ART. I. Christian Ethics, or Moral Philosophy on the Principle of Divine Revelation. By RALPH WARDLAW, D. D. From the second London Edition, with an" Introductory Essay, by LEONARD WOODS, D. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Boston: William Peirce. 1835. 12mo. pp. 380.
THIS is the very book which we have long wished to see. For we have long been convinced that there is a question connected with the Calvinistic controversy, more important than all others, going beyond all others, and that is nothing less than a question about the essential principles and grounds of right and wrong. What is rectitude? And what are the principles on which we are to arrive at the knowledge of it? These are the questions, which Dr. Wardlaw has undertaken to discuss in the work before us. And what now, do our readers suppose, is the legitimate theory of Calvinism on the subject of morals? Why, truly, that human nature, which has always been supposed to be both the subject of moral philosophy and its investigator, is neither one nor the other; that it neither furnishes the facts on which a just theory of morals can be built up, nor contains the power that is able to discriminate among any facts, so as to arrive at a safe conclusion. Human nature is totally depraved; therefore it furnishes no data for a moral theory. Its very conscience is perverted; the very labors of conscience in its own appropriate sphere, that of moral philosophy, have resulted in error; and in such serious, wide-spread, universal error, that it cannot be trusted, as VOL. XIX. - 3D S. VOL. I. NO. I.