(_c_) The concreated opposition between sense and reason which this theory supposes is inconsistent with the Scripture declaration that the work of God’s hands “was very good” (Gen. 1:31), and transfers the blame of temptation and sin from man to God. To hold to a merely negative innocence, in which evil desire was only slumbering, is to make God author of sin by making him author of the constitution which rendered sin inevitable. (_d_) This theory directly contradicts Scripture by making the effect of the first sin to have been a weakening but not a perversion of human nature, and the work of regeneration to be not a renewal of the affections but merely a strengthening of the natural powers. The theory regards that first sin as simply despoiling man of a special gift of grace and as putting him where he was when first created—still able to obey God and to coöperate with God for his own salvation,—whereas the Scripture represents man since the fall as “dead through ... trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), as incapable of true obedience (Rom. 8:7—“not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be”), and as needing to be “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2:10). At few points in Christian doctrine do we see more clearly than here the large results of error which may ultimately spring from what might at first sight seem to be only a slight divergence from the truth. Augustine had rightly taught that in Adam the _posse non peccare_ was accompanied by a _posse peccare_, and that for this reason man’s holy disposition needed the help of divine grace to preserve its integrity. But the scholastics wrongly added that this original disposition to righteousness was not the outflow of man’s nature as originally created, but was the gift of grace. As this later teaching, however, was by some disputed, the Council of Trent (sess. 5, cap. 1) left the matter more indefinite, simply declaring man: “Sanctitatem et justitiam in qua _constitutus fuerat_, amisisse.” The Roman Catechism, however (1:2:19), explained the phrase “constitutus fuerat” by the words: “Tum originalis justitiæ admirabile donum _addidit_.” And Bellarmine (De Gratia, 2) says plainly: “Imago, quæ est ipsa natura mentis et voluntatis, a solo Deo fieri potuit; similitudo autem, quæ in virtute et probitate consistit, _a nobis quoque_ Deo adjuvante perficitur.”... (5) “Integritas illa ... non fuit naturalis ejus conditio, sed supernaturalis evectio.... Addidisse homini donum quoddam insigne, justitiam videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo quodam fræno pars inferior parti superiori subjecta contineretur.”