The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 296

—

:

THE SINNER TO BE WROUGHT UPON

256

sin, try to

escape from

its

tight hold

upon them.

But they can

not,

altho discarding the draperies belonging to the system as un-

for,

suitable to our line of theories,

Western mode of thinking, they adopt his whole and thus falsify not only the doctrine of sin, but

almost every other part of the Christian doctrine.

And

yet

it is

only in the doctrine of inherited sin that this error

so conspicuous that It is

argued:

By

it

is

can not escape detection.

virtue of his birth

man

is

in the cradle is ignorant of spiritual sin,

a sinner.

And

every child must inherit sin from his parents.

Hence

since an infant

and without

spiritual de-

velopment, the inherited sin must hide in his being, transmitted

with the blood from the parents.

And

this is

pure Manicheism, in

makes sin to be transmitted as a power inherent in matter. The Confession of the Reformed churches, speaking of inherited

that

it

sin, says, in article xv.

"We

Adam,

believe that, through the disobedience of

mankind

original sin

is

which is a corruption of the whole nature, and an hereditary disease, wherewith infants themselves are infected even in their mother's womb, and which produceth in man all sorts of sin, being in him as a root thereof; and therefore is so vile and abominable in the Nor is it by sight of God, that it is sufficient to condemn all mankind. any means abolished or done away by baptism since sin always issues

extended to

all

;

;

from

forth it is

this

woful source, as water from a fountain

not imputed to the children of

grace and mercy sin,

is

make

rest securely in

believers often to sigh,

desiring to be delivered from the body of this death.

who

notwithstanding

Not that they should

forgiven them.

but that a sense of this corruption should

the error of the Pelagians,

:

God unto condemnation, but by His

Wherefore we reject from imita-

assert that sin only proceeds

tion." It is

apparent, therefore, that the Reformed churches positively

acknowledge inherited sin ; acknowledge also that the child inherits sin from the parents; even calls this sin an infection, which adheres even to the unborn child. But and this is the principal thing they never say that this inherited sin is something material, or is transmitted as something material. The word infection is used metaphorically, and therefore is not the proper expression for the thing which they wish to confess. Sin is not a drop of poison which, like a contagious disease, passes from father to child. No; the transmission of sin remains in our confession an unexplained mystery,

—

only symbolically expressed.

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