broken, curses did commence; and cursed is every one that is yet in a natural state and under the covenant of works, as all are that are out of Christ! O the cursed state of unbelievers, and of all that are out of Christ. Alas! how great is the folly of multitudes besides the openly profane, that flatter themselves as if they were blessed! And why? They think they are good honest folk, and good livers, as they call them; they perform many good duties, and so they doubt not but God will thereupon bless them. But I must tell you in the name of the great God, that you are under the awful curses of this great God, as long as you lean upon the old covenant foundation. You may indeed deceive yourselves and the world by thinking that you are Christians good enough, and that you are like your neighbours; but God knows the blasphemy of those who say they are Christians and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan, the temple of the devil and not of God. And as you blaspheme God by thinking your religion is good enough, while God’s work declares the contrary, so God curses you, and all his attributes are against you; for out of Christ God is a consuming fire. In Christ only God is well pleased; and therefore while you are out of Christ God is pleased neither with your persons nor duties. If your works be only the repairing the fabric of the old covenant of works, thinking to please and satisfy God’s justice, and fulfil God’s law by your duties, that you may live thereby, I must tell you that unless your person were as innocent as Adam’s before the fall, and your obedience so perfect as never to have sinned in thought, word, or deed, all your days, but lived up to the law in its most full and spiritual extent; I say unless it be thus with you, which is simply impossible of any of Adam’s sinful race, I must tell you, that ye are so far from being God’s people, or in God’s favour by your best duties, that all the people of God are obliged to own that God is just in cursing you; they are obliged to say Amen to all the curses of the Bible against you. “Cursed is he that confirmeth not all the words of this law, to do them: and all the people shall say, Amen,” Deut. xxvii. 26. “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them:” and all true believers can say Amen to it in the words of Paul, Let him that loves not our Lord Jesus Christ be Anathema Maranatha. O the cursed old foundation! Ah! dreadful! Man, woman, what if God be saying, From this day will I curse you, from this day will I plague you? Consider this all ye that are in a secure, Christless, natural state.

(From: “The Beauties of the Rev. Ralph Erskine” )

John Kennedy (1819-1884)

Man sinned, and by sinning fell. It was by an act of sin he fell—he ate the forbidden fruit. It is this overt act that is set before us, in scripture light, as the procuring cause of all his ruin. What occurred in the secrecy of his soul, ere sin was developed in that act, we cannot tell; for God has not unveiled it. That soul was the abode of innocence, the temple of God, and yet sin entered into it, and came forth in an act of disobedience.

In accounting for man’s fall, we cannot trace the sin which procured it further back than man himself. It originated, as an act, in him. True, the tempter was in Eden; the “liar and murderer” was busy there. But he was weak against the will of man. He could not take the citadel of Mansoul by storm. Ere he could enter, the gates must be opened from within. This is made patent in God’s description of the fall. If Satan seems to triumph, he has no ground of boasting. His is not the position of being an independent source of evil; of evil even he is not the god. He is but its slave himself, though the world submits to his power as if he were a god. He cannot show himself godlike, even when weak man is the subject on whom he operates. It is a profound mystery, and shall be so perhaps for ever, how the Holy One permitted the introduction of sin. But while I cannot but tremble, as I reflect on His mysterious connection with sin and the fall, I cannot but rejoice to recognise His effective presidency, as the Only God, even under the shade which the prince of darkness casts over the bright bliss of Eden. Satan has carried infection to the garden; and this is all his achievement. He need not boast. The wandering leper has affected another with the plague; and that other has thus become unclean like himself. His form and demeanour were those of a serpent:—so far from being godlike was he. He decoyed into fellowship with himself, in the slavery of sin, one who was once, like himself, in the image and service of God; but this is all the triumph of his power. The serpent has bitten, because man opened his bosom to receive him; and the poison has done its deadly work. But the deadly deed was man’s. Satan had not the power to kill. He only tempted man to slay himself; and all the more guilty is the suicide, because he had not only all the attractiveness, of divine glory and goodness, to attach him to the service of God, but all the loathsomeness of the liar, to scare him from the evil.

The sin was committed, and God departed. With His presence all spiritual life was gone. The soul God-forsaken, is now dead. Of the soul, deserted by God, sin takes possession. Sin is now an operative principle in that soul, determining all its states of feeling, and the character of all its exercises. That principle is not dependent for its continued existence on the presence of Satan, as is the life of God in the quickened soul on the presence of the Spirit of God (Eph. 2:1-3). Nor are its motions merely the results of an impetus given by the active power of Satan. He is not the god of evil. He is himself the victim and the slave of sin; he cannot be its god. But he “keeps” that dead soul as “his palace,” and he works as a “prince” in that child of disobedience.

If the principle of spiritual life is love to God, that of spiritual death is enmity to God; for there is an active principle in this death, as surely as there is in that life. Spiritual death is not mere impotence; it is not a mere negation. To be dead is to be under the sway of sin; and essentially sin is enmity to God (Col. 1:21). A rational soul cannot be neutral in relation to God. There must be infinite repulsion, in divine holiness, if it has ceased to attract. God must be either loved or hated. Fallen man must be an alien, in relation to the living God, for he is dead; and he must be an enemy, to the Holy God, for he is under the sway of sin.

All the image of God is effaced from the soul of fallen man. That temple is now an utter ruin. True there is still some light—“the work of the law written in the heart,” (Rom. 2:15),—but, like a lamp, hung from the broken vault of a ruin, its flickering glimmer only makes more manifest the wreck on which it shines. True, there is a conscience still in that fallen soul, which seems as if it were a living thing amidst the dead;—the one survivor of those who once worshipped in that temple. It is there, and it speaks; but its cry, like the screech of the owl amidst the desolation of the ruin, only serves to make the place more dismal. It befits the ruin; it is no exception to its utterness. Or, if a survivor, it is so only as that maniac is, to whom the fall of the temple was the death of his reason; and who, with the life of an animal only, still haunts the scene of ruin, finding nought to feed on but the putrid carcasses of the dead, and making with his shrieks, which express alike his madness, his hunger, and his loathing, the place more dismal than if all were still.

Man, as fallen, is a dependent creature, and, at the same time, a guilty sinner. He lives in God while he is a child of wrath. He is at once sustained and accursed by God. He is upheld by His power while he is lying under His wrath.

(From: “Man’s Relations to God”)

The third article in the Declaratory Statement is as follows:– “That the doctrine of Man’s Total Depravity, and of his loss of ‘all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation,’ is not held as implying such a condition of man’s nature as would affect his responsibility under the law of God and the gospel of Christ, or that he may not experience the strivings and restraining influences of the Spirit of God, or that he cannot perform actions in any sense good; though such actions, as not springing from a renewed heart, are not spiritually good or holy, and consequently are not such as accompany salvation.” If by this it was intended to modify, or tone down, or to adapt to the taste of whole-hearted men, the Confession doctrine of man’s total depravity, then, however inconsistent this may be with the Confession of Faith, it is quite in harmony with the preceding articles in the Statement. Those who are enamoured of the doctrines of universal love, universal atonement, and universal grace, cannot receive in its entireness the Confession doctrine of sin. They cannot but be disposed to modify it. The state of feeling that disposes to the former must demand the latter. At first, the attempt to modify will be done with a trembling hand – first attempts will be marked by hesitancy and will not apparently go very far. This is the characteristic of the third article in the Statement. There is scarcely anything declared in it that does not seem to be said in the Confession. But why should it be deemed necessary to say that the Confession doctrine of Man’s Total Depravity “is not held as implying such a condition of man’s nature as would affect his responsibility,” unless the authors of the Statement held that the depravity was not total, and that this was required in order to preserve the responsibility. The Confession has neither declared nor insinuated that rational life has not survived the fall, and its authors were wise enough to know that on this, and not on his spiritual condition, man’s responsibility rests. But the authors of the Statement could not see that the utter bondage of the will to sin does not impair the responsibility of him who is enslaved. Reason and conscience survive to act, and these, though spiritually corrupted, are the pillars on which man’s responsibility is placed. But what they dare not formulate in a plain statement, they insinuate in a hazy one – that there must be some reserve of spiritual power unaffected by, ere responsibility could survive, the fall.

Why add that a man, notwithstanding of his depravity, may “experience the strivings and the restraining influences of the Spirit of God”? Is this not as well, and more briefly said in the Confession, which declares that the non-elect “may have some common operations of the Spirit”? Was the alteration intended as a step nearer to the doctrine of “gracious ability” bestowed on all who hear the gospel? If not, why was it necessary to make the statement at all? And why was this followed up by another seeming repetition of the words of the Confession, in what is said about the actions of unrenewed men? The repetition here is, however, much less exact. The divergence from the language of the Confession here is manifestly intended to serve a purpose. There is a real and wide difference under the seeming correspondence. In the Confession all “works done by unregenerate men” are declared to be “sinful.” The authors of the Statement do not say so – they cannot, they dare not, say so, while saying that they may be in some sense “good.” True, they say that they cannot be “spiritually good or holy,” but still they declare that these actions are in some sense good. What a contrast they present in their Statement to what the Westminster divines have given us as their deliverance on this subject! The latter remembered that, when speaking of men’s actions, they were speaking of what must not be dissociated from the state of the heart out of which they spring. They would not, therefore, call the works of the unregenerate in any sense good. “As to the matter of them,” they say that “they may be things which God commands, and of good use to themselves and others; but because they proceed not,” they add, “from a heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner, according to the Word, nor to a right end, the glory of God, they are therefore sinful, and cannot please God, or make a man meet to receive grace from God. And yet their neglect of them is more sinful and displeasing to God.” Such is the masterly deliverance of the Confession, and this is what is to be laid aside, in order to find a place for the crooked weakling, brought forth in the Declaratory Statement. The men who dared, to this extent, to modify the doctrine of the Confession, regarding total depravity, and who, in doing so, have shewn their incompetence, as well as indicated their Pelagian tendencies, will not stop short of removing more of what the Confession teaches regarding man’s ruin by the fall. Their successors may remove it all.

(From: “Signs of the Times”)

William Romaine (1714-1795)

Are you then, my brethren, in the number of the righteous, or of the unrighteous? Is it not of infinite consequence to know what state you are in? For certainly if it should appear that you are unrighteous, you would not act so contrary to your own interest, as to choose to be subject to the curses of God’s holy law, and to suffer the threatened punishment, if there be a way left to escape. Do you see then, how necessary it is we should inquire, whether we have acted righteously with God or not. To the infallible word therefore, and to the testimony, let us repair. The oracles of truth inform us, that, after God had finished his six days’ work, he looked down from heaven, and behold all things were good. There was no disorder in the natural world, and no evil in the spiritual world. But he is soon after represented looking down from heaven upon the children of men, and behold all things were evil. “And God saw that the wickedness of men was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Gen. vi. 5.) Whence was the origin of this universal evil? Mankind had gone out of the way of righteousness, they had broken the law, and had made themselves altogether corrupt, and were become abominable, there was none of them righteous, no, not one. What! Not one righteous man left upon earth? No. God declares by the mouth of his holy prophet, that there was not one. They had all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. They were by nature children of his wrath through one man’s disobedience, and they were ten times more the children of wrath by actual guilt; and being sinners against God’s law, both by nature and by life, he hath shut them all up under sin, in a state of condemnation, reserving them to the judgment of the great day.

This is our condition, We are all unrighteous: and we are without strength to attain any righteousness of our own: because we are poor, broken debtors, who have nothing to pay. One offence attaints our blood, and renders us incapable of doing any act that will be deemed good and valid in the court of heaven, for this irreversible decree stands against us in the divine records: “The unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

(From: “Works of William Romaine”)

George Smeaton (1814-1889)

Of this revival the great theologian was President Edwards, whose influence, as a thinker and leader of revival, has ever since been powerfully felt. No man can dispute his claim to a place among the acknowledged magnates of theology, whether we consider his profound exposition of the high doctrines of sovereign grace, or his view of the Religious Affections, in which he states his doctrine of the Spirit, or his almost unparalleled logical power. Had the theological reading of Edwards and his acquaintance with the productions of previous theological schools been in any proportion to his spiritual experience and mental powers, he would have taken his place along with Augustin, Anselm, Calvin, and Owen as one of the greatest formers of thought for all time. But from lack of acquaintance with the theological thought and style of the previous ages of the Church, he does not always lay down his premises or first principles with sufficient breadth and caution. Thus he powerfully describes the supernatural light immediately imparted to the soul by the Spirit of God as giving a sense of divine things in their reality and superlative excellency. But it is too one-sided for a high Calvinist, as Edwards undoubtedly was. His distinction between natural and moral ability, in which he has been largely followed by American and English writers, was a capital mistake. Had Edwards fully known the place which that mischievous theory occupied in the Amyraldist system, it would probably never have been propounded in the manner in which it is set forth by him in his essay on the freedom of the will and elsewhere. For all the practical ends for which he appeals to it, it is safe enough; when it is used speculatively, it is dangerous. It was adopted in America by Bellamy, Dwight, Woods, and by the revivalists as a body. It was accepted here by Dr. Erskine, by Fuller, Ryland, Hinton, Dr. Pye Smith in England. Proceeding in that line of things, these writers thought they had gained a vantage-ground. They argued that the previous mode of representing the matter by the followers of Augustin and Calvin, left the idea of a real incapacity or natural inability; that it was chargeable with an improper application of Scripture figures (Eph. ii. 1; Ezek. xxxvii.); that they gave a needless point of attack to Pelagians; and that men might reasonably say that they were not responsible for not performing what was really not in his power. To obviate this, the assertors of the above-named distinction said, The proper language to be used was simply that men would not, not that they could not, repent and believe the gospel. They wished to exhibit that the entire turning-point was with the will, and they threw the responsibility on the man to make him feel that he would not come and be saved.

These expositions of inability, resolving the whole matter into an act of will, served no good purpose or end. They were not in harmony with Scripture nor with the doctrines of the Reformation, either in the Lutheran or Reformed Church. They were an attempt in words at least to do something, or at least seem to do something, to obviate the common objection of the Semi-Pelagians: “A man cannot be under an obligation beyond his ability; he cannot be bound to do what is not within his own power and resources.” The answer to that objection, as given by Marckius and by all the divines of the post-Reformation period, was, that while God did not require of man in innocence anything for which he had not ability, yet God did not lost His right to demand obedience though man has forfeited his power or ability. This answer was held to be sufficient; and it is recognised by all who have right views either of the IMPETRATION or APPLICATION OF REDEMPTION. The writers to whom Edwards incautiously gave this new impulse supposed that a better answer could be given by drawing a distinction between natural and moral ability. They set forth that men, even as they now are, have a natural power to believe in Christ and to repent, but that they are denuded of all moral power to do either. There is nothing more deceptive that the use of such nomenclature, which really amounts to nothing. It hides the true state of the question under cloudy terms. To show how unmeaning that distinction is, let me notice the following points:–(1) The inability, according to the express words of Scripture, must be traced to the understanding as well as to the will (1 Cor. ii. 14). To the natural man the things of the Spirit of God are foolishness, because he cannot know them, and because he misrepresents them. But to prove that no efforts of the natural man will avail to make a change, and that only the supernatural light imparted by the Spirit can suffice, the apostle says, “because they are spiritually discerned.” (2) The inability, viewed, according to the Pauline statements, as enmity against God, as a non-subjection to the divine law, and as an incapacity for being so subject (Rom. viii. 7), may be called both natural and moral. That is, it is the loss of the image of God, or of the original righteousness which at first belonged to him and was natural to him. As man’s entire nature is subject to this corruption to such a degree that he cannot think a good thought or perform a single good act without a change of nature, this inability may be called natural and culpable. The act of the will is not the only hindrance. There is the corruption of the nature and the want of supernatural grace. It if lay all in a want of will or inclination, the frequently repeated cannot of Scripture–e.g. cannot come, cannot please God, cannot bear fruit, and the like–would have no other significance than the disinclination of a man to do what he has within him full ability or power to do, if we were only induced to will it. There can be greater misrepresentation or deception. (3) A common paralogism is: “If a man cannot in a true manner repent and believe, then he cannot do the opposite, disbelieve and refuse salvation.” But all unbelief and impenitence have their root in natural depravity, and grow from it. The inability to repent and believe presupposes a bias or tendency to the opposite sin, and makes it natural and easy to practise it; and they are left the more to shut their eyes and ears under a peculiar induration permitted to descend on them.

All this serves to show how mistaken Edwards was in making that distinction, which is still drawn by many of his followers, between natural and moral ability. What was really aimed at was the conjunction of two things, neither of which must be permitted to eclipse the other, viz. free agency and inability, personal responsibility and the necessary helps or aids of God’s Spirit. And the true object is gained, not by magnifying natural ability and shutting men up to will, but by exhibiting the two sides of the incomprehensible mystery. They are both true; and all that theology effects, is to conserve the mystery.

(From: “The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit”)