This is the Catholic mode which has been perpetuated by many Protestants. It is the same method as is adopted in defending the Catholic doctrine of _transubstantiation_. All who do not resort to the Catholic mode of mystery and sovereignty, endeavor to relieve the Creator from the charge of being the author of sin by maintaining that _man made his own depraved nature_. This they set forth in the following ways: Mode of Augustine and of President Edwards. Augustine, the father of this dreadful system, maintained that all men had a common nature _in_ Adam, which was ruined by his act, after God had made this common nature perfect. That is to say, every human soul existed as a part of Adam, and thus his act was the act of each and of all. This act vitiated the common nature of all, and thus Adam and each of his posterity caused the depravity of their common nature. And thus, though God had the power to create each mind as perfect as he created Adam’s, still he is not the author of sin. President Edwards, the great New England theologian, taught that all the minds of our race so existed in Adam, and were so one with his mind, that when he chose to eat the forbidden fruit, all his descendants chose to do so too, and thus each man ruined his own nature, and God is not the author of the evil. The Princeton Mode. The theologians of Princeton set forth the following as the mode in which man caused his own depraved nature: God created Adam with a perfectly holy nature. Adam sinned and ruined his own nature. God had previously “made a covenant with Adam, not only for himself, but for all his posterity, or in other words, Adam having been placed on trial, not only for himself, but also for his race, his act was in virtue of this relation _regarded (by God) as our act_. God withdrew from us as he did from him; in consequence of this withdrawal, we begin to exist in moral darkness, destitute of a disposition to delight in God and prone to delight in ourselves and in the world. The sin of Adam therefore ruined us; and the intervention of the Son of God for our salvation is an act of pure, sovereign, and wonderful grace.” The above is extracted from a standard writer of the Princeton Theological Seminary, and expresses the views of the Old School Presbyterian church in this matter. It is simply saying that man made his own depraved nature, inasmuch as God _regarded_ Adam’s act as our act _when it was not_, being performed before we existed, and that he punished us by withdrawing from us, as he did from Adam, and thus our nature becomes ruined and totally depraved. The Constitutional Transmission Mode. The next way in which man is made to be the author of his own nature is called the _constitutional transmission mode_. It is as follows: