Asahel Nettleton (1783–1844) on Total Depravity and Free Agency

This doctrine [of total depravity] does not imply that men are as bad as they can be. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse.” And all the finally impenitent will wax worse and worse forever. The longer sinners suffer in hell, the more will they deserve to continue there.

This doctrine does not imply that men are not free moral agents. They possess all the faculties which are essential to moral agency—reason, judgment, memory, will, and affections. If they were not free moral agents, they could not be the subjects of moral depravity. To say, therefore, that total depravity is inconsistent with free agency is absurd. It if is, there can be no such thing as sin or blame in the Universe. For if total depravity annihilates free agency, then partial depravity destroys it in some degree. So far as an individual is depraved, so far as he is not free, and of course, not blame-worthy.

Asahel Nettleton, “Sermon 44: Total Depravity (Genesis 6:5),” in Asahel Nettleton: Sermons from the Second Great Awakening (Ames, IA: International Outreach, 1995), 394–95. Also in Asahel Nettleton, “Sermon XXVIII: Total Depravity,” in Remains of the Late Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D. D., ed. Bennet Tyler (Hartford: Published by Robins and Smith, 1845), 314–15.

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Samuel Spring (1746–1819) on Natural and Moral Ability

5. Does the total depravity of man consist in the destitution of any faculties or abilities which are necessary to constitute a moral agent. For, if men were not moral agents, or were destitute of natural ability to keep the divine commands, they would be incapable of moral action. It is not possible for men to be disobedient, except they have natural ability to be obedient. For the commands of God never exceed the natural ability of man. God does not require the improvement of more talents than he has given. “For to whom much is given much shall be required.” The depravity of man, therefore, does not consist in the destitution of natural ability to obey the divine command; but in those volitions or exercises which are opposed to it. It is the will or heart of man which is depraved. Accordingly Christ does not condemn sinners because they are destitute of natural ability to come to him; but because they refuse: therefore he says, “Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.” Sinners are able to do their duty, but not willing. For God requires no natural impossibilities.

Samuel Spring, Moral Disquisitions: And Strictures on the Rev. David Tappan’s Letters to Philalethes, 2nd ed. (Exeter: Printed by Charles Norris & Co., 1815), 10–11.

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Richard Muller on Francis Turretin and Free Choice

Dr. Richard Muller said the following in a recent interview with R. Scott Clark on the topic of "Recovering the Past for Use in the Present" (see minute 7:39–8:26):

If you read Francis Turretin’s Institutes of [Elenctic] Theology at the beginning of each topic, he has a state of the question. What are we actually discussing here. A good example is when you ask the question, “Do human beings have free choice?” Turretin will say we are not discussing the question of whether human beings have free choice in every day matters. There’s no debate. They do. We’re not discussing the question of whether human beings have free choice to obey the law on a daily basis, the civil law or moral law. We all agree, they do. What we are debating is the specific question, “Do human beings have free choice in matters of salvation, matters of being righteous before God. And the answer we have is, no they don’t. We disagree with Rome and Arminians and the like on that point.

See also Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology, eds. Willem J. van Asselt, J. Martin Bac, and Roelf T. te Velde (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010). They cover the positions of Zanchi, Junius, Voetius and Turretin.

Update on 8-28-2014: Muller also wrote this about Robert Baron’s treatment of Calvin on free will:

Calvin is similarly defended on the issue of free choice by various others, including the St. Andrews and Aberdeen University metaphysician Robert Baron (1593–1639). In the particular case of free choice of the will, Calvin's rather hyperbolic language of the bondage of the will and its inability to to any good (quite in parallel with Luther's De servo arbitrio) had to be argued as referring to the specific case of the fallen will in its inability to choose a saving good rather than, as one might read Calvin's unqualified language, as a full doctrine of free choice. Baron pointed out, against Ballarmine, that the issue in debate was not the human power of free choice in natura sua considerato, which all human beings can exercise, but rather the limitation of free choice in fallen humanity and the issue of free choice in the instant of conversion.

Richard A. Muller, “Reception and Response: Referencing and Understanding Calvin in Seventeenth-Century Calvinism,” in Calvin and His Influence, 1509–2009, ed. by Irena Backus and Philip Benedict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 189.