As it respects God, this theory, indeed, relieves his character very essentially; but as to affording any comfort to man, it only adds a new thorn to wound sensitive consciences. For no man could possibly help feeling that when, according to High Calvinism, he had _no power at all_ to do right, he was relieved from some portion of obligation, even if, six thousand years ago, he did join Adam in that sinful repast. But President Edwards and his followers took away this small alleviation, and put the whole blame entirely on the depraved and guilty creature, both for the ruin of the fall and the refusal to remedy the evil.
This attempt to prove that _God does not require men to perform what they have no power to do_, has been regarded as a most terrific heresy by the strict Calvinist, while for nearly a hundred years New England and the whole Presbyterian Church have been agitated by it. Again and again, some of the wisest and best of their clergy have been arraigned for this heresy, with the threatened or inflicted penalty of loss of character, profession, and daily bread for themselves and their families. Three times the author has seen a revered parent thus arraigned. And in these ecclesiastical trials, she has herself heard otherwise sensible persons maintaining that men were required by their Maker to do what they had no power of _any_ kind to do, under the penalty of eternal damnation, and that it was a dangerous heresy to maintain that God did not thus require it.
Another attempt to modify the Augustinian dogma is found in the work entitled "The Conflict of Ages," by the Rev. Edward Beecher. The theory there presented was first started by the great and learned Origen in the third century, and has been advocated by individuals ever since. It assumes the entire and fatal depravity of the mental organization, but relieves the Creator of all blame by assuming that every human mind was created with a perfect mental organization, and placed in the most favorable circumstances possible in a _pre-existent state_; and yet the same sad results then occurred as our race are approaching, viz., the existence of two classes of minds, the holy and the sinful. Meantime this world was prepared as a merciful arrangement to afford a _second_ probation to those who ruined themselves in the pre-existent state.