“I have _always taught_ that man, after the fall of Adam, was as truly created in God’s image as was Adam; that Christ was tempted in _all_ points like as we are; that the stronger are our inferior propensities, if we govern them, as we can, by the morally right act of the will, the greater is the moral excellence of the act. I _do not_ maintain that man has full power to _change_ his depraved nature without divine aid—for I have never supposed that he has a depraved nature in ANY sense, or a corrupt nature, much less a sinful nature, _to be_ changed; but rather, that _in nature_ he is like God. In discussions I have always opposed the use of language by your father and Mr. Barnes, of a _corrupt nature not sinful_.” Now it is not possible to make these two extracts any thing other than exact contradictions. For in one he teaches that men are so totally depraved _in nature_, that “in all the appropriate circumstances of their being they will _sin, and only sin_.” In the other, he says of man, “I have never supposed that he has a depraved nature, _in any sense_, or a corrupt nature, much less a sinful nature, to be changed; but rather that _in nature_ he is like God.” If it is asked, “How is it possible that a man, at once so honest and so acute, can thus contradict himself and not perceive it?” it may be replied, that he has done it no more than does every other theologian and every creed that teaches at once, that the _nature_ of man is so depraved at birth that every moral act is sin, and only sin, till regeneration—and yet, that God, the Creator of all minds, is not the author of the sin resulting from such a depraved nature. And theologians are not peculiar in self‐contradictions. _Every error is a contradiction to some principle of common sense._ Thus it is a fact, that, as all men believe and maintain, by a necessity of nature, the principles of common sense, every _false_ principle or error which they defend, is a flat contradiction to some of their other declarations on other occasions. Meantime, it is the great mission of all free and fair _discussion_ to bring men to see their own inconsistencies, and to forsake all which are shown to be _contrary to reason and common sense_. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE AUGUSTINIAN THEORY NOT IN THE BIBLE. In the preceding chapters it is shown that theological creeds and teachings maintain the common‐sense system, and at the same time the contradictory Augustinian system. In other words, it is shown that the Augustinian theologians contradict at once our common sense, our moral sense, and themselves. It will next be shown that the Augustinian theory _is not contained in the Bible_, and that theologians conflict with each other in regard to this point also. There is _only one_ passage in the Bible which was ever claimed by _any_ one as teaching a depraved nature _consequent on Adam’s sin_. That passage is Romans v., from the 12th to the 19th verse: