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the Apostle, than such an arbitrary interpretation, as it will be obvious to any one that will give himself the trouble to read the whole 5th chapter of St. Paul to the Romans, quoted above, in which the Apostle forms a perpetual antithesis between the death, that passed upon all men by the disobe dience of Adam, and the life, which men receive through the obedience of Christ; as, therefore, the life, which is through Christ, chiefly and directly relates to the life of the soul, or to sanctifying grace, so likewise that death, which is through Adam, chiefly and principally regards the death of the soul, that is to say, sin.

LIV. The last quotation I shall adduce, is from the Epis tle to the Ephesians, 2d chapter, 3d verse: "We were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest."* Why, by nature children of wrath, but because from our very birth, or from the nature of our first parents, defiled by sin, we contract the guilt of sin, by which we become subject to the divine wrath?

SECTION 111.

LV. Original Sin evinced from the authority and uniform consent of the Holy Fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers of the primitive ages of the Church.

The following testimonies are extracted from such fathers as have flourished before the rise of the Pelagian heresy, which denied original sin, and which Unitarianism, in these and other particulars, revives. They exhibit, therefore, the undeniable evidences of the faith in the primitive ages of Christianity.

St. Justin Dialog. cum Tryph. post med. "We know that it was not, because Christ stood in need of baptism, or of the spirit which descended in the figure of a dove, that he came to the waters of the Jordan. Nor did he suffer himself to be born and crucified, because it was necessary for himself; but it

* "Eramus natura filii iræ, sicut et cœteri."

was for the human race, who, by Adam, had fallen into death, and the stratagem of the serpent, and who act wickedly by their own individual guilt."*

St. Irenæus, in his fifth book against heresies, 19th chapter, has these words: "He (Christ,) has destroyed the handwriting, our debts, hanging it upon the cross, in order that, as it was by the wood, we have been made debtors to God, by the wood likewise we may receive the remission of the debt."t

Tertullian, another learned father of the second century, expresses himself thus: "Every soul is reckoned to be in Adam, as long as it is not enrolled in Christ; as long unclean as it is not enrolled: and a sinner, because defiled."‡

St. Cyprian, the learned and eloquent Bishop of Carthage, and martyr, who illustrated the Church in the third century, writes thus, in his 59th Epistle to Fidus: "An infant newly born is guilty of no other sin, except that being born accord ing to Adam, by way of natural generation, it has, from its very first birth, contracted the contagion of the ancient death."§

St. Hilary, in the fourth century, writes thus of David, in his explanation of the 118th Psalm: "He (David,) knows that he was born under the origin of sin, and under the law of sin."||

St. Ambrose, in his Apology of David, or writing on the 50th Psalm, is not less explicit: "Before we are born," says

* Και εχ ως ενδεα αυτον τε βαπτισθηναι, η το επελθοντος εν είδει περιστερας πνευματος, οίδαμεν αυτον εληλυθέναι επι τον ποταμον ωςπες εδε το γεννηθηναι αυτον και σταυρωθήναι, ως ενδεής τούτων, υπεμεινεν, αλλ'υπες τε γενές τε των ανθρωπων, απο το Αδαμ υπό θανατον και πλανην τηντε οφεως επεπτώκει παρα την ίδιαν αιτίαν εκαστα αυτών πονηρευσάμενε.

"Delevit, chirographum debita nostra, affigens illud cruci, ut quemad modum per lignum facti sumus debitores Deo, per lignum accipiamus debiti remissionem."

"Omnis anima eousque in Adam censetur, donnec in Christo recenseatur : tamdiu immunda, quamdiu recenseatur: peccatrix autem, quia immunda." "Infans recens natus nihil peccavit, nisi quod secundum Adam carnaliter natus, contagionem mortis antiquæ prima nativitate contraxit."

"Scit se sub peccati origine et sub peccati lege esse natum."

he, "we are already defiled by contagion, and before we receive the benefit of the light, we receive already the injury of our origin; we are conceived in iniquity.'

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St. Gregory Nazianzen shall close the list of the holy fathers, with what he says in his third Oration on Peace: "I, the whole man, have fallen, and have been condemned by the disobedience of the first man, and by the artifice of the serpent."

Passages similar to these will be found in St. Athanasius's Sermon on the text, "All things are given over to me;" in St. Basil's Homily on Fast, and in his Exposition of the 32d Psalm; in St. Cyril, of Jerusalem, 11 Catech. in St. Siricius, 1 Epist. ad Himerium, 2d chapter; in St. Jerome's Comm. in cap. 6, Oseæ; in St. Chrysostom, Homily ad Neophytos, &c. &c. It is then with much reason, St. Augustin, the scourge of the Pelagians, has written, (lib. 3. de peccat. meritis et remiss. cap. 6.) "This, and nothing else, (on original sin,) since the church of Christ has been established, has been written by those that explained the divine Scriptures; this and nothing else have they received from their ancestors; this and nothing else have they left to their posterity."

SECTION IV.

LVI. If the fathers of the primitive ages are unanimous in attesting the uniform and constant doctrine of the Church on original sin, the same tenet is not less irrefragably attested by the decrees of holy Pontiffs, and of the Councils held in the four first ages, which were issued against the impugners of original sin. The Pelagian error was proscribed by St. Inno

* "Antequam nascamur, maculamur contagio: et ante usuram lucis, origiDis ipsius excipimus injuriam, in iniquitate concipimur."

"Non aliud, ex quo Christi Ecclesia constituta est, divinarum scripturarum tractatores scripserunt, non aliud a majoribus acceperunt, non aliud posteris tradiderunt."

centius I. in his Epistle to the Fathers of the Councils of Carthage and Milevis; by St. Zosimus, in his Epistle to the Bishops of the whole world a fragment of which is extant in St. Augustine's 190 Epistle to Optatus, cap. 6, num. 23; in St. Prosper. lib. contra collatorem, cap. 5 ad Nicetam Aquileensem; by St. Gregory the Great, lib. 7, Epist. 53, ad Secundinum.

The constant and universal belief of the primitive church with regard to original Sin, is likewise incontestably evinced by numbers of councils, in which the dogma of original Sin was confirmed, and the contrary error condemned: this was done in the Synod of Palestine, and in that of Diospolis, in which Pelagius at least outwardly abjured his errors; in the council of Carthage, composed of sixty-eight Bishops, in the year of our Lord 416; in that of Milevis, by sixty-one Bishops; in that of Constantinople, under Atticus; in that of Antioch, under Theodotus, Bishop of the same city; in the numerous council of Carthage, under Aurelius, consisting of two hundred and seventeen Bishops, A.D. 418; in the Oecumenic council of Ephesus, A. D. 431; in the sixth council of Toleto, Can. 1; in the second council of Orange, Can. 2. He that may feel an interest in seeing the very texts and formal decisions of the said councils, is referred to the second dissertation of John Garner, on the councils held in the cause of the Pelagians, during the lifetime of St. Augustine: he may, in like manner, satisfy his curiosity, by consulting the collection of the councils, by F. F. Harduin, or Labbe.

SECTION V.

LVII. The doctrine of Original Sin proved by the univer sality of the death of Christ for all men.

Christ is the Redeemer and Saviour of all men, also of children. This proposition is clearly deduced from the 1st Epistle to Timothy, chap. 2.-" Who (Christ) gave himself a

redemption for all." Epist. ad Rom. 8." He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." 1st Epistle to Timothy, 4." Who is the Saviour of all men." And, in fine, from the 1st Epistle of St. John, 2. "And he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." Therefore all, and children also, are dead; all, therefore, are defiled by sin, as sin only can bring on the death of the soul; but children are not, cannot be contaminated with personal sin; therefore with original sin. Hence, St. Augustine rightly says, (lib. i. de peccat: merit et remiss.-cap. 23.) "Who shall dare to say, that Christ is neither the Saviour nor the Redeemer of infants? From what, then, does he save them, if the disorder of original sin be not in them? From what, then, does he redeem them, if by their origin from the first man, they have not been made slaves to sin."§

SECTION VI.

LVIII. The dogma of original guilt is invincibly demonstrated, 1st, from the nature of Baptism-2ndly, from the necessity of Baptism-3rdly, from the ceremonies of Baptism.

First. Original Sin evinced from the nature of Baptism. Baptism, by the divine institution of Christ, washes away, wipes off, cleanses from sin. In support of this truth, I might adduce the clearest evidence, both from scripture and perpetual tradition; but for brevity's sake, I shall confine myself to the common form of Baptism, which was used at the Baptism of infants, as well as of adults, and which was worded thus in the time of Pelagius, “I baptize thee unto the remission of sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

"Dedit semetipsum redemptionem pro omnibus."

+ "Qui proprio filio suo non pepercit, sed pro nobis omnibus tradidit illum." "Qui est Salvator omnium hominum."

"Ipse est propitiatio pro peccatis nostris, non pro nostris autem tantum, sed etiam pro totius mundi."

"Quis audeat dicere, non esse Christum infantium Salvatorem, nec Redemptorem? unde autem salvos facit, si nulla in eis est originalis ægritudo peccati? unde redimit, si non sunt per originem primi hominis venumdati sub peccato?"

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