“This natural propagation of sinful inclinations from a common parent, by a law of creation, seems difficult to be reconciled with the goodness and justice of God. It seems exceeding hard to suppose that such a righteous and holy God, the Creator, who is also a being of such infinite goodness, should, by a powerful law and order of creation, which is now called nature, appoint young, intelligent creatures to come into being in such unhappy and degenerate circumstances, liable to such intense pains and miseries, and under such powerful tendencies and propensities to evil, by the mere law of propagation, as should almost unavoidably expose them to ten thousand actual sins, and all this before they have any personal sin or guilt to deserve it.
“If it could be well made out that the whole race of mankind are partakers of sinful inclinations, and evil passions, and biases to vice, and also are exposed to many sharp actual sufferings and to death, merely and only by the original divine law of propagation from their parents who had sinned; and, if the justice and goodness of God could be vindicated in making and maintaining such a dreadful law or order of propagation through six thousand years, we have no need of further inquiries, but might here be at rest. But, if the scheme be so injurious to the goodness and equity of God as it seems to be, then we are constrained to seek a little further for a satisfactory account of this universal degeneracy and misery of mankind.”
The following was written by an American divine at the time of the commencement of the conflict in this country between the Old and New School Calvinists. At that time this theory of a depraved nature was accompanied, even in pulpit teachings, by the assumption of man's total inability to do any thing to gain salvation, and that Christ died, not for all men, but only for “the elect.”
Dr. Whelpley.
“The idea that all the numerous millions of Adam's posterity deserve the ineffable and endless torments of hell for a single act of his, before any one of them existed, is repugnant to that reason that God has given us, and is subversive of all possible conceptions of justice. I hesitate not to say, that no scheme of religion ever propagated amongst men contains a more monstrous, a more horrible tenet. The atrocity of this doctrine is beyond comparison. The visions of the Koran, the fictions of Sadder, the fables of the Zendavesta, all give place to this; Rabbinical legends, Brahminical vagaries, all vanish before it.”
“The whole of their doctrine, then, amounts to this: that a man is in the first place condemned, incapacitated, and eternally reprobated for the sin of Adam; in the next place, that he is condemned over again for not doing what he is totally and in all respects unable to do; and in the third place that he is condemned, doubly and trebly condemned, for not believing in a Saviour who never died for him, and with whom he has no more to do than a fallen angel.”
The elder President Adams at first designed to enter the clerical profession, but was deterred by doctrinal difficulties, of which he thus writes:
John Adams.
“If one man, or being, out of pure generosity, and without any expectation of return, is about to confer any favor or emolument [pg 037]upon another, he has a right and is at liberty to choose in what manner and by what means to confer it. He may confer the favor by his own hand or by the hand of a servant; and the obligation to gratitude is equally strong upon the benefited being. The mode of bestowing does not diminish the kindness, provided the commodity or good is brought to us equally perfect and without our expense. But, on the other hand, if one being is the original cause of pain, sorrow, or suffering to another, voluntarily and without provocation, it is injurious to that other, whatever means he might employ, and whatever circumstances the conveyance of the injury might be attended with. Thus we are equally obliged to the Supreme Being for the information he has given us of our duty, whether by the constitution of our minds or bodies, or by a supernatural revelation. For an instance of the latter, let us take original sin. Some say that Adam's sin was enough to damn the whole human race, without any actual crimes committed by any of them. Now this guilt is brought upon them, not by their own rashness and indiscretion, not by their own wickedness and vice, but by the Supreme Being. This guilt brought upon us is a real injury and misfortune, because it renders us worse than not to be; and therefore making us guilty on account of Adam's delegation, or representing all of us, is not in the least diminishing the injury and injustice, but only changing the mode of conveyance.”
The celebrated Dr. Channing was educated a Calvinist. The following exhibits his views on this subject, after embracing Unitarianism: