To meet this, these gentlemen maintained that they had not essentially departed from the system of New England divinity as exhibited in the writings of President Edwards. Thus they had two labors to perform--the one to maintain the doctrine that sin consisted solely in wrong _action_ and not at all in _nature_, and the other to show that in this they did not differ from Edwards.
In attempting the first, at one time and another, they have maintained that mankind _since the fall_ are as truly created in God's image as Adam was; that the nature of man is still like the nature of God; that a corrupt, depraved, or unholy nature can not be affirmed of the human mind in any proper use of these terms.
The inquiry, then, must arise, in many minds that are familiar with the writings of President Edwards, how it is possible that men so intelligent and so honest should maintain that on this subject they had not departed from the system of New England divinity as exhibited by Edwards.
To the author this enigma is solved by the character of Edwards's writings, which, like those of many other metaphysicians who hold theories contrary to common sense, are _contradictory and inconsistent_. Thus it is seen that one class of very acute minds find in Edwards's _Treatise on the Will_ the most complete exposition and defense of _fatalism_, and thus the author regards it. Another class, equally acute, claim this same essay as a full exposition and defense of the contrary doctrine of _free agency_.
The Augustinian theory of a totally depraved mind, transmitted through the Catholic Church to its reformed offsets, was received by Edwards. He perceived that if God was the cause of this depravity, he is the author of sin, and so he labored to prove that all mankind "sinned in Adam and fell with him," and thus caused their own depravity.
He perceived, too, that requiring men to originate holy acts with a totally depraved nature seemed to demand what they had no power to perform, and thus made God unjust. So he brought forth his _Treatise on the Will_ to prove that man had a _natural ability_ to obey God, and a _moral inability_; and so at once he established _fatalism_ to one class of minds, and _free agency_ to another.