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

in the XVII. Swabach Articles of Luther. In the fourth of these articles of
Luther, are these words: "Original sin is a true real sin, and not merely a
fault or a blemish, but a sin of such kind as would condemn, and separate
eternally from God, all men who spring from Adam, had not Jesus Christ
appeared as our substitute, and taken upon Himself this sin, together with
all sins which result from it, and by His sufferings made satisfaction
therefor, and thus utterly removed, and blotted them out in Himself, as in
Ps. li., and Rom. v. 5. is clearly written of this sin."
2. The fourth Article of the Swabach series is evidently based upon
the fourth of the Articles prepared at the Marburg Colloquy. That Article
says: In the fourth place, we believe that original sin is inborn, and
inherited by us from Adam, and had not Jesus Christ come to our aid by
his death and life, we must have died therein eternally, and could not have
come to God's kingdom and blessedness. 261
3. In Melanchthon's edition of the Confession in German, published
in 1533, the part of the Second Article now under consideration, reads
thus: "This inborn and original sin is truly sin, and condemns under God's
eternal wrath all who are not born again through Baptism and faith in
Christ, through the Gospel and Holy Spirit." 262
4. In Melanchthon's Latin edition of the varied Confession of 1540
and 1542, occur at this point these expressions: "Condemned to the wrath
of God and eternal death." "Those defects and that concupiscence are a
thing criminal, in its own nature worthy of death." 263
The Scripture evidence of the truth of the Thesis.
1. The great proposition that original sin condemns and brings now
also eternal death, i. e. that, left to its natural consequences, unchecked in
any way by God, this condemnation and death would be the result, is
already involved in the previous Thesis. The present Thesis was meant by
the confessors to be the practical inference from that, and that Thesis was
mainly set forth in order to this, and the emphasis of the connection is this,
that original
261 Rudelbach's Ref. Luth. u. Union, p. 626.
262 See Weber's ed. Weimar, 1781.
263 Hase, L. S., p. 15.