10. History of the Doctrine of Native Depravity
CHAPTER X History of the Doctrine of Native Depravity
" The doctrine of man’s nature was worked out by the practical Western, or Latin, part of the early church as the doctrine of Christ’s nature was by the speculative Eastern, or Greek, part. The general belief at first was in the inherited or Adamic corruption (not guilt) of man, and his ability to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in regeneration. Pelagius, a British monk, precipitated discussion by asserting, about 405 that man inherited nothing from Adam, neither original guilt, which was impossible, nor innate corruption, nor physical consequences, as pain and death, which were in the world before Adam. Every man was born free and unbiased. Augustine in 412 maintained that man inherited not only inborn corruption, but guilt; that he was helpless. Augustinianism first gained the complete ascendancy, and Pelagianism never had any considerable footing. But Augustinianism gradually softened into Semi Pelagianism, which was very much the original doctrine of inherited corruption and the power of cooperation. This has remained the doctrine of the Roman Church, as fixed by the Council of Trent after the Reformation...
" The three views were revived at or after the Reformation. Calvin (1536) revived Augustinianism, Socinus (about 1590), Pelagianism, and Arminius (1589), Semi Pelagianism. Calvin was followed by most Protestants of his century,-Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, etc. -Socinus by’ the early Unitarians, and Arminius practically by the Church of England (the Romanists being already of the same mind), and formally by the Methodists in the eighteenth century. Since then Calvinism has largely died away and Arminianism now has decidedly the supremacy.
"Pure Pelagianism is made impossible by the facts of habit and heredity. No one would maintain that we come into the world without bias or corruption, amounting often to serious crippling, if not to helplessness. But that men are guilty of what they did not originate and can not help, and deserve God’s wrath and extreme penalty, is a doctrine which shows no sign of return. That there is original or hereditary misfortune or moral disease, is more clearly seen, but original or hereditary sin is an obsolete phrase. That infants are guilty and under divine wrath and punishment, as Augustine and Calvin taught, is a doctrine that no one now can be found to own, scarcely to remember. "
-"A Study of the Sects."