The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

is represented as the motive power in covetousness. In Col. iii. 5, it is
distinguished from inordinate affection and covetousness, to which it is
related as the root to the tree, or as the trunk to the branches. In 1 Thess.
iv. 5, the "lust of concupiscence" is mentioned, that is, the lust or positive
desire generated by the evil propensity inherent in our own nature; that is,
the actual evil desire by the original evil desire, or concupiscence; sin by
sin; sin the offspring by sin the parent, the actual sin of our character being
related to the original sin of our nature, as child to mother. The
Pelagianizing Romanist says, Lust, or concupiscence, brings forth sin,
therefore it cannot be sin, because the mother cannot be the child. We
reply, Concupiscence brings forth sin, therefore it must be sin, because
child and mother must have the same nature. The grand sophism of
Pelagianism is the assumption that sin is confined to acts, that guilty acts
can be the product of innocent condition, that the effect can be sinful, yet
the cause free from sin--that the unclean can be brought forth from the
clean. The word concupiscence, therefore, as the representative of
epithumia in its evil sense, very properly designates that moral condition
which is antecedent to positive and conscious moral acts. It is the first
phenomenon of personality in morals, and no better practical definition can
be given of it, than the simple one of our Confession. It is "evil desire" and
"evil propensity," "böse Lust und Neigung."
The grand idea here lies in this, that sin is in us potentially before it
comes to the act; that the moral nature of the infant is born with it, and
does not originate in, nor date its origin from, any conscious movement of
the infant's will, any purpose of its heart,'any act of its hands; but that, on
the contrary, the general character of that movement, purpose, and act of
will, heart, and hand, apart from Divine grace, is inevitably conditioned as
actually sinful, and that this actual sinfulness is merely on the one side the
result and token of a defect, and on the other the positive exhibition of an
evil tendency already in being, from the time of the origin of the human
nature of the child. Hence, in a new sense, this sin may be called original.
It is that in which all other sins in some sense take their