Читать книгу An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible - Catharine Esther Beecher - Страница 15

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Augustine, the father of this dreadful system, maintained that all men had a common nature in Adam, which was ruined by his act, after God had made this common nature perfect. That is to say, every human soul existed as a part of Adam, and thus his act was the act of each and of all. This act vitiated the common nature of all, and thus Adam and each of his posterity caused the depravity of their common nature. And thus, though God had the power to create each mind as perfect as he created Adam's, still he is not the author of sin.

President Edwards, the great New England theologian, [pg 014] taught that all the minds of our race so existed in Adam, and were so one with his mind, that when he chose to eat the forbidden fruit, all his descendants chose to do so too, and thus each man ruined his own nature, and God is not the author of the evil.