"Wherefore, as by one man, sin entered into the world, and death by sin;
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." — Romans 5:12.
THE discussion of this theme, as you readily perceive, leads me directly upon controverted ground; i. e., human depravity; commonly styled "total depravity."
As no truth of our holy religion is so debasing and humiliating to the carnal heart, as that it is totally or wholly corrupt and depraved, so no doctrine of the Bible has been so bitterly assailed and violently opposed by the founders and supporters of human-invented systems of religious faith, from the period of the first schism until now. Nor is this strange. Human systems of religion are constructed to please the world and to gain popularity. And what is so pleasing and complimentary to a wicked and depraved heart as the flattering insinuation that it is not naturally sinful or depraved but, on the contrary, naturally perfect and holy? What religious doctrine is so well calculated to win
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Notes of a Discourse, preached in the ordinary course of his ministry, by Rev. J. R. Graves, Pastor of the Second Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee.
As it was of the ancient, so it still is the first article in the creed of the modern, Pelagians among us. "No original sin" is still the watchword and ready reply they receive from the world. Save the divinity of Christ, no doctrine of the Bible receives so much of their ridicule and abuse. They direct the attention of the world to the preachers and believers of the doctrine of original depravity as the defamers of their character and natures, and thereby gain favour to their cause. We can easily see why they can so conveniently dispense with the divinity of Christ. For if the disease is superficial, the remedy may be trivial. If the garment be perfectly sound apd well finished, only a little dusty from wear, there is no need of having it renovated and renewed; a little brushing, "an external application of water will do." So if the heart of man is naturally holy, but only the inclinations of it a little warped, then he needs but recall his aberration, regain his natural bias, and have a perfect example to assist him (which they believe was the object of Christ's mission), and all will be well!
But if the Bible teaches the doctrine of original depravity, shall we cower, be ashamed, or afraid to assert it, regardless of the displeasure of the world,
Cast your eyes over our sad, fallen world, and behold the millions of the human race, the entire population of the globe, paling and vanishing before the sickle of the great reaper, Death, and
2. It is declared by the apostle (Romans 3:20) that "by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified." Now, if there was a child of Adam that was sinless or ever should be, he could be justified by the law. So all have sinned.
3. "Except a man be born again," says Christ (John 3:3), "he cannot see the kingdom of God." This implies that all are depraved — morally unfit for holy associations. If there was a person on earth not depraved, he could enter heaven without regeneration.
4. Christ came to save the lost. Therefore all saved by Him were in a lost state — those not saved by Him will be damned, and of course lost. The former, saved from sin; the latter perish for sin.
5. The laws of all nations are proofs of man's
6. The religion of all nations substantiates the truth of our proposition. No nation was ever yet found without its altar of sacrifice and priests. The religion of all nations is propitiatory.
7. The conversation of all nations. No man but what will say his neighbour is a depraved man — a sinner. So every man will correct his neighbour. If he tells the truth, our proposition stands. If he does not, of course it stands. Conceiving this point fully established, we will, in considering the source of this depravity, advance.
2. If it results from either, who taught the first persons or community, in each and every land, in all the unnumbered species of wickedness and crime? It must of course have been natural to their first teachers, and their number must have been many millions, to have rendered instruction to the whole world and made it popular, if mankind were as hard to be instructed in sin as in holiness — which would have been if not biased. Then, the impossibility of original depravity and sin being removed, is it more rational to believe that a few were thus, and the rest initiated into it, or that all are naturally inclined to do wrong?
3. But, granting that it is the result of education or imitation, or both, then there must be a natural love for sin, and a natural adaptedness of the human faculties to commit it; otherwise, every person on earth, young and old, in all climes, would not love it equally, or have learned it alike readily, and become alike perfected in it. Is it so with the arts and sciences, or anything that is learned?
4. It cannot be either; for children that have been placed out of the reach of vicious persons, to corrupt or teach them, and, moreover, have been most carefully taught the principles of religion and
5. Finally, and conclusively, it cannot result from either education or imitation, for the most atrocious crimes and acts of wickedness on record have been perpetrated by those who had no example. Where lived the fratricide before the days of Cain? Had he heard of one who had stained his hands in fraternal gore? Who taught him, but his own wicked disposition, to raise the murderous club, and strike the innocent to the earth? Therefore, if it cannot be from either education or imitation, it must be from a naturally vitiated and depraved nature. We adduce, in proof of this latter:
(1) The opinions of the most eminent and distinguished philosophers of antiquity. They saw this universal malady — this leprosy of the heart which rendered the whole human family unclean — and studied diligently for its origin, and have left us their reasonings and conclusions. No human opinions are superior to them. Allow me to quote briefly:
Plato, the godlike, asserts that no one is born without sin. He names this proneness to sin Kakophuia, i. e., natural sin or depravity — defining it, kakia en phusei — an evil nature. We hear Horace, the prince of Roman poets, acknowledging
"Eheu!
"Alas!
Plutarch says: "There is a fatal portion of evil in all when born, from whence results the depravity of the soul, diseases, death, etc. Unicuique dedit vitium natura creata." Cicero "laments that man should be brought into life by nature as a stepmother, with a naked, frail and infirm body, and with a mind naturally depraved and prone to vice."
(2) The Scriptures leave us not to the conclusions of human philosophy; but shed the clearest light upon it. With what confidence does it ask us, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one" (Job 14:4). Can a pure, sinless, and holy nature proceed from an unholy and depraved one? John 3:6: "That which is born of the flesh, is flesh" — carnal — corrupt. And the prophet testifies (Jeremiah 17:9) that the heart is the bitter fountain of all pollution and of all things the most deceitful, and desperately wicked. The
Again, "If the root be holy, so are the branches." Conversely, if the root be unholy, so are the branches. If the root of mankind was of corrupt and diseased nature, will not all the branches, the descendants of that stock be of like nature? Unholy? Corrupt?
(3) Finally, upon this point: That the natures of mankind are vitiated and depraved, we prove from the fact that infants and children, who never committed actual transgression, die. This could never be unless they were sinners or of sinful and depraved natures. When sin entered into the dominions of God, he summoned the most malignant of the lost spirits from the world of darkness, and gave him permission to dwell upon earth until the end of time, and become the executioner of the penalty of sin: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" — hence he was called Death. His commission was: Upon whatever being he found the mark of depravity, or the sign of sin, he might seize it for his prey.
Death went forth upon his mission of destruction; thousands on thousands fell daily before him, from the ranks of manhood and age. One day, as he drew near to touch with his ice pointed finger the heart of a mother on whom he discovered his
The young viper, though harmless and innocent, possesses naturally the venomous disposition and poisonous nature of its species, and requires only time to mature and develop it. Will our modern theologians who defend infant holiness assert that the young basilisk is not naturally a basilisk?1 We leave this proposition, so fully substantiated, to notice the depth of human depravity, which will constitute:
(1) That we don't understand by "total" depravity, that man is a sinner to the extent of his abilities, i. e., as great a sinner as he can be. Because reason, experience, and revelation teach that men do become more and more hardened in sin, and adept in iniquity. Nero, when he was first required to sign the death warrant of a murderer, was so affected with the idea that his signature authorized death, that he wept like a child, and wished that he had never learned to write. Yet, after a few short years, he could without remorse, fire the eternal city, enact the mountebank with the violin amidst its sweeping conflagration; crowd thousands into a temple and fire it, to enjoy the hideous yells and shrieks of the consuming victims;
(2) Nor are men wicked to the extent of their wishes. They are restrained from doing very many things which are sinful and wrong, because they would thereby draw upon themselves the odium of public opinion. If they commit this or that act, they would forever ruin their characters, and become outcasts from society. Those whom neither public opinion, or the rules of society, serve to restrain from vice and crime, the civil law steps in, with its arm clothed with a thousand terrors, to terrify the daring trespasser.
(3) But how deep shall we fix the dye of this depravity? Will the history of man give the faintest idea? If so, think of the deep corruption and licentiousness of the antediluvian world, swept from earth with the besom of waters. Go ask the Dead Sea's flood what ruins slumber 'neath its waveless depths. 'Twould answer, the fragments of those cities whose deep pollution heaven's fire and brimstone alone could cleanse. Go ask the god of war the almost countless millions of frater victims man has immolated at the shrine of battle, and hear his answer: "Forty times more human victims have they sacrificed to me in war, than in habit the globe to-day!" Their bodies piled one upon another would wall this mighty continent to
(4) Therefore, we do most unhesitatingly declare that man by nature is wholly and totally depraved and tainted with sin. We use the term totally or wholly, because we are acquainted with no better one to express our idea. We have been scouted and ridiculed for using the word "total," when we did not mean that man was as depraved as he could be. But no term could be more appropriately used. What is "total," but the sum of all the parts? Is not the mind, considered as a unit, composed of many parts, i. e., powers, faculties? What other idea can total depravity convey, to any intelligent mind, than that the sum total — all the powers and faculties of the mind — are vitiated?
Let us illustrate. Into a glass of water throw one spoonful of arsenic, and dissolve it; now is not
We do not teach that the judgment and reasoning faculties of man are destroyed, or his will, so that he can neither reason, or wish for what is good; but that all the affections of the sinner's heart are under the control and keeping of the evil one, as completely as the goods were under the power of the "strong man armed " — that the whole man is in the slavery of sin. "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" says Paul to the Romans (6:16). Have not sinners yielded themselves servants to sin to do the works of the devil? And now are ground down in vilest bondage? But cannot the slave wish for freedom and release? The slave may wish in vain, but the sinner has a deliverer to rescue him when he wishes.
2. We learn our lost and undone state by nature.
3. The force of those words of our Saviour to Nicodemus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, ye must be born again."
