same scriptures which these men use to prove that man, since the fall, lies under a necessity of doing evil only. Now there be three advantageous differences betwixt this opinion of Origen, and that of these Decretalists,

(1.) That he made these souls to suffer for their personal sin alone; they make them suffer for another's sin, or for a thing impossible, viz. a personal sin committed by them when they were no persons.

(2.) His punishments were medicinal and purgative, and so designed for their eternal good; whereas the punishment inflicted on the posterity of Adam for his fall, are in most persons, according to their doctrine, only a sad preface to eternal punishments.

(3.) He was so merciful as to assert and believe that after these souls had suffered in these bodies for some time, they should. at last be saved and admitted to the enjoyment of God, whilst these men leave the generality of them infallibly to fail of salvation, and obnoxious to eternal misery.

III. And yet against this and other doctrines of Origen allied to it, the Fathers argue from those grounds which do as manifestly destroy the necessity of sinning they assert, and the foundation of it, viz. the imputation of the sin of Adam to all his posterity.

For, First, Methodius speaks thus, "If, as Origen saith, the soul for sin was united to the body, πῶς διὰ τῦτο ἡμαρτανὸν ὅ μὴ v undέnw, 'how did they sin by that which yet was not'?" (ANSWER. Even as the wills of all men sinned in Adam when as yet they were not.)"" And because Origen attempted to prove his doctrine from those words of the apostle, I am carnal, sold under sin;' he asks him how he could reconcile his sense of these words “ with the liberty of the will? Ἐφ' ἡμῖν γὰρ καὶ τὸ πιςεύσαι κεῖται, καί τὸ μὴ πιςεῦσαι, 'for it lies in our power to believe or not;'"', 'it is in our power' to amend our actions or to sin; 'nu, we are free' to do good or evil; for that which hath not ¿oíav duтodéσToтov, a self-commanding power of chusing'y what course of life it would lead, iva idíws tiuntñ ↓ɛxoñ, 'so that it may be honoured or blamed for what is properly its own,' must necessarily be exempted from all fault. (iii.) He adds, "that according to the doctrine of Origen, neither soul nor

Apud Epiph. Hær. 64, n. 4.

w N. 46.

Ibid.

y N. 55.

body could be judged; for if the soul," saith he, "be placed before the judgment-seat, it will plead that sin proceedeth not from me, ἀλλ' ἀπ' ἐκείνα τα φθαρτῶ καὶ γηίνει σώματος, but from that corruptible and earthly body to which thou didst unite me;' and since I quitted it, I neither whored, nor had any carnal lustings; and the body might say, ὅτι ἐκ ἔγω ἡμαρτὸν, ἀλλὰ ἡ ψυχὴ, “I sinned not, but the soul,' for since that was separated from me, I have done no evil;" and he concludes that "both these pleas were made, ¿úλóyws 'rationally'," and yet it is manifest that all souls united to bodies since the fall of Adam, might plead thus.

Secondly. Their second argument against this doctrine of Origen, is this, that "whereas God blessed man, created male and female, and said unto them, increase and multiply, &c. this doctrine turns God's blessing into a curse:" Jam enim non erit benedictio sed maledictio secundum Origenem; for according to Origen's doctrine, it will not be a blessing, but a curse,' saith Epiphanius. "For how," saith Theophilus of Alexandria, "is the marriage-bed undefiled, si anima vitiis circundatur, ‘if by it the soul is surrounded with vice?' Then Moses sinned in praying that God would multiply the seed of Israel, and make them a thousand times more; seeing this was to pray, ut animarum catervæ in calo peccantes Israelitici populi gentem conderent, that the nation of the Jews should be made up of souls that had sinned in heaven,' and that they might increase, animarum ruinis, ́ ́by the ruin of souls;' whereas he ought rather to have prayed, ne propter vitia melioris substantia, vilior natura conderetur, 'out of regard to the corruption ensuing to the better part that the viler body might not be produced.' Yea why," saith he, "doth David pray thus, The Lord bless thee out of Zion, that thou mayst see thy children's children,' si animarum jacturâ justi viri augetur genus, if the offspring of the just were to be increased by the loss of souls? Or why doth God say by his prophet, If thou hadst hearkened to my precepts, thy seed should have been as the sand, and as the dust of the earth? For they who observe God's precepts, non debent accipere præmium animarum ruinas de cœlo quæ alligata corporibus sobolis eorum incrementum multiplicent,

Apud Hieron. To. 2, Ep. ad Joh. Hieros.-F. 57. Lit. F.

ought not to receive, as their reward, the ruin of souls to increase their offspring'." And again, "were this so, "Increase and multiply' would be no blessing to Adam and Eve, cum causa peccati maledictionem potius mereretur, since that which is the cause of sin ought rather to be deemed a curse.' And if these things be so, why doth St. Paul say, 'I will that the young women marry and breed children? For then they must do this, not for the order of generation, sed propter pœnas animarum, but for the púnishment of souls;' which far be it from us to believe. Si enim propter peccata in cælis præcedentia, ad terras missæ sunt amimæ, ut corporibus ligarentur, for if souls were sent from heaven to be united to bodies for their preceding sins,' Paul lied when he said Marriage is honourable, and the bed undefiled;' nor can the same thing be a benediction and a punishment." Now the sin of Adam being the cause of all the sins of his posterity, and they having all souls sent pure from heaven into those bodies, by the sole union to which they instantly become sinful and corrupted, and mostly lie under a necessity of doing evil to their inevitable ruin, it may with much more truth and certainty be said, that "such a generation turns God's blessing into a curse, endangers souls, and increaseth posterity by the loss and ruin of them." Cyril, the successor of Theophilus, in his see, and also in his attempts against this doctrine of Origen, declares, in his commentary on those words of St. John, this is the true light,"*

1. That according to his opinion, it would be unjust in God to require of the soul thus united to the body, that it should not sin, it being thereby placed, v ohwo pagrías, 'in the defilement of sin;' which is more sadly the case of the posterity of Adam, lying under a necessity to do evil.

2. That "then God promising to Abraham that his seed should be multiplied as the stars of heaven, promised him only an ignoble rout of damned persons, and alien from all virtue (as by these men the generality of the seed of Adam are supposed to be) xai sxì μᾶλλον ευλογίας μέτοχον σπέρμα, and not rather a seed partaking of a blessing"."

3. That "according to St. Paul, we are only to be punished or rewarded for what we have done, διὰ τῇ σώματος, by the

body, αλλ' ἐδὲ πρεσβύτερον τῆς γενέσεως ἔγκλημα ζητηθήσεται, “ nor will any fault antecedent to the body, be charged upon it;' and therefore not the sin of Adam."

"b

4. That "St. Paul teacheth that 'death reigned over them who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; which," saith he, "cannot be according to the opinion of Origen (much less according to them who say that "we all personally sinned in Adam;") for then where will they be found who have not thus sinned?"

5. That "Christ by saying concerning the blind man, ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his fathers,' said what is to be interpreted of the time preceding their nativity, καθ' ὃν ἔπω γεγονότες édé Яuagтavov, when being not yet born, they had not sinned:' πῶς γὰρ ἡ μὴ ὑφες ῶσα καὶ ἁμαρτεῖν ἠδύνατο; “ for how can the soul sin that did not exist'?" (Add, or that soul which had no being

when Adam sinned?)

Moreover they condemn Origen's opinion concerning "the resurrection, not of the same body," on this score, that "it was unjust that one body sinning another should be punished;" and must it not be more unjust that one Adam sinning all mankind should be punished? Against his other opinion, St. Jerome thus disputes; "if it be an offence to be born of human bodies, quomodo Isaac, Sampson, et Johannes Baptista de repromissione nas cuntur, 'how were Isaac, Sampson, and John the Baptist, born by promise"?" And if it be no offence to be thus born, it can be no offence to be born of lapsed Adam; if "the cause of vice and virtue be not," as he saith, "in the seed, but in the will of him that is born." If he could not sin by the body, as Methodius saith, who yet was not; neither could men sin by the soul which yet was not. If, as he saith, they who act intemperately cannot be worthy of reprehension by a just judge, aduvátws ¿xèσης τῆς σαρκὸς ὑποτάσσεσθαι τῷ νόμῳ τῷ θεῖ, “ if the flesh could not be subject to the divine law,' neither can the sons of Adam, lying under the disability by reason of the flesh, be subject to reprehension. In a word, Epiphanius truly blames Origen and John of Jerusalem, for saying that "the image and similitude of God was lost in man after the expulsion of Adam out of Paradise;' and

b P. 83. c P. 84. Hieron. ad Pam. Tom. 2, f. 61, K.

"h

yet, according to the doctrine of these men, this must be a most certain article of faith.

IV FOURTHLY. Now be it so that St. Austin, to defend himself against himself, renounced, in his discourses against the Pelagians, most of those things which he had said in confutation of the Manichees; yet seeing the things he had then said were evidently the voice of nature, and by his own confession, "the voice of every man's conscience, and that which learned and unlearned, poets and orators, and civilians, heathens and christians, did unanimously own;" seeing the christian Fathers who lived before him, in his time, and after him, and equalled or much excelled him in learning and judgment, said constantly the same things, and never thought fit to renounce one tittle of any thing they had thus said, nor ever excepted, as he did afterwards, the case of infants, or original sin: It is manifest that his innovations and discord from his former and better self in this manner, ought not to be regarded in opposition to the constant sense and the concur ring judgment of all these Fathers of the church; especially if we

consider

First. That he hath been able to say nothing in answer to some of the arguments produced by him in confutation of the Manichees, viz. (i.) to the arguments taken from the divine precepts;the Mosaical precepts, do this, and do not that, being given to fallen man, and therefore if it be, as he saith, "folly and injustice" to lay them upon him who hath no power to do what is commanded or omit what is forbidden, it cannot consist with divine equity to lay these precepts upon fallen man had he no power of himself, and no assurance of divine assistance to enable him to do them. Such (ii.) is his argument taken from the duty of repentance; for if that testifies that the penitent hath done ill when he might have done well, when was it that the posterity of Adam might have done well before they were his posterity? But then they were not; if after, then if they contracted the guilt of Original Sin, they had done ill when they were not able to do well.

Secondly. That the exceptions which he makes to some of his own rules, and the answers he attempts to make to some of his own arguments, are vain, false, and absurd.

Thus when in defence of his definition of sin, that "it is the will to do that from which we have the power to abstain;" he saith,