rior is not in justice binding unless it be in some mode
sufficiently declared." Now in the righteous adjudgments of revelation
the heathen are "without excuse." The will of God must, therefore, be
"sufficiently declared" to constitute them accountable. Who will presume
to say that the shadowy, uncertain, variable, easily and unavoidably
corrupted medium of tradition running through forty muddy centuries is a
"sufficient declaration of the will of God?" The law is "written on the
heart" of every man, or all men are not accountable.

[Footnote 376: Romans, ch. ii. ver. 14-15.]

Now this "law written within the heart" immediately and naturally
suggests the idea of a Lawgiver who is over us. This felt presence of
Conscience, approving or condemning our conduct, suggests, as with the
speed of the lightning-flash, the notion of a Judge who will finally
call us to account. This "accusing or excusing of each other," this
recognition of good or ill desert, points us to, and constrains us to
recognize, a future Retribution; so that some hope or fear of another
life has been in all ages a universal phenomenon of humanity.

It is affirmed, however, that whilst this capacity to know God may have
been an original endowment of human nature, yet, in consequence of the
fall, "the understanding and reason are weakened by the deterioration of
his whole intellectual nature."[377] "Without some degree of education,
man is _wholly_ the creature of appetite. Labor, feasting, and sleeping
divide his time, and wholly occupy his thoughts."[378]

[Footnote 377: "Institutes of Theology," vol. i. p. 15.]

[Footnote 378: Ibid., vol. i. p. 271.]

We reverently and believingly accept the teaching of Scripture as to the
depravity of man. We acknowledge that "the understanding is darkened" by
sin. At the same time, we earnestly maintain that the Scriptures do not
teach that the fundamental laws of mind, the first principles of reason,
are utterly traversed and obliterated by sin, so that man is not able to
recognize the existence of God, and feel his obligation to Him. "_Though
they_(the heathen) _knew God_ (dioti gnontes), they did not glorify him
as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imagination, and
their foolish hearts were darkened. They changed the truth of God into a
lie, and worshipped and served the creature _more_ than the Creator."
"And as they did not _approve of holding God with acknowledgment_, God
delivered them ov