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

of sin in the Word of God. Psalms Ii. 5, "In sin did my mother conceive
me," where David speaks not of the sin of his mother, but of a sin
pertaining to himself, and regards his moral condition, which he calls sin,
as antecedent to his birth--and as beginning with the beginning of his
being. 256 So the German of the Confession: “In Sünden empfangen."
Rom. v. 12, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and
so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned." Here the generic
moral state of all of our race is considered as sin. "Sin dwelleth in me." "In
me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." "The law of sin which is
in my members." "Let not sin reign in your mortal body." Psalm li. 5, "I
was shapen in iniquity." John iii. 6, "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh." In these passages original sin is called "sin," "iniquity," and the
"flesh."
In the phraseology of the early Christian writers, of the Reformers, of
the Confessions of all pure Churches, of the profoundest later theologians,
as well as of private Christians, the names and synonyms of sin are
confessedly applied to original sin.
When men profess to believe in the reality of that which is called
original sin, yet object to the term, they have failed to find or invent
another term as expressive and less open to objection. In the very act of
opposing the doctrine that original sin is truly sin, they drift into the use of
terms whose natural force involves that it is truly sin. If a general
consciousness ever embodied itself in the unhesitating application of a
term, then does the name of original sin prove that it is truly sin.
3. The essence.
3. It has the essence of sin, which is deviation from the will of God.
In physical, irrational, or non-moral nature, as such, there can be no
deviation from the will of God. To deviate from His will, personal will is
necessary. Hence all deviation from God's will is sin, and all sin is
deviation from His will. When matter is said to be perverted from its right
use by the corrupt will, it is still true that, as matter, it obeys the law under
which God has placed it. Fire is not
256 The Chaldee paraphrase renders Yahham by a yet more radical term: impraegnat a est.