The first question we should put to ourselves, when we have to read a passage that perplexes us in a work of authority, is; What does the writer _mean_ by all this? And the second question should be, What does he intend by all this? In the passage before us, Taylor's _meaning_ is not quite clear. A sin is an evil which has its ground or origin in the agent, and not in the compulsion of circumstances. Circumstances are compulsory from the absence of a power to resist or control them: and if this absence likewise be the effect of Circumstance (that is, if it have been neither directly nor indirectly caused by the agent himself) the evil _derives_ from the circumstances; and therefore (in the Apostle's sense of the word, sin, when he speaks of the exceeding sinfulness of sin) such _evil_ is not _sin_; and the person who suffers it, or who is the compelled instrument of its infliction on others, may feel _regret_, but cannot feel _remorse_. So likewise of the word origin, original, or originant. The reader cannot too early be warned that it is not applicable, and, without abuse of language, can never be applied, to a mere _link_ in a chain of effects, where each, indeed, stands in the relation of a _cause_ to those that follow, but is at the same time the _effect_ of all that precede. For in these cases a cause amounts to little more than an antecedent. At the utmost it means only a _conductor_ of the causative influence; and the old axiom, _causa causæ causa causati_, applies, with a never-ending regress to each several link, up the whole chain of nature. But this _is_ Nature: and no _natural_ thing or act can be called originant, or be truly said to have an _origin_[110] in any other. The moment we assume an origin in nature, a true _beginning_, an actual first--that moment we rise _above_ nature, and are compelled to assume a _supernatural_ power. (Gen. i. 1.)
It will be an equal convenience to myself and to my readers, to let it be agreed between us, that we will generalize the word Circumstance, so as to understand by it, as often as it occurs in this Comment, all and every thing not connected with the Will, past or present, of a Free Agent. Even though it were the blood in the chambers of his heart, or his own inmost sensations, we will regard them as _circumstantial, extrinsic_, or _from without_.