Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

"lieth in the wicked one," with an unavailing wish, yet without any
efficient power, to rise. Understanding, judgment, and reason, those so
much boasted, strong and commanding powers of the soul, which should
regulate all the inferior faculties, are themselves so fallen, enfeebled,
darkened, and corrupted, as to spiritual good, that they see not how to
command, and feel not how to perform: there is, therefore, no hope that
the man can raise himself from the fall, and replace himself in a state of
moral rectitude; for the very principles by which he should rise are
themselves equally fallen with all the rest. Wishing and willing are all
that he can exercise; but those, through want of moral energy, are totally
inefficient: God has inspired him with the desire to be saved; and this
alone places him in a salvable state. There is, therefore, in the human soul
no self-reviviscent power, no innate principle which may develope itself,
expand, and arise; all is infirm; all is wretched, diseased, and helpless.
This view of the wretched state of mankind led one of the primitive
fathers to consider the whole human race as one great diseased man, lying
helpless, stretched out over the whole inhabited globe, from east to west,
from north to south; to heal whom the omnipotent Physician descended
from heaven.
From all the accounts we have of the most eminent, ancient, and
celebrated nations, such as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Persians,
Greeks, and Romans, we find them, from their own relations, to have
been destitute of the knowledge of the true God, and although cultivating
the various arts and sciences, yet fierce, barbarous, and cruel. Their
history is a tissue of frauds, aggressions, broken truces, assassinations,
revolts, insurrections, general disorder, and insecurity. Their laws
despotic and oppressive; their kings and governors tyrants; their
statesmen time-servers and oppressors of the common people; their
soldiers licensed plunderers, their heroes human butchers; their conquests
the blast of desolation and death on empires and nations; their religion
superstitious, gross, brutal, and unclean; and their gods, and general
objects of their worship, worse in their character and acknowledged
practices than the most villanous and execrable of men. And what must