Note G.
Among theologians and pastors there are two classes now existing, in all the great Protestant sects, the one holding to a real depravity of nature, and striving to make such a fact consistent with common sense and with the ideas of benevolence and justice in the Creator; the other, holding only to a depravity of action and of character, resulting from such action in this life, are striving to evade open antagonism with the Augustinian theory.
No third position being possible, every man is necessarily Augustinian or Pelagian; either holding that man is depraved in nature, or that he is not.
In the first class, is one whom, above all others, the writer would prefer to meet in a discussion on this great question. [pg 379] It is one who is remembered in early life as the honest, serious, book-loving boy; next as the earnest Christian and faithful student, winning the highest honors of a collegiate course; next as a student of theology called to several of the highest city pulpits, even before finishing his preparatory course; next, even in youth, the president of a flourishing western college, taking a decided stand on the slavery question, defending the freedom of the press with its first martyr, and very nearly sharing his fate; next resuming the pastor's office, mainly to gain more freedom to write and publish his peculiar views, which he well understood would encounter all the organized interests of Christendom, and place a drag-chain on all his personal and professional interests; finally, one who, as scholar, metaphysician and theologian, in the writer's view, has never been surpassed, while he never has, and never will, resort to a cowardly or unfair mode to weaken or escape an argument. Thus much, if not allowable toward a brother, may be permitted toward an antagonist.
It is this brother who for years has been laboring to sustain the Augustinian dogma by a theory which—could it be proved—is the only one yet devised that is at once rational, intelligible and actually secures the end designed. For if it were a fact that the nature of mind is depraved, and if it were possible to prove that our race originally, in a preëxistent state, were created with a perfect nature, ruined themselves, and were born into this world for purposes of pardon and redemption, the grand difficulty would all be remedied, and God could be exhibited as wise, just and good in spite of this mournful fact.
But it is the fact of the depraved nature of the human mind, where the writer and this brother are at issue, and not on any theory to relieve the difficulties incident to that fact.
The argument of this work, to prove that there is no possible mode of proving the benevolence of God, or of proving that the Bible is a reliable revelation from him, to any man who teaches that the nature of the human mind is depraved in any sense that can be made intelligible by human language, this is the place where the author of the Conflict of Ages, in due time, will meet this discussion fairly, openly and honorably.
In the second class, mentioned above, is another brother, whom the writer believes to be as decidedly on the Pelagian ground. [pg 380] Whether he yet fully understands his position, is not affirmed by one, who has, for so short a time, fully understood her own bearings in this matter. But ere long, the only question remaining for him will be, whether he shall openly attack this strongly-entrenched error, this wholesale slander on his Lord and Master, or take the Tract Society mode of evading discussion. All who best know the writer of the Star Papers, best understand that any question of expediency will relate, not to the fearless, outspoken exhibition of his opinions, but only to the time and manner in which it shall be done. He must soon perceive that it is as much his duty openly to attack the African[A] enslavement of Anglo-Saxon minds, as it ever was to combat the Anglo-Saxon enslavement of African bodies.
It will be noticed that this public appeal to family friends was not made until all other theologians, especially obligated to meet this discussion, had evaded it, and some of them by unfair, ungentlemanly and unchristian methods.
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.]