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

4. But the doctrine of the Confession is not that this loss of the race
actually takes place, but that original sin, unchecked by God, tends to this,
and that such, apart from the provisions of his grace in Christ and the Holy
Spirit, would be the result. This is made very clear by the historical
citations with which our discussion of this Thesis opens.
5. If it be argued that it is impossible before any moral act, or moral
choice, a human creature should have an element which, unchecked in its
results, would produce death, we reply, that it would much more seem
impossible that before any moral act, or moral choice, a human creature
should have an element which, not only unchecked, but with the mightiest
checks, actually results in conscious sin, and is itself sin. But the latter is
admitted by all who acknowledge the existence of original sin. Much more
then should they admit the former. If we have sin without an act of our will,
much more may we have death, the result of that sin, without an act of our
will. 6. We see, furthermore, that all the visible results of Adam's sin to
Adam are perpetuated to us his descendants, and this creates a powerful
presumption that the invisible results of that sin are also perpetuated to us.
The sorrows of Eve are the sorrows of her daughters; the sorrows of Adam
are the sorrows of his sons; the curse of the ground, the curse of temporal
death, the exclusion from Paradise, all are perpetuated to us. But the
principle on which God allows the perpetuation of a fellowship in these
visible results of Adam's fall is the principle on which He would also allow
the natural tendency of our sin to run out into the invisible results of the
Fall, that is, into eternal death. If God had no right to allow the one
tendency, He had no right to allow the other. If He has no right to allow
Adam's sin to bring upon us, apart from. His grace, Adam's spiritual curse,
He has no right to allow Adam's sin to bring upon us Adam's temporal
curse. But confessedly, He does the latter, and has the right to do it;
equally therefore has He the right to do the former, and if he does not, it is
on another ground than that of abstract justice.
It is not anything I did which places me in a sorrowful world, with a
frail body, a clouded mind, a sad heart, and