The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

272 OF ORIGINAL SIN.one of the spirit against God; the other, of flesh against thespirit ; that the former is unrighteousness, and the latterconcupiscence, and that both together constitute sin.Aftera lengthened debate, in which the fathers, not the Scriptures,were appealed to, and which gave abundant room forthe display of that scholastic erudition which is so fruitfulin casuistical subtleties and distinctions, the council wiselyresolved to eschew the danger of adefinition, and, despairingof harmonizing their views, promulgated their decreewithout defining its subject. " Whoever shall not confess,"said the council, " that the first man, Adam, when he brokethe commandment of God in Paradise, straitway fell fromthe holiness and righteousness in which he was formed, andby the offence of his prevarication incurred the wrath andindignation of God, and also the death with which God had.... let him be accursed."*The council was scarce less divided on the subject of thethreatened him,transmission of original sin.Wisely avoiding to determinethe manner in which this sin is conveyed from Adam to hisposterity, the council decreed as follows :— " Whoever shallaffirm that the sin of Adam injured only himself, and notlikewise his posterity ; and that the holiness and justicewhich he received from God he lost for himself only, andnot for us also ; and that, becoming polluted by his disobedience,he transmitted to all mankind corporal death andpunishment only, but not sin also, which is the death of thesoul ;let him be accursed.""-}-The council, then, were at one asregards the penalty ofsin, which is death eternal ; they were not less at one as regardsthe remedy, which is baptism. And so efficacious isthis remedy, according to the Council of Trent, that in baptism,—" the laver of regeneration," as they termed it,—all sinis washed away.In the regenerate, that is, in the baptized,there remains no sin. The council admitted that concu-* Concil. Trid. sess. quinta,—Dec. de Peccato Origiuali.t Idem, p. 19.