But it gradually broke upon me, that when Paul said nothing stronger
than heathen moralists had said about human wickedness, it was absurd
to quote his words, any more than theirs, in proof of a _Fall_,--that
is, of a permanent degeneracy induced by the first sin of the first
man: and when I studied the 5th chapter of the Romans, I found it was
_death_, not _corruption_, which Adam was said to have entailed. In
short, I could scarcely find the modern doctrine of the "Fall" any
where in the Bible. I then remembered that Calvin, in his Institutes,
complains that all the Fathers are heterodox on this point; the Greek
Fathers being grievously overweening in their estimate of human power;
while of the Latin Fathers even Augustine is not always up to Calvin's
mark of orthodoxy. This confirmed my rising conviction that the tenet
is of rather recent origin. I afterwards heard, that both it and the
doctrine of compensatory misery were first systematized by Archbishop
Anselm, in the reign of our William Rufus: but I never took the pains
to verify this.

For meanwhile I had been forcibly impressed with the following
thought. Suppose a youth to have been carefully brought up at home,
and every temptation kept out of his way: suppose him to have been in
appearance virtuous, amiable, religious: suppose, farther, that at the
age of twenty-one he goes out into the world, and falls into sin by
the first temptation:--how will a Calvinistic teacher moralize over
such a youth? Will he not say: "Behold a proof of the essential
depravity of human nature! See the affinity of man for sin! How fair
and deceptive was this young man's virtue, while he was sheltered from
temptation; but oh! how rotten has it proved itself!"--Undoubtedly,
the Calvinist would and must so moralize. But it struck me, that if I
substituted the name of _Adam_ for the youth, the argument proved
the primitive corruption of Adam's nature. Adam fell by the first