But as this theory doth not explain, and is unable to explain, the per. versity of the will, wherewith we are born, it also is insufficient. It speaks only of a conflict between the sensual and the rational principle, which without the Divine aid would have arisen as a natural occur. rence. But the question before every other is, to account for the wounds of the spirit, especially for the perversity of the will. Would the spirit of man, because it is an essence distinct from God, when con. sidered in itself, that is to say, as void of the gift of supernatural grace, and as a bare finite being, be found in that attitude of opposition to God, and all things holy, wherein man is now born? Then man, as a finite being, would be of himself disposed to sin, and would not be so merely through abuse of his freedom. The supernatural, divine prin. ciple, can certainly not be destined merely to remove that inclination to opposition against his Creator existing in man as a creature, or rather only to prevent its outbreakings. It is not by the absence of this super. natural grace, without which all are now born, that man is perverted in his will; he may become so, and doubtless easily, but he is not yet so at the moment of his creation.

The inadequacy of this theory, to an explanation of the subject, has given rise to many objections against the Catholic doctrine of original sin. Men went on the supposition suggested by excited passions, that Catholic theologians would admit as notions of original sin, only what was really explained by the above-stated theory. Instead of accusing the weakness of speculation, they impeached the principle itself.*

§ VI.-Doctrine of the Lutherans respecting original sin.

The Augsburg confession expresses itself in the following manner respecting original sin. "They (the Protestants) teach, that, after Adam's fall, all men, who are engendered according to nature, are born in sin, that is to say, without fear of God, without confidence in Him,

erat, id est, ex conditione materiæ secutura, nisi Deus justitiæ donum homini addidis. set. Quare non magis differt status hominis post lapsum Adæ a statu ejusdem in puris naturalibus, quam differat spoliatus a nudo, neque deterior est humana natura, si culpam originalem detrahas, neque magis ignorantia et infirmitate laborat, quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibis condita. Proinde corruptio naturæ non ex alicu. jus doni naturalis carentia, neque ex alicujus malæ qualitatis accessu, sed ex sola doni supernaturalis ob Adæ peccatum amissione profluxit."

* Even Bellarmine, who defends, with great acuteness and subtlety, the last-stated opinion, says of original sin :

"Omnibus imputatur (peccatum Adæ) qui ex Adamo nascuntur, quia omnes in lumbis Adami existentes, in eo, et per eum, peccavimus, cum ipse peccavit... Præ.

and with concupiscence."* This article describes original sin as some. thing at once privative and positive; as the deprivation of good, and the establishment of evil. It is our duty, in the first instance, to determine more accurately the nature of the good withdrawn. The Catholic theologians at the Diet of Augsburg, Eck, Wimpina, and Cochlæus, who had prepared a refutation of the Lutheran confession there read, remarked in their essay, that the description of original sin," men were born without fear of God, and without confidence in Him," was very unfitting and inadmissible; because the fear of God and confidence in Him, consisted in a succession of intellectual acts, which not any one would think of demanding of the unconscious child. Hence, they said, the absence of such acts is by no means to be considered as constituting a sin in the new-born; the non-existence of those virtues would establish guilt perpetrated with self-consciousness and with freedom, and would not, in consequence, denote the essence of original sin, because man is born therewith, and this sin exists in him prior to all self-consciousness.†

The author of the apology saw himself hereby forced to express himself on this subject with the scientific accuracy to be desired. The obscure meaning of the passage he elucidated with the remark, that, by it, nothing more was signified, than that man, engendered in the course of nature, wanted the capacity or the gifts for producing the fear of God, and confidence in Him. Hereby, in fact, the tenet of the Protestants was stated with the utmost precision; yet in a manner to be intelligible only to one who knew its connexion with other doctrines. The reader will remember, that, according to the views of Luther and his follow

terea dicimus, quemadmodum in Adamo, præter actum illius peccati, fuit etiam per. versio voluntatis et obliquitas ex actione relicta, per quam peccator proprie et formali. ter dicebatur et erat. . . ita quoque in nobis omnibus, cum primum homines esse incipimus, præter imputationem inobedientiæ Adami, esse etiam similem perversionem et obliquitatem unicuique inhærentem, per quam peccatores proprie et formaliter dicimur."

Confess. August. art. ii. p. 12. "Docent, quod post lapsum Adæ omnes ho mines, secundum naturam propagati, nascantur cum peccato, hoc est, sine metu Dei, sine fiducia erga Deum, et cum concupiscentia."

+ Resp. theolog. Cath. ad art. ii. "Declaratio articuli est omnino rejicienda, cum sit cuilibet Christiano manifestum, esse sine metu Dei, sine fiducia erga Deum, potius esse culpam actualem, quam noxam infantis recens nati, qui usu rationis adhuc non pollet."

Apol. ii. sect 2, p. 54. "Hic locus testatur, nos non solum actus, sed et potentiam, seu dona efficiendi timorem et fiduciam erga Deum adimere propagatis secundum carnalem naturam."

ers, man was originally endowed with only natural powers;—an opi. nion which in the present matter exerts a very important influence. For as fallen man, as such, is evidently unable to exercise those virtues,` which were possible to him in his state of original purity; and as he is unable to do so, because the powers fail him; the Reformers saw themselves in a situation to put forth the doctrine, that certain natural powers man no longer possessed.*

But most insight into these lost natural powers is afforded us by the Formulary of Concord. In the synergistic controversies, which agitatated the Lutheran Church, Victorinus Strigel,† (a leader of the heterodox party, an acute, well-informed thinker, who was very familiar with the Catholic points of defence, and convinced of the incontrovertible character of the dogma of free-will,) asserted, that even fallen man possesses at least the faculty, the capacity, the aptitude, to know God, and to will what is holy; although this faculty is completely paralized, and, as it were, benumbed, and is not susceptible of any spontaneous exertion. The formulas, which he made use of, are these: fallen man possesses still the "modum agendi, capacitatem aptitudinem;" that is to say, he still at least enjoys, in reference to spiritual things, the empty form of knowledge and of will, void, though that form be, of all real and essential purport.§ Although Victorinus considered the consequences

* Luther (in c. iii. Genes.) says, after the above-cited passage, wherein he rejects the doctrine of Catholic theologians respecting the supernatural powers of Adam: Hæc probant, justitiam esse de natura hominis, eâ autem per peccatum amissâ, non mansisse integra naturalia, ut delirant scholastici."

46

† See Plank's "History of the Rise, Changes, and Formation of our Protestant System of Doctrine," (in German) vol. iv. p. 584.

Hc was a learned scholar in the old Christian Greck literature, and we are, as is well known, indebted to him for some translations from that literature into the Latin language. But the Greek Church shows only advocates of the doctrine of free-will.

§ Calvin (Instit. lib. ii. sect. 14, fol. 87) gives us the wished for explanation of the notion, which, in the sixteenth century, was attached to the word "aptitudo." We may compare with great utility this passage with one in St. Thomas Aquinas. (See Summa tot. theolog. p. q. xciii art. iv. ed. Cass. Lugd. 1580, vol. i. p. 417.) St. Thomas here inquires, wherefore the spirituality of man constitutes his similitude to God; and he then says, the divine image within us may be considered in a threefold point of view. "Uno quidem modo secundum quod homo habet aptitudinem naturalem ad intelligendum et amandum Deum. Et hæc aptitudo consistit in ipsa natura mentis, quæ est communis omnibus hominibus. Alio modo secundum quod homo actu vel habitu Deum cognoscit et amat," etc. Aptitudo accordingly signifies, in opposition to actus, the natural disposition,—the faculty,—and here, the moral and religious faculty. See more copious proofs of this in my work,-" New Inquiry," &c. in reply to Dr. Baur, p. 35, second edition.

of the sin of Adam, in respect to his whole posterity, as of a far more destructive character, than Catholics, by the decisions of Trent at least, are immediately bound to regard them; still his view did not satisfy the orthodox party in his own Church. They called him a Pelagian, and asserted that even that bare faculty of knowledge and will,-that mere empty form in the soul of man, had been utterly destroyed; and here they doubtless spoke quite in the sense of Luther. The formulary of concord likewise rejected the view of the Synergist, and declared that fallen man no longer possessed even the mere natural faculty to understand God and his holy will, and, in conformity to that knowledge, to direct his own will.* In one word, the faculty of knowledge and will, inasmuch as it has reference to divine things, or (if we prefer the expression) the rational aptitude, is denied to the mere natu. ral man, the man as born of Adam. The truth of this mode of conceiving the Lutheran doctrine, on original sin, is not done away with, nay, is confirmed, by the declaration of the Formulary of Concord, that it was not thereby intended to hold fallen man for an irrational creature. For to that faculty of the human mind, which it terms reason, it assigns merely the finite world as the sphere of activity :‡ and thereby

Solid. declar. ii. de lib. arb. sect. 44, p. 644: "Eam ob causam etiam non recte dicitur, hominem in rebus spiritualibus habere modum agendi aliquid, quod sit bonum et salutare. Cum enim homo ante conversionem in peccatis mortuus sit, non potest in ipso aliqua vis ad bene agendum in rebus spiritualibus inesse ; itaque non habet modum agendi, seu operandi in rebus divinis." I. sect. 21, pp. 616, 617: "Repudiantur, qui docent, hominem ex prima sua origine adhuc aliquid boni, quantulum. cunque etiam et quam exiguum atque tenue id sit, reliquum habere; capacitatem videlicet et aptitudinem et vires aliquas in rebus spiritualibus," etc.

+ Solid. declar. ii. de lib. arbitr. sect. xvi. p. 633. "Non tamen in eam sententiam sic loquuntur, quasi homo post lapsum non amplius sit creatura rationalis.”

Solid. declar. i. de peccat. orig. sect. x. p. 614. "In aliis enim externis et hujus mundi rebus, quæ rationi subjectæ sunt, relictum est homini adhuc aliquid intellectûs, virium, et facultatum, etsi hæ etiam miseræ reliquiæ debiles, et quidem hæc ipsa quantulacunque per morbum illum hæreditarium infecta sunt atque contaminata, ut Deus abominetur ea. (Sect. xl. p. 644.) Et verum quidem est, quod homo etiam ante conversionem sit creatura rationalis, quæ intellectum et voluntatem habeat: intellectum autem non in rebus divinis; et voluntatem, non ut aliquid boni et sani velit." Victorinus Strigel, in his commentary on the Psalms, which appeared in the year 1563, had adduced the following passage from St. Augustine: "Non omnino deletum est in corde hominis per peccatum, quod ibi per imaginem Dei, cum crearetur, impressum fuerat, neque adeo imago Dei detrita est illa labe, ut nulla in anima veluti lineamenta extrema remanserint, remansit enim quod homo non nisi rationalis esse possit." These words the theologians of Würtemberg note as reprehensible See Plank's "History of the rise and changes of the Protestant system of doctrine, (in German) vol. iv. p. 682. We see that Victorinus Strigel attached a different meaning

clearly shows, that, in its opinion, Adam, rejected of God, and all his descendants, considered merely as such, have no longer preserved any spiritual aptitude for God and His kingdom.

We arrive at the same result by various ways. The first, presenting itself to our view, is the following. The Lutheran confessions, as was proved above, (see section II.), describe the image of God, as the natural capacity in man to know God, to fear Him, and to confide in Him. But it is precisely this capacity, which we especially revere as rationality, the rational disposition in man. Yet of this very divine image the Lutherans repeatedly assert, that it has been utterly effaced by original sin, and thereby plucked from the posterity of Adam.* The second course which leads to the above-mentioned result, consists in the views entertained by the Lutherans respecting man's free-will subsequently to his fall. They hold that he possesses only a certain external freedom, but none at all in spiritual things; and that, in respect to the latter, he is no more than a stone or a stock (these are comparisons they frequently use).† In like manner, the Formulary of Concord observes, that fallen man can neither think, believe, nor will, any thing having reference to divine and spiritual concerns; that he is utterly dead to all good, and no longer possesses any, even the least, spark of spiritual powers. The expression "spiritual powers" is here

to the word reason, from that which was attached to it by the Formulary of Concord. He considered it as the faculty for the apprehension of the super-sensual, as the principle of the Divine similitude in man; for as man appeared to him a being necessa. rily rational, he asserted, that remains of that faculty had survived his fall. This view, now, his adversaries rejected, and consequently regarded fallen man as really irrational, that is to say, as devoid of every faculty for the apprehension of the supermundane.

Solid. declar. i. de pecc. or. § 9, p. 614. "Docetur, quod peccatum originis sit horribilis defectus Concreatæ in paradiso justitiæ originalis, et amissio seu privatio imaginis Dei."

+ Confess. Aug Art. xvIII. "De libero arbitrio docent, quod humana voluntas habeat aliquam libertatem ad efficiendam civilem justitiam, et diligendas res rationi subjectas." Here is reason, the highest faculty in man that has survived his fall, confined purely to the finite. Let the reader compare the Solida Declaratio, ii de lib. arb. § 21, p. 635, ibidem: "Antequam homo per Spiritum Sanctum illuminatur. ...... ex sese et propriis naturalibus suis viribus, in rebus spiritualibus nihil inchoare, operari, aut cooperari potest: non plus, quam lapis, truncus aut limus"

↑ Solid. declar. ii. de lib. arb. § 7, p. 629. “ Credimus igitur, quod hominis non renati intellectus, cor, et voluntas in rebus spiritualibus et divinis prorsus nihil intelligere, credere, amplecti, cogitare, velle, inchoare, perficere, etc., possint. Et affirmamus, hominein ad bonum (vel cogitandum vel faciendum) prorsus corruptum et mortuum esse; ita quidem, ut in hominis naturâ, post lapsum et ante regenerationem, ne scintillula quidem spiritualium virium reliqua sit.

We must remember that here the question is only respecting the natural powers of man, since, according to the Protestant theory, he had no supernatural powers to lose.