cause with which I cannot but identify it, it does, it will, experience fluctuation; and those who see the waves retiring in one place, may not be aware how much they are moving onward in another. In various instances of frequent and extensive occurrence, the Unitarian controversy has gradually lowered the tone of Orthodoxy. The fact has been brought before the public, which has long been known to individuals, that in the very cradle of Calvinism, what many here call the es sential doctrines of the Gospel are virtually abandoned. And though I do anticipate that the absurd efforts which are made there to prevent free inquiry, and which show the danger of arming the professors of religion, however pure, with temporal authority, will defeat their object, and give opposing principles a power which they would not otherwise possess; yet I cannot see any reason to apprehend that their power will extend farther than to make that genuine Unitarianism, which unhappily is yet mixed without something of the old leaven. But what, for the present, I feel the most encouraging circumstance of all, is, that in various parts of our own land, many thinking, intelligent men, of christian principles and genuine piety, among that class who are least likely to be influenced by worldly motives, have been gradually embracing and then openly avowing Unitarian principles, led to them by the simple study of the scriptures, and often without knowing that there were any in the world who held the same views of christian truth with themselves.

When such men as these go back again, then may the Unitarian advocate be staggered; but when he sees persons of all ranks, and especially among those

whose circumstances have most led them to the close study of the scriptures, leaving the principles of childhood, after cautious, serious investigation, and often, in consequence of their avowal of obnoxious truth, subjected to many worldly privations and great discouragements, and yet rejoicing in the light they possess, desirous to impart it to others, and, above all, solicitous to display its influence in their lives, he feels that he is not laboring alone. While he is aiming to promote the glory of God, and the great ends for which his Saviour came forth from the Father, and for which he shed his blood, he knows that God's truth must be omnipotent; he knows that he must add to it no human admixture; he knows that, to promote it he must employ no unholy weapons; and he goes on in the work of reformation, with humble hope that he has his Lord's approbation, while in his name he endeavors to diffuse that knowledge which is the way to eternal life, while in his name he teaches men to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent,' while in his name he contributes to the arrival of the period, when the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God, shall extend over the whole earth, when Jehovah shall be one, and his name one,' when everywhere the name of God shall 'be hallowed, and his will done on earth, as it is done in heaven.'

AN

EXPLANATION

OF THE WORDS,

BY NATURE CHILDREN OF WRATH';

FOUND IN EPHESIANS II. 3.

Rev Freewrich

PRINTED FOR THE

American Unitarian Association.

BOSTON:

GRAY AND BOWEN, 141 WASHINGTON STREET.

FEB. 1831.

Price 2 Cents.

NOTICE. Through inadvertence the last tract (No. 43) appeared on the title page to have been published in 1830. It should have been dated JAN. 1831. For "convenient reference the tracts will in future be marked with the month of their publication.

PRINTED E7 I. R. BUTTS....BOSTON.

EXPLANATION

OF

EPHESIANS II. 3.

And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

WHAT did the apostle mean by the phrase, "by nature the children of wrath?" That "man in his state of innocence had freedom and power to will and to do that which was good; and that by his fall he hath wholly lost all ability to will any spiritual good accompanying salvation, so as a natural man he is utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, dead in sin, and is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto?"-" In the primitive state of innocence, man was endowed with freedom of the will, which was lost when he sinned; his descendants are born into the world inheriting his nature, in its fallen state, despoiled of that power over the will which he enjoyed at first; and without the grace of God, man has only the power of doing evil." "Previous to regeneration, men are dead, morally dead dead in a moral sense, as to spiritual things, in all the powers and faculties of their souls: they have no more knowledge of them, affection for them, will to them, or power to perform them, than a dead man has with respect to things

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