Out of the myth of the Fall sprang the dogma of
total depravity, dooming our whole race to hell forever, except
those saved by the subsequent artifice of the atonement. Theories
conjured up and elaborated by fanciful and bloodless metaphysicians,
in an age when the milk of public human kindness was thinned,
soured, poisoned, by narrow and tyrannical prejudices, might
easily legitimate and establish any conclusions, however
unreasonable and monstrous. The history of philosophy is
the broad demonstration of this. The Church philosophers, (with
exceptions, of course,) receiving the traditions of the common
faith, partaking in the superstitions of their age, banished from
the bosoms of men by their monastic position, and inflamed with
hierarchic pride, with but a faint connection or intercourse
between conscience and intellect or between heart and fancy,
strove to spin out theories which would explain and justify the
orthodox dogmas.

Working with metaphysical tools of abstract reason, not with the
practical faculties of life, dealing with the fanciful materials
of priestly tradition, not with the solid facts of ethical
observation, they would naturally be troubled with but few qualms
and make but few reservations, however overwhelming the results of
horror at which they might arrive. Habituated for years to hair
drawn analyses and superstitious broodings upon the subject,
overshadowed by the supernatural hierarchy in which they lived,
surrounded by a thick night of ignorance, persecution, and
slaughter, it was no wonder they could believe the system they
preached, although in reality it was only a traditional
abstraction metaphysically wrought up and vivified by themselves.
Being thus wrought out and animated by them, who were the sole
depositaries of learning and the undisputed lords of thought, the
mass of the people, lying abjectly in the fetters of authority,
could not help accepting it. Ample illustrations of these
assertions will occur to all who are familiar with the theological
schemes and the dialectic subtleties of the early Church Fathers
and of the later Church Scholastics.

Finally, by the combined power, first, of natural conscience
affirming a future distinction between the good and the bad;
secondly, of imperfect conceptions of God as a passionate avenger;
thirdly, of the licentious fancies of poets drawing awful
imaginative pictures of future woe; fourthly, of the cruel spirit
and the ambitious plans