Is the system of natural religion evolved by their aid accepted?
Is the Augustinian theory of depravity, as tried by these principles and the rules of interpretation, supported either by reason or the Bible?
The work, as thus revised, was again sent to these same theologians, and it was noticed in most of the periodicals.
The result was the same as was accorded to the arguments of the Conflict of Ages. Some criticisms on style, language and minor matters appeared in the notices of the book, but the above main questions thus submitted were met with an ominous silence.
None of the theologians of any school has pointed out any misstatement of any specific fact; nor have they attempted to dispute the principles of common sense set forth, or the results of their application in the system thus evolved. Nor have they attempted to show that the passage in the Bible on which [pg 309] the Augustinian theory chiefly rests, is sanctioned by the interpretations of the apostolic ages, or that the interpretation of it in the Conflict of Ages, is incorrect.
Moreover, in the columns of the Independent, in reply to their notice of her work, the following statement was made by the author:
“The case stands thus: I am aiming to present, in a short and popular form, in my next volume, the evidence that, in the Bible, we have reliable and authoritative revelations from the Creator, and to educe from these documents the true answer, not only to the question, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ but to the grand question of my own profession, ‘What must we do the most effectively to train the young mind to virtue and immortality?’
“At my first step I am met by ‘Young America,’ with such an honest, amiable, and powerful leader as Theodore Parker. Regarded as holding the creed in which I was educated, and most of my life have advocated, I am thus interrogated:
“ ‘Is not the Creator the author of the constitution of mind?
“ ‘If the Creator had power to make it right and yet has made it wrong, is he not proved by his works (the only mode of learning his character) to be unwise and malevolent, and is not a reliablerevelation from such a being, to teach the way of virtue and happiness, impossible?