Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1847 edition. Excerpt: ...a conscious affection and a defined process of thought, and a preference in act of man's own will before the will of God. For the effect of Adam's first sin entered into himself, and depraved his own nature, into the likeness of the sin which he had committed, which was the aspiration to be as God, knowing good and evil. His children were born in his evil likeness, after his sin, and not before. Therefore they are born with a nature out of which springs, the preference of-their own wills, or of what seems good to themselves, before what seems good in the eyes of God, as necessarily as the poison springs under the tongue of the viper., This expression, the aspiration to be as God knowing good and evil, is here used to describe that corruption of the most inward and spiritual nature of man, which is behind all his affections, all his thoughts, and all his actions, and from which they all spring." And this corruption of his nature, derived from his first sin, consists in this very thing, and in nothing else, that his nature contains in itself the substance and root and principle of that which in form, in growth, in development, becomes in conscious affection, in defined process of thought, the active preference of what seems good to himself before that which seems good in the eyes of God. But this is to feel and act and live in the character of a god, in the assumption that he can know the difference between good and evil, of himself, and by his own wisdom. Without this, in the substance of it, there can be no sin. The expression of immaculate perfection in man is, Not my will, but thine be done, or in other words, not what seems good to me, but what seems good to thee, O Father. Higher than this in holiness the creature cannot rise; as...
