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 temptation: what greater proof of a fallen nature have _I_ ever given?
or what is it possible for any one to give ?--I thus discerned that there was _a priori_ impossibility of fixing on myself the imputation of _degeneracy_, without fixing the same on Adam.

In short, Adam undeniably proved his primitive nature to be frail; so do we all: but as _he_ was nevertheless not primitively corrupt, why should we call ourselves so?
Frailty, then, is not corruption, and does not prove degeneracy.
"Original sin" (says one of the 39 Articles) "standeth not in the following of Adam, _as the Pelagians do vainly talk_," &c.