Divine will; perfect conversion of the heart to God, which rendered him apt for obedience to the Divine will: in short, perfect subjection of the sensitive appetites to the mind and will, which freed the soul from all internal discord and rebellious passions. If you take away any one of these, you destroy original righteousness. For take away the illumination of the mind, the will is in itself a blind faculty; nor can it serve God as it ought. Take away the conversion of the will to God, the enlightened mind will see what is best, but the depraved heart will follow what is worse. In fine, suppose the mind enlightened and the will good; yet if concupiscence be inordinate, it will spread darkness over the mind, enchain the will, and hinder the man from serving God according to the rule of perfect righteousness.

That original righteousness consisted of these three parts is plain from hence, that when the Scriptures speak of the renewal of righteousness commenced in the regenerate, they indicate some renewal of all these. For that the above light is partially restored the Scriptures shew, when they say, that it is granted to the regenerate to have the eyes of their mind enlightened, Ephes. i. 18.; and that God hath shined into their hearts, to give the light of the knowledge, &c.; 2 Cor. iv. 6. That an habitual conversion of the heart itself to God is granted them, they shew when they teach, that a new heart is created within them, Ps. li. 10.; that their heart is purified, Acts xv. 9.; and lastly, that the rebelliousness of concupiscence is healed, when they affirm that the regenerate are delivered from its reign and dominion, that they should not obey its lusts, as it is said in Rom. vii. 12, 14.

These things being thus explained, it is easy to shew in what the nature of Original Sin consists; for it is the knowledge of the opposites to these. Hence the loss of the rectitude, of which we have been speaking, in every one of the faculties of the soul, with the corrupt habit which always adheres to this loss, constitutes the nature of Original Sin. For Thomas seems to me to have remarked, not unsuitably,* Just as bodily sickness has in it something privative inasmuch as it takes away the quality of the temperament and health; and

Aquin. 1. 2. qu. 82. art. 1. resp. ad primum.

something positive in that the humours themselves are disordered; so original sin is not pure privation, but a certain corrupt habit. And rightly has Cajetan laid down on this place, That this corrupt habit is founded on that proneness which is not merely beside or without, but against the due harmony of the soul. Let us now turn again to the oracles of Scripture, and learn from them in what the nature of Original Sin consists.

First, then; as original righteousness comprehended the spiritual light of the mind; so original sin implies the densest mental darkness. Hence the Apostle, depicting the condition of unregenerate men, says, Ephes. iv. 18; Having the understanding darkened. Behold the privation of original rectitude in the intellect! Now would you learn what that corrupt habit is, which always accompanies this privation, in all the powers of the soul? I shall easily shew it from the effects. For the human understanding is not a sufferer merely from privation of due knowledge; but is prone to mock at the truth, to hate it, and eagerly to embrace errors, and foolish and vain opinions. Hence said the Apostle, that the natural man, not only doth not receive the things which are of God; but he adds they are foolishness unto him (1 Cor. xi. 14); that is, he derides and scornfully rejects Divine truth, as a thing to be mocked at and worthy of fools alone. Nor does the natural man merely deride saving truth, but he hates both it and the preachers of it: I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them; John xvii. 14. Men have loved darkness rather than light; John iii. 19. And as regards errors and vain science, the human intellect eagerly embraces both-yea, with open arms. The Apostle has noticed this evil in the wisest of the philosophers: They became vain in their imaginations; Rom. i. 21. For it is implanted in all the unregenerate, that as they receive not the love of the truth, so they readily give credit to lies; 2 Thess. ii. 11.; and all these things spring from that original taint which has seized upon the human understanding.

Now, in the second place, let us consider what are the effects of Original Sin on the will. As, then, the original rectitude of the will consisted in holding habitual conversation with God and the Divine will; so the original sin of the will consists in this, that it has lost this dutiful turning unto

God, and that there is found instead, an inordinate and contrary application to the creature. This deprivation is pointed out in these words :-There is none that seeketh after God; they are all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no not one; Rom. iii. 11, 12. And this contrary disposition is described in these words, The carnal mind is enmity against God; Rom. viii. 7,: Being filled with all unrighteousness, maliciousness; haters of God, &c. Rom. i. 29. But those words of God, Gen. vi. 5, most fully describe this worst disposition of the human heart: Every imagination of the heart is only evil continually. To which agrees that assertion of Jeremiah, The heart is deceitful above all things, (ch. xvii. 9); and of Job, Abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh in iniquity like water; Job. xv. 16. These depraved actions prove that there is in the human will an habitual aversion to God the Creator, and to his will; and the contrary lust of fornicating with the creature, and its vanity. And in these two things consists that original corruption which hath defiled the will.

It remains that we enquire, lastly, what is the nature of Original Sin in the inferior appetite. Now formerly the original righteousness of the sensitive faculty was its entire and perfect subjection, so as not to have the slightest inclination against the empire of the mind. In this inferior faculty, then, Original Sin will be characterised by an habitual proneness to shake off the empire of the mind, to bind reason, and lead captive the will. That this is the disease engrafted upon the sensitive faculty, the Psalmist plainly taught, when he likened carnal man to the horse, and the mule, which have no understanding, Ps. xxxix. 2; and the Prophet, who says of this kind of men, that Every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle; Jerem. viii. 6. But the Apostle most plainly describes this evil, when he calls it, The law in the members, warring against the law of the mind, and bringing man into captivity to the law of sin; Rom. vii. 23.

Thus you see what Original Sin is, and what faculties of the soul it has seized upon, namely, the understanding, the will, and the affections; for as to the vegetative power, and the body itself, or the fleshly mass, although they may not

be free from any infection peculiar to them, yet they cannot become the seat of sin properly so called. For rightly, I think, has Aquinas observed ;* The superior part of the soul, and even some of its inferior powers, which are under its will, and are formed to obey it, are susceptible of sin; but the inferior powers which are not subject to the will, namely, the animal soul, and even the body itself, become subjects of the consequences of original sin, in the way of punishment, not in the way of fault.

From what has been now premised, it will be the more easy to shew, whether any remains of Original Sin cleave to the regenerate or not. For, if we shall be able to find in them either a deficiency of due original righteousness, or unruly dispositions contrary to this righteousness, we may conclude, that they are not wholly free from original sin. For there is sin not only when a man hath not what he ought to have, but also when he hath what he ought not to have. We affirm, then, that the regenerate themselves are contaminated by the remains of original sin in both respects, as we shall proceed to prove.

CHAPTER XV.

IT IS PROVED THAT THE REGENERATE ARE NOT FREE FROM

ORIGINAL SIN.

WE readily admit that original sin does not remain in the same manner after regeneration, as it remained before; for there are two remarkable differences. In the unregenerate it occupies all the faculties of the soul peaceably, and rules in their mind, will, and affections; but in the regenerate, it neither dwells peaceably, because grace from above is infused into them, which daily opposes this disease, and more and more expels it from every faculty of the soul; nor does it rule over them, because grace prevailing and predominating, restrains it, and sends it, as it were, under the yoke. The other difference is, that in the unregenerate, it has the guilt

Qu, disp. de peccat. orig. art. 2.

of eternal death annexed to it; but in the regenerate, it is absolved from this guilt by gratuitous remission, for the sake of the Mediator Christ Jesus, in whom, being taken from the old Adam, they are engrafted as into a new stock. But notwithstanding this, if the nature of the thing itself be considered, we affirm that something of original sin adheres to the regenerate themselves. These are our reasons, taken from the Scriptures; for the Scriptures declare that every man, however regenerated, is ever defiled by sin; and this must be necessarily understood of inherent sin.

Test. 1. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ? Not one. Job. xiv. 4. And ch. xv. 14, What is man that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman that he should be righteous? These places plainly shew, that no one is clean from all the defilements of sin, and therefore, that no one can be free from actual sin. For that inward pollu

tion is the cause of outward sins.

Test. 2. Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified; Ps. cxliii. 2. This may be truly said of every man whatsoever, and at any time. whatsoever. But if the regenerate, whether adults or infants, should have, even for a moment, nothing of sin in them, then, if God should, at that time, enter into judgment with them, they could bear the examination of strict justice; which that no one can, all the saints, together with David, confess.

Test. 3. Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? Prov. xx. 9. From this passage it is manifest, that not even the regenerate themselves, or newly baptised, can boast that they are cleaner than the rays of the sun, unless they refer this their cleanliness to the remission of sins. This declaration Augustine applies even to infants, whom he denies to be absolutely clean in the sight of God.*

Test. 4. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; Jerem. xvii. 9. Some render the original word deceitful, others perverse; Pagninust supplanting; but

• Tom. 6. De sancta Virginitate, cap. 48.

+ SANCTES PAGNINUS; or, according to the Italian, Sante Pagnini, an Ecclesiastic of the Order of St. Dominic, flourished in the 15th century, being born at Lucca in 1466. He was accurately skilled in the Latin, Greek, Arabic,