We have heard that the impurity of the parents is so transmitted to the children that all, without a single exception, are polluted as soon as they exist. But we shall not find the origin of this pollution, unless we ascend to the first parent of us all, as to the fountain which sends forth all the streams. Thus it is certain that Adam was not only the progenitor, but as it were the root of mankind, and therefore, that all the race were necessarily vitiated in his corruption. What cavil will the Pelagians raise here?
And then John Calvin went on to tell David Joslin, sitting here in the saloon of John Moran, what sin was:
Wherefore, Augustine, though he frequently calls it the sin of another, the more clearly to indicate its transmission to us by propagation, yet, at the same time, also asserts it properly to belong to every individual. And the apostle himself expressly declares, that “death has therefore passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;” that is, have been involved in original sin, and defiled with its blemishes. And therefore infants themselves, as they bring their condemnation into the world with them, are rendered obnoxious to punishment by their own sinfulness, not by the sinfulness of another. For though they have not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, yet they have the seed of it within them.
When arguing respecting corrupt nature, Paul not only condemns the inordinate motions of the appetites, but principally insists on the blindness of the mind and the depravity of the heart; and the third chapter of his Epistle to the Romans is nothing but a description of original sin.
We say, therefore, that man is corrupted by a natural depravity. Thus vanishes the foolish and nugatory system of the Manichæans who, having imagined in man a substantial wickedness, presumed to invent for him a new Creator, that they might not appear to assign the cause and origin of evil to a righteous God.
The dour words of the savage old doctrinaire looked up familiarly to David Joslin. More than once alone he had pondered upon the cavilings of the Pelagians, the deeds of the Manichæans, the Celestians, and others who had fallen under the invectives of this stern leader of the past. Once they had seemed adequate to him. That very day they would have seemed adequate to him. But not to-night.