ian
life is of necessity, and not of choice, for the root always bears the
tree, and not the tree the root. If the cause is the unconditioned power
of God, the effects growing out of that cause are the fruits of
necessity; and so the Christian is a necessitated creature, and entitled
to neither praise or reward, for it was not he that did it, _but God_.
And in this case the sinner is not a moral agent, for in moral agency
the sinner, with a knowledge of the right and the wrong, begins the work
_himself_ and does it himself. This does not exclude the instrumentality
of Christ, the Apostles, prophets and Christians, who, by the words of
the Holy Spirit, have placed before sinners all the knowledge necessary
to give them correct ideas of duty, and also the motives to be accepted.
An agent is one who has power to begin action, and moral agency in
conversion is the exercise of that power, with a knowledge of the right
and the wrong, and so it comes to pass that conversion to God always
makes a Christian, provided, however, that the man, knowing what to turn
from and what to turn to, honestly turned from the wrong to the right,
which is the same as to say that he was a moral agent in his conversion.
A man may _turn_ without a knowledge of the right and the wrong, but it
is turning _round_ and _round_ and remaining in the same place, _i.e._
in ignorance of God's will, and so remaining in disobedience. Such may
be and often is.

In all such cases the person has been the creature of passion, wrought
upon by excitement, and left in ignorance of duty in disobedience to the
gospel of Christ. A good rule by which to determine when such is the
case, and it is the Master's rule, is the unwillingness of the person to
do the commandments of God, and to receive for instruction upon the
subject of duty, his word, an unteachable disposition, which not only
refuses to obey when the commandments are presented, but absolutely
persists in opposing them. A man in this condition is worse than
ignorant, his heart is irreconciled to the government of God, and he may
turn around and around and die in sin and transgression. Do you object
that God controls in conversion, and, therefore, the man is illuminated
in a mysterious manner, and necessitated aright--that he is a
necessitated moral agent? Necessitated moral agency and free slavery are
identical. There is no such thing as necessitated moral agency. What I
am compelled to do is not mine, but his