The sum is, man was created with a nature not only weak and imperfect, unable by its native strength and endowments to attain that supernatural end for which he was made, and which he was commanded to seek, but depraved also with a love and desire of things repugnant to the will of God, by reason of an inbred inclination to sinning. It doth not properly belong to this place to show how they extenuate those gifts also with which they cannot deny but that he was endued, and also deny those which he had, as a power to believe in Christ, or to assent unto any truth that God should reveal unto him; and yet they grant this privilege to every one of his posterity, in that depraved condition of nature whereinto by sin he cast himself and us. We have all now a power of believing in Christ; that is, Adam, by his fall, obtained a supernatural endowment far more excellent than any he had before. And let them not here pretend the universality of the new covenant until they can prove it; and I am certain it will be long enough. But this, I say, belongs not to this place; only, let us see how, from the word of God, we may overthrow the former odious heresy:—

God in the beginning “created man in his own image,” Gen. i. 27, — that is, “upright,” Eccles. vii. 29, endued with a nature composed to obedience and holiness. That habitual grace and original righteousness wherewith he was invested was in a manner due unto him for the obtaining of that supernatural end whereunto he was created. A universal rectitude of all the faculties of his soul, advanced by supernatural graces, enabling him to the performance of those duties whereunto they were required, is that which we call the innocency of our first parents. Our nature was then inclined to good only, and adorned with all those qualifications that were necessary to make it acceptable unto God, and able to do what was required of us by the law, under the condition of everlasting happiness. Nature and grace, or original righteousness, before the fall, ought not to be so distinguished as if the one were a thing prone to evil, resisted and quelled by the other; for both complied, in a sweet union and harmony, to carry us along in the way of obedience to eternal blessedness. [There was] no contention between the flesh and the Spirit; but as all other things at theirs, so the whole man jointly aimed at his own chiefest good, having all means of attaining it in his power. That there was then no inclination to sin, no concupiscence of that which is evil, no repugnancy to the law of God, in the pure nature of man, is proved, because, —

First, The Scripture, describing the condition of our nature at the first creation thereof, intimates no such propensity to evil, but rather a holy perfection, quite excluding it. We were created “in the image of God,” Gen. i. 27, — in such a perfect uprightness as is opposite to all evil inventions, Eccles. vii. 29; to which image when we are again in some measure “renewed” by the grace of Christ, Col. iii. 10, we see by the first-fruits that it consisted in “righteousness and true holiness,” — in truth and perfect holiness, Eph. iv. 24.

Secondly, An inclination to evil, and a lusting after that which is forbidden, is that inordinate concupiscence wherewith our nature is now infected; which is everywhere in the Scripture condemned as a sin; St Paul, in the seventh to the Romans, affirming expressly that it is a sin, and forbidden by the law, verse 7, producing all manner of evil, and hindering all that is good, — a “body of death,” verse 24; and St James maketh it even the womb of all iniquity, James i. 14, 15. Surely our nature was not at first yoked with such a troublesome inmate. Where is the uprightness and innocency we have hitherto conceived our first parents to have enjoyed before the fall? A repugnancy to the law must needs be a thing sinful. An inclination to evil, to a thing forbidden, is an anomy, — a deviation and discrepancy from the pure and holy law of God. We must speak no more, then, of the state of innocency, but only of a short space wherein no outward actual sins were committed. Their proper root, if this be true, was concreated with our nature. Is this that obediential harmony to all the commandments of God which is necessary for a pure and innocent creature, that hath a law prescribed unto him? By which of the ten precepts is this inclination to evil required? Is it by the last, “Thou shalt not covet?” or by that sum of them all, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” etc.? Is this all the happiness of paradise, — to be turmoiled with a nature swelling with abundance of vain desires, and with a main stream carried headlong to all iniquity, if its violent appetite be not powerfully kept in by the bit and bridle of original righteousness? So it is we see with children now;⁷ and so it should have been with them in paradise, if they were subject to this rebellious inclination to sin.

Thirdly, and principally, Whence had our primitive nature this affection to those things that were forbidden it, — this rebellion and repugnancy to the law, which must needs be an anomy, and so a thing sinful? There was as yet no demerit, to deserve it as a punishment. What fault is it to be created? ⁸The operation of any thing which hath its original with the being of the thing itself must needs proceed from the same cause as doth the essence or being itself; as the fire’s tending upwards relates to the same original with the fire: and, therefore, this inclination or affection can have no other author but God; by which means he is entitled not only to the first sin, as the efficient cause, but to all the sins in the world arising from thence. Plainly, and without any strained consequences, he is made the author of sin; for even those positive properties which can have no other fountain but the author of nature, being set on evil, are directly sinful. And here the idol of free-will may triumph in this victory over the God of heaven. Heretofore all the blame of sin lay upon his shoulders, but now he begins to complain, Οὐκ ἐγὼ αἴτιός εἰμι ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς καὶ μοῖρα. “It is God and the fate of our creation that hath placed us in this condition of naturally affecting that which is evil. Back with all your charges against the ill government of this new deity within his imaginary dominion; what hurt doth he do but incline men unto evil, and God himself did no less at the first?” But let them that will, rejoice in these blasphemies: it sufficeth us to know that “God created man upright,” though he “hath sought out many inventions;” so that in this following dissonancy we cleave to the better part:—

---

---

← Chapter VII. Of original sin and the corruption of nature · Contents · Chapter IX. Of the death of Christ, and of the efficacy of His merits →

Footnotes

1. “Ex ratione creationis homo habebat affectum ad ea quæ vetabantur.” — Corv. ad Molin., cap. vi. sect. 1. ↩

2. “Deus homini repugnantiam indidit adversus legem.” — Joh. Gest. in Synod. Confes. ↩

3. “Homo non est idoneus cui lex feratur, quando in eo, ad id quod lege vetatur, non est propensio, ac inclinatio naturalis.” — Corv. ad Molin., cap. x. sect. 15. ↩

4. “Inclinatio ad peccandum ante lapsum in homine fuit, licet non ita vehemens ac inordinata ut nunc est.” — Armin. ad Artic. Respon. ↩

5. “Justitia originalis instar fræni fuit, quod præstabat internæ concupiscentiæ ordinationem.” — Corv. ad Molin., cap. viii. sect. 1. ↩

6. “In spirituali morte non separantur proprie dona spiritualia a voluntate, quia illa nunquam fuerunt ei insita.” — Rem. Coll. Hag., p. 250. ↩

7. “Vidi ego zelantem parvulum qui nondum loquebatur, et intuebatur pallidus, amaro aspectu colluctaneum suum.” — Aug. ↩

8. “Operatio quæ simul incipit cum esse rei, est ei ab agente, a quo habet esse, sicut moveri sursum inest igni a generante.” — Alvar., p. 199. ↩