aware, a diversity of opinion, with freedom of discussion, among
the Calvinists in this country, especially in New England, but
which has never impaired their fellowship or mutual confidence. To
these topics of difference, greater or less importance has been
attached by different individuals. In respect to some of these,
(and, in respect to them, I suppose myself to agree with a large
majority of our Calvinistic clergy,) I will now briefly but
frankly state what I do _not_, and what I do, believe.

"I do _not_ believe that the posterity of Adam are, in the proper
sense of the language, guilty of his sin; or that the ill desert
of that sin is truly theirs; or that they are punished for that
sin. But I do believe that, by the wise and holy constitution of
God, all mankind, in consequence of Adam's sin, become sinners by
their own act.

"I do _not_ believe that the nature of the human mind, which God
creates, is itself sinful; or that God punishes men for the nature
which he creates; or that sin pertains to any thing in the mind
which precedes all conscious mental exercise or action, and which
is neither a matter of consciousness nor of knowledge. But I do
believe that sin, universally, is no other than selfishness, or a
_preference_ of one's self to all others,--of some inferior good to
God; that this free, voluntary preference is a permanent principle
of action in all the unconverted; and that this is sin, and all
that in the Scriptures is meant by sin. I also believe that such
is the _nature_ of the human mind, that it becomes the occasion of
universal sin in men in all the appropriate circumstances of their
existence, and that, therefore, they are truly and properly said
to be sinners _by nature_.

"I do _not_ believe that sin can be proved to be the necessary
means of the greatest good, and that, as such, God prefers it, on
the whole, to holiness in its stead; or that a God of sincerity
and truth punishes his creatures for doing that which he, on the
whole, prefers they should do, and which, as the means of good, is
the best thing they can do. But I do believe that holiness, as the
means of good, may be better than sin; that it may be true that
God, all things considered, prefers holiness to sin in all
instances in which the latter takes place, and, therefore,
sincere