Читать книгу An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible - Catharine Esther Beecher - Страница 9

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The next question connected with the Augustine theory is in regard to man's power or ability to obey God.

The old school Calvinists hold that man has no power of any kind to obey any of God's laws acceptably until his depraved nature is regenerated by God, and also that he has no power to do any thing that has any tendency to secure regeneration. Every act and feeling is sin and only sin from birth to regeneration.

The new school Calvinists hold that man has full power to obey all that God requires, but that owing to his depraved nature, he never will perform a morally right act in a single instance, until regenerated, nor will he do any thing that has any promise, or encouragement from the Word of God, as tending to secure regeneration. He is as entirely dependent on God as if he had no power of any kind. And as the inability, whether natural or moral, is all owing to the depraved nature consequent on Adam's sin, the fact that man has power to do what he never will do, only adds to the misery of the condition thus entailed.

The Arminian sects agree in the fact that the sin of Adam entailed such a depraved nature to all the race, as more or less incapacitates for right moral action until regeneration takes place.

The Episcopal Arminians hold to the Catholic view that baptism in part remedies the effects of Adam's sin, so that by the use of the means afforded by a ministry regularly transmitted from the Apostles, the unregenerate can gain eternal life.

The Methodist Arminians hold that depravity consists [pg 009] in the “deprivation” of God's Spirit which was given to Adam, and that the death of Christ has so availed, that man now has some measure of this Spirit restored before regeneration, so that all men have power, by the use of certain appointed means of grace, to gain regeneration.

The main point where the Calvinists and Arminians differ is, that the Arminians teach that man has an appointed mode for gaining regeneration, and the Calvinists teach that he has not.