This being so, the author has concluded, and the public probably will conclude, that the most profound and acute theologians of this country have relinquished the idea of attempting any farther defense of the Augustinian dogma. CHAPTER XLVI. PRESENT POSITION OF THE CHURCH. The word “church,” as used in this article, refers chiefly to those close corporations which claim to be regenerated persons, whose depraved nature, transmitted from Adam, has been so far rectified by re‐creation, that they are, more or less, in the practice of true virtue, of which the unregenerate world are supposed to be totally destitute. In this sense they claim to be “the saints,” “the righteous,” “the elect,” “the children of God,” “the salt of the earth,” “the light of the world,” “a holy nation,” “a peculiar people.” While the members of these churches do not claim that all who do not come into their organizations are of the opposite class, they do, by their profession and admission to such churches, claim to be of the regenerated class, to whom the above terms of the Bible are to be applied, while the great majority of mankind, not in these organizations, are called by them “the world,” “the unregenerate,” “sinners,” “the wicked,” and by other similar terms. So long as the great body of the people were guided chiefly by ecclesiastics, and were thus trained to believe that heaven was to be gained by some unintelligible “change of nature,” imparted by priestly agency, or by some supernatural intervention of God’s Spirit, these claims were regarded with mystified fear and doubt. But the more intelligence and discussion have spread among the people, the more such claims have been questioned and distrusted. Many things have combined to increase such distrust. Among these may be mentioned the discussions already noticed, conducted by theologians themselves, by which the absurdities and inconsistencies maintained by each, were exposed by all the others. Another cause of distrust has been the great variety of _tests_ and _signs of regeneration_. One class of religious teachers claim a certain kind of experience as indispensable to admission to the church. A second class reprobate this sign and set up another. A third class depreciate both and insist upon still another. And thus it is made apparent, that theologians do not agree among themselves what the “depraved nature” of man consists in, nor what are the true signs or evidence of its “saving change.”