ARTICLE IX.

Of Original or Birth-Sin.

Original Sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk,) but it is the fault or corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the Offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from Driginal Righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the Flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit, and therefore in every Person born into the World it deserveth God's Wrath and Damnation: And this Infection of Nature doth remain, pea in them that are regenerated, wherebp the Lust of the Flesh, called in Greek çgóvnua ragxòs, which some do expound the Wisdom, some Sensuality, some the Affection, some the Desire of the Flesh, is not subject to the Law of God. And though there is no Condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, per the Apostle doth confess, That Concupiscence and Lust hath of itself the nature of Sin.

AFTER the first principles of the Christian religion are

stated, and the rule of faith and life was settled, the next thing that was to be done, was to declare the special doctrines of this religion; and that first with relation to all Christians, as they are single individuals, for the directing every one of them in order to the working out his own salvation; which is done from this to the nineteenth Article: and then with relation to them as they compose a society called the Church; which is carried on from the nineteenth to the end.

In all that has been hitherto explained, the whole Church of England has been all along of one mind. In this and in some that follow there has been a greater diversity of opinion; but both sides have studied to prove their tenets to be at least not contrary to the Articles of the Church. These different parties have disputed concerning the decrees of God, and those assistances which pursuant to his decrees are afforded to us. But because

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the foundation of those decrees, and the necessity of those ART. assistances, are laid in the sin of Adam, and in the effects it had on mankind, therefore these controversies begin on this head. The Pelagians and the Socinians agree in saying, that Adam's sin was personal: that by it, as being the first sin, it is said that sin entered into the world: but that as Rom. v. 12. Adam was made mortal, and had died whether he had sinned or not; so they think the liberty of human nature is still entire; and that every man is punished for his own sins, and not for the sin of another; to do otherwise, they say, seems contrary to justice, not to say, goodness.

In opposition to this, judgment is said to have come upon Ver. 15. many to condemnation through one (either man or sin). Death is said to have reigned by one, and by one man's offence; and many are said to be dead through the offence of one. All these passages do intimate that death is the consequence of Adam's sin; and that in him, as well as in all others, death was the wages of sin, so also that we die upon the account of his sin.. We are said to bear the image of the first Adam, as true Christians bear the image 1 Cor. xv. of the second: now we are sure that there is both a deriva- 49. tion of righteousness, and a communication of inward holiness transferred to us through Christ: so it seems to follow from thence, that there is somewhat both transferred to us, and conveyed down through mankind, by the first Adam; and particularly that by it we are all made subject to death; from which we should have been freed, if Adam had continued in his first state, and that by virtue of the Tree of Life: in which some think there was Gen. iii. 22. a natural virtue to cure all diseases, and relieve against all accidents, while others do ascribe it to a divine blessing, of which that tree was only the symbol or sacrament; though the words said after Adam's sin, as the reason of driving him out of Paradise, lest he put forth his hand, and take of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live for ever, seem to import that there was a physical virtue in the tree, that could so fortify and restore life, as to give immortality. These do also think that the threatening made to Adam, that upon his eating the forbidden fruit he should surely die, is to be taken literally, and is to be carried no further than to a natural death. This subjection to death, and to the fear of it, brings men under a slavish bondage, many terrors, and other passions and miseries that arise out of it, which they think is a great punishment; and that it is a condemnation and sentence of death passed upon the whole race; and by this they are made sinners, that is, treated as guilty persons, and severely punished.

This they think is easily enough reconciled with the notions of justice and goodness in God, since this is only a temporary punishment relating to men's persons and we see in the common methods of Providence, that children are in this sort often punished for the sins of their fathers; most men that come under a very ill habit of body, transmit the seeds of diseases and pains to their children. They do also think that the communication of this liableness to death is easily accounted for; and they imagine, that as the Tree of Life might be a plant that furnished men with an universal medicine, so the forbidden fruit might derive a slow poison into Adam's body, that might have exalted and inflamed his blood very much, and might, though by a slower operation, certainly have brought on death at the last. Our being thus adjudged to death, and to all the miseries that accompany mortality, they think may be well called the wrath of God, and damnation: so temporary judgments are often expressed in Scripture. And to this they add, that Christ has entirely redeemed us from this, by the promise he has given us of raising us up at the last day and that therefore when St. Paul is so copiously discoursing of the Resurrection, he brings this in, that as we have borne the image of the first Adam, who was earthly, so we shall also bear the image of the heavenly; and since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead; and that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive; and that this is the universal redemption and reparation that all mankind shall have in Christ Jesus. All this these divines apprehend is conceivable, and no more; therefore they put original sin in this only, for which they pretend they have all the Fathers with them before St. Austin, and particularly St. Chrysostom and Theodoret, from whom all the later Greeks have done little more than copied out their words. This they do also pretend comes up to the words of the Article; for as this general adjudging of all men to die may be called, according to the style of the Scriptures, God's wrath and damnation; so the fear of death, which arises out of it, corrupts men's natures, and inclines them to evil.

Others do so far approve of all this, as to think that it is a part of original sin, yet they believe it goes much farther; and that there is a corruption spread through the whole race of mankind, which is born with every man. This the experience of all ages teaches us but too evidently; every man feels it in himself, and sees it in others. The Philosophers, who were sensible of it, thought to

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avoid the difficulty that arises from it, when it might be ART. urged, that a good God could not make men to be originally depraved and wicked; they therefore fancied that all our souls preexisted in a former and a purer state, from which they fell, by descending too much into corporeal pleasure, and so both by a lapse and for a punishment they sunk into grosser bodies, and fell differently according to the different degrees of the sins they had committed in that state: and they thought that a virtuous life did raise them up to their former pitch, as a vicious one would sink them lower into more depraved and more miserable bodies. All this may seem plausible: but the best that can be said for it is, that it is an hypothesis that saves some difficulties; but there is no sort of proofs to make it appear to be true. We neither perceive in ourselves any remembrances of such a state, nor have we any warning given us either of our fall, or of the means of recovering out of it: so since there is no reason to affirm this to be true, we must seek for some other source of the corruption of human nature. The Manichees imputed it to the evil God, and thought it was his work, which some say might have set on St. Austin the more earnestly to look for another hypothesis to reconcile all.

viii. 21.

16.

Rom. viii,

But before we go to that, it is certain, that in Scripture this general corruption of our nature is often mentioned. The imaginations of man's thoughts are only evil continually: Gen. vi. 5. What man is he that liveth and sinneth not? The just man 1 Kings falleth seven times a day: The heart of man is deceitful above viii. 46. all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? All Prov. xxiv, that are in Christ must become new creatures: old things must Jer. xvii. 9. be done away, and every thing must become new. God made 2 Cor. v. 17. man upright, but he sought out to himself many inventions, Eccl. vii.29. The flesh is weak; The flesh lusteth against the spirit; The Gal. v. 17. carnal mind is enmity to the law of God, and is not subject 7,8. to the law of God, neither indeed can be: and they that are in the flesh cannot please God: where by flesh is to be meant the natural state of mankind, according to those words, That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is John iii. 6. born of the Spirit is spirit. These, with many other places of Scripture to the same purpose, when they are joined to the universal experience of all mankind concerning the corruption of our whole race, lead us to settle this point, that in fact it has overrun our whole kind, the contagion is spread over all. Now this being settled, we are next to inquire, how this could happen: we cannot think that God

made men so: for it is expressly said, that God made man Gen. i. 27, after his own image.

ART.

IX.

Eph. iv. 22,

24.

28.

The surest way to find out what this image was at first, is to consider, what the New Testament says of it, when we come to be restored to it. We must put on the new man, after the image of him that created him; or as elsewhere, the new man in righteousness and true holiness. This then was the image of God, in which man was at first made. Nor ought the image of God to be considered only as an expression that imports only our representing him here on earth, and having dominion over the Gen. i. 27, creatures: for in Genesis the creation of man in the image of God is expressed as a thing different from his dominion over the creatures, which seems to be given to him as a consequent of it. The image of God seems to be this, that the soul of man was a being of another sort and order than all those material beings till then made, which were neither capable of thought nor liberty, in which respect the soul was made after the image of God. But Adam's soul being put in his body, his brain was a tabula rasa, as white paper, had no impressions in it, but such as either God put in it, or such as came to him by his senses. A man born deaf and blind, newly come to hear and see, is not a more ignorant and amazed-like creature than Adam must have been, if God had not conveyed some great impressions into him; such as first the acknowledging and obeying him as his Maker, and then the managing his body so as to make it an instrument, by which he could make use of and observe the creation. There is no reason to think that his body was at first inclined to appetite, and that his mind was apt to serve his body, but that both were restrained by supernatural assistances. It is much more natural and more agreeable to the words of the wise man, to think that God made man upright, that his body craved modestly, and that his mind was both judge and master of those cravings; and if a natural hypothesis may be offered but only as an hypothesis, it may be supposed, that a man's blood was naturally low and cool, but that it was capable of a vast inflammation and elevation, by which a man's powers might be exalted to much higher degrees of knowledge and capacity: the animal spirits receiving their quality from that of the blood, a new and a strong fermentation in the blood might raise them, and by consequence exalt a man to a much greater sublimity of thought: but with that it might dispose him to be easily inflamed by appetites and passions; it might put him under the power of his body, and make his body much more apt to be fired at outward objects, which might sink all spiritual and pure