Mistakes under such circumstances are pardonable.
Like Schleiermacher he substitutes collective guilt for original sin; and he attaches great dogmatic value to the assertion that sin has two stages - ignorance, in which it is pardonable, and obduracy, when it is ripe for final sentence (probably annihilation).
Unhappily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardonable, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness.
Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable vanity, that in New England his dream was the daily subject of the conversation of thousands, and was thought worthy to appear in the most superb binding.
Lactantius (circa 300 A.D.), for example, roundly declares that Plato and Aristotle, referring everything to this earthly life, " made virtue mere folly "; though himself maintaining, with pardonable inconsistency, that man's highest good did not consist in mere pleasure, but in the consciousness of the filial relation of the soul to God.
