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

convert and be healed," that is, be healed of sin, which is the disease of the
soul. The Chaldee Paraphrase and the Syriac render: "and be forgiven."
The metaphorical transfer of the idea of disease and fault to express
moral condition is so obvious, that we find it in all cultivated languages.
Cicero says, "As in the body there is disease, sickness, and fault, so is there
in the soul."
We have this triple parallel therefore:
body, health, sickness,
mind, sanity, insanity,
spirit, holiness, sin.
Analogies between Morbus and Original Sin.
The analogies between MORBUS, disease and sin are very many. 1.
Morbus is in conflict with the original perfection of body with which man
was created, the original rightness or wholeness of body.
2. Morbus is a potency before it is revealed as a fact.
3. Morbus in its tendency is toward death. The slightest morbus
developed to the last degree would destroy the body. There is no morbus
so slight that it has not brought death. Strike out two letters, and morbus,
"disease," becomes mors, "death."
4 Morbus is common to the whole race. Cicero, in the Tusculan
Questions, 325, translates from Euripides this sentence, "Mortalis nemo est
quem non attingit. dolor morbusque," "There is not one of our race
untouched by pain and disease."
5. Morbus is the spring of pain, grief, and misery to the body.
6. Morbus rests on an inborn tendency of the body. It could not
touch the body of a sinless being without his permission. Our Lord Jesus
Christ could only endure it by the act of His own will.
7. Morbus is primarily in the world, not because we sinned, but
because Adam sinned; he is the spring of original morbus, as he is of
original peccatum.
8. Morbus depraves and corrupts the substance of the body, but is
not itself substance; it is not a creature of God, but a defect in, and vitiation
of, that which He created. The body is His work, morbus the result of sin.