For long ages after this, no attempt was made to oppose the system based on this theory in any of its branches. The doctrine that man, being so depraved in nature as to be incapable of knowing or judging aright, and having no standard of right and wrong but express revelations from God, resulted in the unresisted claim of popes and church councils as the only authorized interpreters of the Bible.
Then began the powerful influence of education. Every child was trained to believe the doctrine of a depraved nature as a part of the word of God, to be received with unquestioning submission. Thus the [pg 283] most powerful influences were enlisted to enchain the feeble and plastic mind of childhood at the starting-point of thought and reason. It was also taught by theologians to all the young ecclesiastics as a system, thus adding a new force to early educational training by the authority of the church, with all its solemn and awful sanctions.
The idea that every man is to receive the teachings of Christ, uncontrolled by church authority, as he understands them, and that he is a Christian just so far as he understands aright and obeys them, found no advocates for long centuries. Meantime the ecclesiastics, as the only infallible interpreters of God's word, and the only source by which to gain regenerating influences, abused the influence thus acquired, to build up the awful prelatic power that ruled Christendom for ages. At last, with many other abominations, the regular sale of indulgences to commit all manner of crimes at fixed prices, brought intolerable follies and crimes to a crisis.
Then Luther and his compeers arose and waged war, not against the root of these evils, but against those inevitable branches, the infallibility of church interpretations and the substitution of outward creeds, rites and forms for the spiritual principle of love to God and man exhibited by obedience to the Creator's laws.
Luther claimed that he and all men were bound to interpret the Bible for themselves, and not to submit their judgment to any pope, council or ecclesiastical power. And he claimed that the Bible teaches that man is to be saved [justified], not by outward forms, but by faith in Jesus Christ. But retaining the doctrine [pg 284] of man's ruined and helpless nature, his ideas of faith and of the mode of attaining it, were vague and conflicting. Thus originated the long conflict between Catholic and Protestant Christianity, involving some of the most bloody and cruel wars and persecutions that ever afflicted humanity.
Next came Arminius and his associates, who, still clinging to the fatal root of a totally depraved nature, labored to devise some way in which, in spite of this ruin, man could do something to secure regeneration from God. For, as shown in the early chapters, Calvinism maintained that man was utterly helpless, and that all the doings of the unregenerate were sin and only sin, and therefore utterly unavailing in gaining regenerating aid from God. Hence originated the long conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism, which has been continued to this day.
Both these schools of divinity rested on the dogma of an entirely depraved nature, but their tendencies were diverse.
Calvinism, maintaining the utter helplessness of man, tended to despairing inefficiency. If man really could do nothing, why should he attempt any thing to secure salvation?
On the other hand, Arminianism, promising help through certain forms, rites and influences conveyed by ecclesiastics, tended to a reliance on rites and forms. If man is to be saved by these instrumentalities and can do nothing himself except through them, then, these being secured, the natural tendency must be to rest in them.
These two diverse tendencies finally resulted in an equal torpor and indifference to religion in both parties, [pg 285] which was interrupted on the Arminian side by Wesley and Whitfield, and on the Calvinistic side by Jonathan Edwards.