Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note VII. 347
.answers Ad Orthodoxos, to be witness. For answering
" those words of Scripture, There is not any one clean who is
born of a woman," and there is none begotten who hath not
cannot extend to
1
committed sin he ; says, their meaning
Christ, for He was not "
TTS^UKMS d^apravsiv born to
sin but he is natura ad ;" peccandum natus TTS^VKWS
d/jLapravsiv," who, by the choice of his own will, is author
to himself to do what he list, whether it be good or evil, 6
KCLTO, tr)v avOaipBTOv irpoalpsa LV ciywv savrov sis TO Trpdr-
TSLV a (BovKzrai sirs dyaOa SITS </>at)Xa. p. 29. One who
can sin, then, is born to sin, in Taylor s sense of the
phrase ; a man being born to sin means that he can sin,
and no more. But such a meaning is inconsistent with
his own previous meaning of the similar phrase, By nature
children of wrath, which he understands to mean great
and habitual actual sin, or a bad and corrupt course of life ;
for the power to sin and the fact of sin are not the same
thing.
Either meaning, however plainly, falls short of the
Apostle s. Why should S. Paul sin was all
1
if
say by nature," actual
that he meant? The term evidently intro
duces another idea beyond and in
bad course of life.
addition to an actual
The modification which Taylor has hitherto proposed
of the doctrine of original
sin has been rather concerned
with its effects than with itself. The particular view of
the sin itself which he proposes
to substitute for the re
ceived one is, that it is imputed sin, as distinguished from
real sin in us. He objects to the idea of our being parties
to Adam s sin as absurd ; but has no objection to a certain
imputation of that sin, considered to be his and his only,
to us. Indeed, my Lord, that I may speak freely
in this
great question : when one man hath sinned, his descendants
and relations cannot possibly by him, or for him, or in
him be made sinners really and For in sin there
properly.
are but two things imaginable,
the irregular
action and the
guilt or obligation to punishment. Now, we cannot be
said in any sense to have done the action which another
did, and not we ;
the action is as individual as the person ;
and Titius may as well be Caius, and the son be his own