A Short Essay on Original Sin

Heathens themselves create matte up and acknowledged that they were contrary beings; and depraved, not by imitation only, yet by temper; or (as the church ser frailty of England well expresses it) by birth- blunder. --Hence that celebrated saying, so usual among the classical philosophers, sumfuton anthropois to hamartanein . i.e. moral venomous is implanted in men from the offset moment of their existence. Plato goes pacify farther in his treatise De Legibus: and directly affirms that man, if not well and c arefully cultivated, is zowon agriotaton hoasa fuei gay . the wildest and near savage of solely animals. Aristotle asserts the aforementioned(prenominal) truth, and virtuall(a)y in the comparable run-in with Plato. The truly poets asserted the dogma of human degeneration. So Propertius: Unicitique dedit vitiam natura creato ; i.e. Nature has infused vice into forevery created being. And Horace observes, that young is cerens in vitium flecti; or, admits th e impressions of immoral, with all the ease and manners of yielding wax. --And wherefore? Let the same poet inform us. Nemo titiis sinning nascitur: The seeds of vice are innate in every man. \n because proceed errors in judgment and immoralities in practice? offensive tempers, evil desires, and evil words? wherefore is the real gospel preached by so few ministers, and strange by so many concourse? Wherefore is it that the virtues have so more often than not took their flight? that Fugere pudor, verumque, fidesque; In quorum subiere locum fraudesque, dolique, Insidiaque, et vis, et amor sceleratus habendi? first sin answers all these questions in a moment. Adams offence was the peccatum peccans (as I think St. capital of Texas nervously calls it), the sin that still goes on sinning in all human race: or, to use the on the button and emphatic words of Calvin (Institut. 1. iv. c. 15.) Haec perversitas nunquam in nobis cessat, sed novos assidue fructus parit ; non secue a tque incensa fornax flammam et scintillas perpetuo efflat, aut scaturigo aquam sine fine egerit: The corruption of our nature is unendingly operative, and constantly ample with unholy fruits: desire a het up furnace which is perpetually rank out; or like an outright spring of water, which is for ever bubbling up and sending forrader its rills. \n