Not being a person, the Holy Ghost cannot be God, and is,
therefore, not self-existent, underived, and unoriginated. Wherever it
is described as a person it is only the writer's striking form of
speech; it is solely personification, just as we often find the case
with the Law, Wisdom, Scripture, Sin, and Charity.[249]
HUMAN DEPRAVITY. The Unitarians have no place in their creed for man's
natural sinfulness. It is, they say, a doctrinal innovation, having been
propagated by Augustine in the fifth century. That God should create men
who are naturally sinners is inconsistent with his parental character.
"The doctrine is itself repulsive. The human mind revolts at it. If God
our Creator has implanted within us a natural sense of right and wrong,
that sense arraigns his character and conduct in creating us thus
corrupt."[250] There is no such thing, the Unitarians contend, as the
fall of man. Adam was what we are. "Had he not sinned," one of their
writers affirms, "our race would have continued perfect and happy
without the necessity for progress, or the need of any of those
educational and recuperative processes to which Providence has resorted.
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