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    were cdld and barren spirits without capacity , and destitute of invention , that others were unable to compare tvvo ideas together and draw a rational conclusion ; that some were as destitute of memory as others of invention , I had 6 een idiots and creditors with good memories , and poets and debtors with none at all ; I had seen souls of

    fire and souls of ice . Seriously , I accounted for the poetic imagery of David in Psalm li . from the depth of his guilt , the strength of his feelings , and the radical nature of his penitence , expressed in the figurative language of an highly wrought Eastern

    imagination . I knew that there was nothing to be found in the sacred records which David possessed to justify the literal sense of his remark , a sense as

    contradictory to the tenor of his own writings as to reason , f could not therefore help rejecting that passage considered as a proof of the universal propagation of a radical and corrupt moral nature , derived from the first

    sinner or the imputation of his guilt to all his descendants . I turned over the pages of revelation till I came to Psalm lviii . 3 . There I read that " the wicked are estranged from the womb , they go astray as soon as

    they be born , speaking lies . " This passage I had heard frequently quoted to prove the universal and original depravity of the heart of human beings . I could not accept this as a proof of it ; I knew ( ftat new born to do

    infants had no power good or evil , that they were incapable of a moral choice , that they were destitute of the faculty of speech , that they were too helpless to go astray , and that so far from speaking lies , they could not speak at all . I was free to

    admit that the children of the wicked might be corrupted in early life by the bad example of their parents , that they might go astray from nature and virtue , and thus be estranged from the womb , and 1 had been often

    grieved to see the direful contagion of vice spreading itself , like a fatal plague , infecting the very souls of youth and childhood . I had seen with terror lying , deceit , dishonesty ,

    debauchery , villainy , pride , illiberality and hypocrisy , propagated in the heart ' s cpre of the rising generation , by the wickedness and folly of parents . Rut I was directed also , ( blessed be

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    God for his goodness ) to " train a child in the way he should go , " ^ A was encouraged by the delightful hone * that when he shall " come to be old rl he will not depart from it . " ' ' I had seen that " a wise son usethh his father ' s instruction and makethaa glad father , " therefore I said « M . soli be wise and make my heart clad d that I may answer him that reproaches is me : " I said to ray neighbour " cor- - rect thy son and he shall give thecc rest , yea he shall give delight unto thyy soul . " I read Prov . x . 7 , that thejustt man walketh in his integrity , hiss children are blessed after him . —thatt

    " even a child is known by his i doings whether his work be pure and whether it be right , " ver . IK I read Psalm exxxvii . that " Children are an heritage of the Lord , and the fruit of the womb is his reward . " I knew who had said , " Suffer little children

    to come unto me and forbid them not , for o £ such is the kingdom of heaven . " *•* Except ye be converted , and be < come as little children , ye shall not see the kingdom of heaven . " I therefore began to think that they did not " as soon as they were born deserve God ' s wrath and eternal damnation . "

    I now lodked around me with pleasure : I thought I had travelled through half my journey , that the prospect was clearing up , the clouds dispersing , light rising out of

    obscurity , the heart-cheering sun began to spread around me its life-nourishing beams , but a Reverend Gentleman quoted a passage in Jer . xvii . 9 , on the deceitfulness of the heart : he asserted

    indeed that all who did not believe his explanation must be bad men ; he seemed to glory in the baseness oim nature ; he told me that the will , the conscience , the understanding , all the powers of the mind , and all the propensities of the heart of every man deceit

    under the sun were by nature - ful above all things , and desperatel y wicked ; he added that whoever denied this fact , proved it by the very denial I read the passage , and conjafl . There I found , Jer . xvii . 1 , that U * sin of Judah is written with a pen ° ' iron , and with the point of a diamom graven upon the table of their new * and upon the horns of the alt ^ <" saw that the man whose heart dep from the JLord and trust * ia ^ Aitbe like tjie heath of the d&m , tfjg , ing the parched places of the w

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    518 Scriptural Examination of Original Sin

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1816, page 518, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2456/page/18/