Chapter IV: The Existence of Original Sin.
CHAPTER IV: DOES ORIGINAL SIN EXIST?
§ 56. That original sin exists—that is, that something truly and properly called sin is taken from Adam into his descendants through carnal generation—was once denied with great effort by Pelagius the Briton (from whom the Pelagians received their name) at the time of Theodosius the Younger. Augustine writes about them (De haeres., ch. 88):
They deny that infants born carnally according to Adam contract the contagion of ancient death from their first birth. For they assert that such are born without any bond of original sin in such a way that it is not at all true that something must be forgiven them by their second birth, but that they are baptized in order to be admitted into the kingdom of God by regeneration, translated from a good condition to a better, but not absolved from some evil of an ancient debt by that rebirth. For even if they are not baptized, they still promise them an eternal and blessed life outside the kingdom of God. They also say that Adam himself, had he not sinned, would have died with respect to his body, and that he died not as a result of the merit of guilt but of the condition of his nature.
Augustine (De bon. persev., bk. 2, ch. 2): “As you know, there are three things that the catholic church defends against those people” (the Pelagians). “One of these is that the grace of God is not given according to our merits; the second is that no one lives in this corruptible body in any sort of righteousness without some type of sin; the third is that a person is born subject to the sin of the first man and bound by the chain of damnation, unless the guilt which is contracted by generation is forgiven by regeneration.” Again (prologue to the Hypogn. cont. Pelag. et Coelest.):
A doctrine of this type
(Pelagian)
is a shameful blasphemy. They say that whether or not Adam had sinned, he was destined to die—nevertheless his sin has harmed no one but himself—and that a man can sufficiently fulfill whatever he intends by free choice or that grace is given by God to each according to the merits of his works. They say that natural lust is good and that there is nothing in it of which one should be ashamed; that the little children of baptized parents do not contract original sin and will not perish from eternal life if they pass out of this life without the sacrament of Baptism.
Those who directly deny original sin: First, the Anabaptists.
§ 57. In our age there are some who fight for the error of the Pelagians directly; on the other hand, others offer it support and help obliquely and indirectly by minimizing original sin with their false hypotheses. Those who deny original sin directly include: (1) The Anabaptists, who (according to Sleidanus, bk. 10) “imagine that sin was removed by the death of Christ in such a way that infants in the New Testament are born without sin and innocent, with the slavery of death as the only exception. Therefore they deny that infants should be baptized, because they are born subject to no sin.”
Second, the Photinians.
(2) The Photinians, who (in the Cat. Racov., p. 285) expressly deny original sin. In fact, they assert that “not even Adam’s natural gifts, much less those of his descendants, could have been corrupted by sin.” Johannes Sommer (tr. De justif., ff. 40 and 43) calls original sin “a fable of monks born of a corrupt understanding of Scripture and invented as a defense of the superstition of paedobaptism.” Ostorodus (Inst. Germ., ch. 35): “We do not concede that nature is corrupted by the first sin of man.”
Third, Zwingli.
(3) Zwingli, who writes (in his Confess. published and offered to Emperor Charles in 1530, art. 4): “Whether we want to or not, we are forced to admit that original sin as it exists in the children of Adam is not properly sin, for it is not a crime against law. Thus it is properly an illness and a condition.”
Fourth, some Papists.
(4) Some of the Papists. Jacobus Faber [Stapulensis] (commentary on Romans 5) teaches: “We contract nothing from Adam except an obligation to death.”
Albertus Pighius (Controvers. prima de peccat. orig.) and Ambrosius Catharinus (De lapsu homin. et peccat. orig., ch. 6) claim: “Original sin does not have the true nature of sin but is only the guilt in which the descendants of the first parents are held bound because of the [parents’] primeval transgression, [yet] without any proper vice [of their own] and without any inherent corruption of their nature.” Bellarmine quite gently calls this opinion “incorrect” (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 5, ch. 6).
Ruardus Tapperus writes (Art. de peccato origin.): “Nothing is found in a recently born infant which truly and properly possesses the nature of sin.”
Cornelius, a canon of Cologne, argues (vol. 2, Animadv.):
Original sin is not properly sin since it is not a defect in the perfection of man necessary for blessedness. Corruption is not hereditary, nor can it be transmitted from parents into children since they themselves have been cleansed. Only those who are endowed with the use of reason and free choice are bound by law. It is an unwholesome blasphemy against God to say that the corruption of original sin has so pervaded all parts of our nature that it has become abundant in all disgrace and crimes and can do nothing but fight against God and the Law, etc.
Pelagianism is indirectly introduced by: First, the Scholastics and the Papists.
§ 58. Indirectly, the following offer encouragement to Pelagianism and diminish original sin: (I) The Scholastics and Papists, when they claim:
(1) “Original sin is nothing else but the lack of a supernatural gift, while the actual nature of man has continued to be pure and sound.”
(2) When they argue freely about the essence of this sin and leave it in doubt, as if it were a matter of question and not of faith. Andrada (Defens. Trid., bk. 3): “The illustrious theologians labor greatly in their explanation of original sin also when, in the Council of Trent, they define original sin as true sin yet wrap the proper nature of it in deliberate silence.”
(3) When they deny that concupiscence is sin, though the power of this original sin is especially conspicuous in it and the blessed apostle quite often speaks of original sin under this name.
(4) When they fight for free choice in spiritual matters, the perfect fulfillment of the Law, the merits of good works, works of supererogation, congruous merit, etc., in such a way that some write that God can be loved by us above all things out of our purely natural state.
(5) When they deny the propagation of the soul, which is nevertheless “the first indicator of sin,” according to Thomas ([ST,] 1.2., q. 83, art. 1). Thus if that is removed in which something properly and of itself inheres, the very thing that inheres is of necessity also removed.
(6) When they assign some blessed place, which is nevertheless outside the kingdom of God, to infants who depart this life without Baptism, just as Pelagius once did.
(7) When they deny that each and every one of those who descends from Adam according to the ordinary course of nature is born in and with sin. Alexander of Hales (according to Trithemius, De script. eccles.) used to say about Bonaventure: “Adam does not appear to have sinned in Brother Bonaventure.” They also make an exception for blessed Mary.
(8) When they claim that through Baptism sin is forgiven in such a way that nothing more is left in the reborn that has the true nature of sin. How, then, do the reborn propagate original sin in their offspring?
The Pelagian declaration of Bellarmine.
§ 59. Here we shall consider some hypotheses of Bellarmine which can scarcely be reconciled with the orthodox article on original sin.
(1) “Actual sin cannot corrupt the natural gifts of man” (De grat. prim. hom., bk. 1, ch. 6). And yet Scripture teaches that original righteousness was natural to the first man. Therefore [according to Bellarmine’s hypothesis] it could not have been lost through the first sin of Adam.
(2) “Sin is the name of an evil activity which is opposed to the activity of virtue. But vice is the name of an evil disposition1 which is opposed to virtue when virtue means a disposition” (De amiss. grat. et stat. peccat., bk. 1, ch. 1). I add the rest of the syllogism: “In infants there is no evil activity which is opposed to the activity of virtue; therefore, properly speaking, there is no sin in them.”
(3) “Nothing has the proper nature of sin unless it is voluntary, and, on account of this, Augustine’s definition seems to be lacking, because no express mention of voluntariness was made in it” (ibid.). I add the rest of the syllogism: “The original taint is involuntary; hence it follows that it is not properly sin.” In ch. 2 he says, “This sin is voluntary by the will of someone else.” Therefore was it voluntary and properly called sin in respect to Adam alone, but not with respect to us? From this the conclusion of Franciscus Maro immediately follows, that “original sin is less than the smallest venial sin.”
(4) “Law is not properly given except to those who have the use of free choice” (Bellarmine, De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 1, ch. 1). I add the rest of the syllogism: “Infants do not have the use of free choice; therefore law is not properly given to them, and, as a consequence, sin which is against law cannot properly fall upon them.”
(5) “What is natural cannot be criminally charged. We cannot sin in regard to something that is not in our power. As death is the punishment and effect of sin, but is not sin itself, so concupiscence is only the penalty and effect of sin, but not sin itself,” etc. (Bellarmine, De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 5, ch. 9). I add the rest of the syllogism: “After the fall, original sin is natural to man and is not in the power of an infant; therefore it is not sin.”
(6) “In Adam, besides the act of sin, there was also a perversion of the will and an obliquity derived from the act by which he was a sinner and was called a sinner, properly and formally, until it might be forgiven him through repentance. The act of the sin is not communicated to us except through imputation, but the perversity and obliquity derived from the act inheres in us” (Bellarmine, De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 5, ch. 17). I add the rest of the syllogism: “Adam finally begot a son after his sin had been forgiven him through repentance; therefore he could not have propagated the perversion and obliquity into his children.” The judgment is the same regarding all who have been reborn through Baptism, in whom, Bellarmine argues, the actual stain of sin has been eradicated.
(7) Bellarmine (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 5, ch. 15) argues against other Papists: “Original sin must not be constituted in a positive quality.” How, then, can he sincerely deal with the doctrine of original sin?
Second, by those who teach with Calvin that holy children are born from holy parents.
§ 60. Those who argue the following must also be classed among those who do battle indirectly for Pelagianism:
Those who are saints by grace produce saints from the same grace by the power of the covenant apprehended by faith. The children of the reborn are by hereditary right contained within the covenant of grace, and thus are not baptized so that they might then for the first time become the children of God, [as if] they had been foreigners to the church beforehand. Rather, by this solemn sign they are received into the church, and the salvation of which they already are partakers is sealed upon them. Holy progeny is born of the faithful, etc.
(See Calvin, Inst., bk. 4, ch. 15, §§ 20, 22; ch. 16, § 24; Defens. 2 contra Westphal., p. 1082; Beza, Respons. 2 ad colloq. Mompelg., pp. 102, 103, 118, 129, etc.; Quaest. et resp., bk. 2, qq. 124, 126.)
But however much these things are explained by some in such a way that they refer not to some inherent sanctity but rather concerning the grace of the covenant into which the children of the reborn have been accepted even before Baptism, so that in this way an assertion about the holiness of children born to faithful parents does not appear to conflict with the propagation of original sin, nevertheless this assertion is still unsound. Rather, there must be a distinction between spiritual holiness and ecclesiastical holiness (so to speak). The children of the faithful are holy—that is, they are considered as having been born into the church—and the road to Baptism lies open to them. However, in actuality they are not in the grace of God nor in the covenant of grace before Baptism but are still by nature the children of wrath like the rest, concerning which more will be said in its own place [cf. below, §§ 106–9; On Holy Baptism (Commonplace XXIII), §§ 42, 118–27].
The existence of original sin is proved.
§ 61. In the following paragraphs we shall examine those varied and different corruptions of this article by which the Pelagian poison is fostered. Here we shall briefly prove the existence of original sin against the Pelagians. Thus the following reasons demonstrate that original sin exists, that is, that sin in the true and proper sense is propagated through carnal generation into people born of Adam according to the natural order.
(I) Statements of Scripture. Gen. 5:3: “Adam begot a son after his own image” (corrupted and depraved by sin). Gen. 6:5: “Every imagination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil every day.” Job 14:4: “Who will produce a clean thing from an unclean seed of conception?” Ps. 51:[5]: “Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Jer. 17:9: “The heart of man is corrupt and inscrutable.” John 3:6: “What is born of the flesh is flesh.” Rom. 5:12: “Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, in whom all sinned.” Eph. 2:3: “We were by nature the children of wrath.” These are the chief statements of Scripture that deal with original sin. We shall evaluate their emphasis later. Secondarily, also these utterances of the Holy Spirit can be classed here: Ps. 19:[12]: “Cleanse me from my hidden faults.” Ps. 25:7: “Remember not the sins of my youth,” or infancy. Ps. 90:8: “You place our hidden [sin] in the light of Your countenance.” Isa. 48:8: “From the womb I called you a sinner.” Ezek. 16:4: “When you were born, on the day of your coming forth, your umbilicus was not cut nor were you washed with water for cleansing nor rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling cloths,” etc. Rom. 7:23: “I see in my members another law at war with the law in my mind.” Here the ancients class the words of [2 Esdras] 4:30: “A grain of evil seed was sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much ungodliness has it produced until now and will it produce until the threshing comes?” The proper basis of this article is Romans 5.
(II) All actual sins, which are the poisoned branches that grow from that poisoned root, also bear witness to original sin. Matt. 15:19: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” Matt. 7:[18]: “An evil tree cannot produce good fruit.”
(III) All calamities, ills, and temporal death, to which even infants are subject, bear witness to this original corruption. Rom. 5:14: “Death reigned even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the transgression of Adam.” Rom. 6:23: “The wages of sin is death.” 1 Cor. 15:21–22: “By the man came death; in Adam all die.”
(IV) The necessity of rebirth and renewal proves that carnal generation is depraved and subject to sin. John 3:5: “Except someone is born again of water and of the Spirit, he will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” John 3:6: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” In addition, there is the consensus of the ancients who wrote before the Pelagian heresy arose, to which consensus Augustine appeals in his disputations against Pelagius. (See Cont. Julian., bk. 1; Ad Bonifacium, bk. 1.)
The witness of the heathen can, in some measure, also be classed here. Plato (De repub., bk. 2): “By nature people are evil and cannot be led to cultivate justice.” In the Sophista he teaches: “There are two special ills of the mind: ignorance and wickedness.” Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 4) cites a passage from Cicero (De repub.): “Man is brought into the light by Stepmother Nature with a naked, frail, and weak body; with a mind anxious over worries, lowly over fears, weak toward hardships, inclined to lusts, in which the divine fire is hidden, as well as his character and behavior.”
The counterarguments of the Pelagians: First, [that] the sin of Adam injured his descendants by imitation.
§ 62. Augustine has carefully explained and refuted the counterarguments of the Pelagians with which they try to weaken the testimony of Scripture. We shall deal with only the more important ones. The first and most common counterargument was: “The sin of Adam entered into the world not by propagation but by imitation.”
We respond. (1) The apostle adds clearly that death, which is the wages of sin [Rom. 6:23], “reigned even over those who did not sin in likeness to the transgression of Adam” [Rom. 5:14]. Surely, then, those who are not yet imitating the sin of Adam are subject to his sin.
(2) Eph. 2:3 asserts that we are “the children of wrath” not by imitation but “by nature.”
(3) It was the aim [scopus] of the apostle that all people, Jews as well as Gentiles, be guilty of sin. This he demonstrates very effectively from original sin which has been propagated into all people.
(4) The weight of the apostolic words clearly does not allow that evasion of Pelagius. He says, [Rom. 5:]12: “All have sinned”; that is, v. 19: “All have been established as sinners.” For it is an idiom of the Hebrew language to express an inclination with a word of action. In chs. 3, 11, and 12 he testifies that all people are useless for thinking, speaking, or doing good and, on the contrary, are prone to evil, which cannot be understood as a reference to some actual sin committed in imitation of Adam’s sin. He is comparing Adam and Christ, but the righteousness of Christ is not only set before us for imitation, but it also becomes ours by regeneration. Therefore the sin of Adam entered into the world not only by imitation but also by generation.
(5) Augustine (De peccat. merit. et remiss., bk. 1, ch. 9) is correct in pressing this point: “If the apostle had intended to discuss the imitation of sin, he would rather have followed the example of Christ (John 8:41, 44) and said that sin entered into the world through the devil, for he was the first to sin.”
(6) We also have this response of Augustine (Contra Jul., bk. 6, ch. 12): “There are many who actually sin but do not think of the sin of Adam. How, then, does the sin of Adam injure them by example? The preposition διά with the genitive expresses the true and proper cause of a thing. But those who sin do not sin in such a way as to imitate Adam. Accordingly, if the apostle were speaking only about imitation, he would not have said, nor could he have said, that sin entered into the world ‘through’ one man.”
(7) Augustine again (Sermon 7 de verb. apostoli) insists on the phrase “passed through,” which means that sin and death did not subsist in Adam but passed into all his descendants from him and out of him.
(8) “As death entered through sin, so also sin entered into the world through one man” [Rom. 5:12]. But sin is the proper cause of death, not improperly or by way of occasion or accidentally. Therefore that one man who is a sinner is also the proper cause of sin which is propagated into his descendants. If it were to harm only by example, it would be the cause of sin accidentally or by way of occasion.
(9) The apostle is speaking generally about the world, that is, about all people. But infants do not contract sin by imitation (Rom. 9:11). (See more in Augustine, De peccat. merit. et remiss., bk. 1; and in his books Contra Julian., [Contra] Pelag. et Coelest., etc.)
Second, ἐφ’ ᾧ, that is, “because of which” they sinned.
§ 63. The second counterargument of the Pelagians was this: “The phrase ἐφ’ ᾧ, ‘in whom’ all sinned (Rom. 5:12), must be explained in this way: ‘because of which all sinned.’ That is, death passed into all people because they imitate Adam by sinning.”
We respond. Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 6, ch. 12) disapproves of this view and takes the word ᾧ as a relative [“which” or “whom”], but it amounts to the same thing. For whether you take ἐφ’ ᾧ causally or relatively, none of the truth is lost. At times the words ἐφ’ ᾧ are used in such a way as to signify the giving of a cause, as Varinus, Budaeus, and Suidas prove with examples. It is for this reason that Dr. Luther has translated it causally in his German version.2 Therefore the meaning is: Death has passed through into all people because all have sinned—that is, because Adam sinned, the one who is the parent of the human race, who represents all the descendants who descend from him through carnal generation, who was created after the divine image, who had received those gifts not just for himself but also for all his posterity. Nor does Augustine disapprove of this view, but rather of the strange and twisted sense which Pelagius was trying to carve out of these words. But if you explain the phrase ἐφ’ ᾧ as a relative particle, it will also follow that all sinned originally in Adam as the first parent of all people, as if in a mass, as the apostle states, 1 Cor. 15:22: “In Adam all die.”
Third, [that] the fall of Adam injures many but not all.
§ 64. Third, the Pelagians sought an evasion in the word “many,” from which they inferred: “If the sin of Adam were harmful by propagation, surely it would be harmful to everyone, and not only to many.”
We respond. (1) In [Rom 5:]18 the apostle clearly adds the universal: “As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men.” (2) He says in Rom. 5:12: “Death spread into all people,” which is surely the wages of sin. 1 Cor. 15:22: “In Adam all die.”
(3) He says, Rom. 5:12: “Sin entered into the world,” but “world” properly indicates the entire human race.
(4) Therefore the word “many” must not be restricted in this passage but should be considered as a universal. Many have been established as sinners—that is, all, who indeed are many. Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 6, ch. 12) compares these words: “I have constituted you as the father of many nations” [Gen. 17:5] and “All nations will be blessed in your Seed” [Gen. 22:18]. Later he adds: “There is a sound reason why Scripture spoke in such a way, because sometimes all are not many, and, again, sometimes many are not all.”
The arguments of the Pelagians: First, Ezekiel 18[:20]: “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.”
§ 65. These were the stronger arguments of the Pelagians:
(I) Ezek. 18:20: “The son will not bear the iniquity of the father.”
We respond. This passage concerns not original sin but actual sins, the punishment of which a son does not bear if he desists from the sins of his scandalous parent and is converted. Thus we turn the argument [against them]. Because infants are punished with illness and death, then surely they have some sin of their own because of which they are being punished, namely, original sin propagated into them by their parents. And this sin is no longer foreign to them but is transfused into them by the contagion of propagation. (See Augustine, Contra Julian., bk. 6, ch. 4.)
Second, [that] infants are innocent.
(II) In Ps. 106:38 infants are pronounced innocent. Jon. 4:11: “They did not know their right hand from their left.” Rom. 9:11: “Although the boys were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad.”
We respond. These things must be understood comparatively with respect to actual sins but not with respect to original sin.
Third, [that] they are without laws.
(III) Rom. 4:15: “Where there is no law, there is no transgression.”
We respond. Infants are both without the Law, that is, they are ignorant of the Law (Rom. 2:12), and they are not without the Law, that is, they are not free from accusation by which the Law accuses and condemns all lawlessness.
Fourth, [that] God shapes the fetus in the mother’s womb.
(IV) “If original sin is established, sin will have to be attributed to God, who forms infants in the womb [Ps. 139:13]; marriage will have to be condemned,” etc.
We respond. The defect of a nature must be distinguished from the kindness of God who forms natures. Both a nature and the defect of a nature are propagated—the former of which is good; the latter, evil. Augustine (De grat. et pecc. orig., ch. 33): “The former is taken from the generosity of the Creator, while the latter is drawn from original condemnation.”
Fifth, [that] the sins of devout parents are remitted in Baptism.
(V) “If the sins of devout parents are remitted in Baptism, how, then, will they propagate sin in their children?”
We respond. Carnal generation takes place not according to grace but according to nature. Augustine (Sermon 14 de verb. apost.):
Sometimes the Pelagians speak and upset the little children. If they were born sinners from a sinner, why are they not born righteous from a baptized parent who is now faithful, all of whose sins have been remitted? Respond quickly: He is not born righteous from a baptized person because the giver of generation begets him, not the giver of regeneration. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh” [John 3:6]. Do you ask how an unrighteous person is born from a righteous one, though you see that he cannot at all be righteous without being reborn? You wonder why a sinner is born from the seed of a righteous man, yet it does not please you to wonder why a wild olive is born from the seed of an olive. Consider another comparison. Imagine that a righteous man who has been baptized is a purged grain. You do not notice that from the purged grain is produced grain with chaff, though it was sown without chaff!
In Contra Jul. (bk. 6, ch. 3) he uses “the example of the Hebrews who were circumcised and yet begot uncircumcised children.”
Sixth, [that] there is no sin except voluntary sin.
(VI) “The consent of one’s will is required for sin.”
We respond. Augustine (Contra Julian., bk. 3, ch. 5): “This is said correctly concerning each man’s specific sin, not concerning the contagion of the first original sin.” In De nupt. et concup. (bk. 2, ch. 28) he responds: “Original sin is voluntary by the will of the first parent in whom all have sinned.” But the prior solution is simpler and safer. Retract. (bk. 1, ch. 13): “That every sin is voluntary must be understood like this: (1) with reference to the sin which is only sin and is not also the punishment for sin; (2) sins which are committed by the ignorant or the coerced cannot be committed without [any movement of] the will at all; (3) original sin is called voluntary because it was contracted from the evil will of the first man.”
Therefore we say that it would be too subtle and far-fetched if original sin were said to be voluntary by the will of someone else, for it will follow that what is not properly voluntary in us but only in Adam is not properly sin in us but only in Adam. And if the nature of our sin must be sought in Adam’s own proper will and action, why, then, are not the rest of his actions, and thus even his conversion, imputed to us?
Do Protestants deny original sin?
§ 66. Up to this point we have been explaining the cause of original sin in opposition to the Pelagians. Before we finish this treatment, the bold and shameless declaration of Bellarmine must be investigated (De amiss. grat. et stat. pecc., bk. 4, ch. 2):
Since they do not acknowledge the gift of original righteousness to be an addition to [human] nature and a disposition, Lutherans cannot acknowledge its lack, and so they are forced to establish and place original sin in concupiscence itself, which they think is sin in the proper sense. From this it follows that Lutherans themselves also deny original sin, though they fight bitterly to assert it, for concupiscence is only sin by metonymy.
We respond. He is committing the great fallacy and sophism of “in a certain manner and simply.”3 We deny that original righteousness was a supernatural and extrinsic gift. Do we, then, on that account deny original righteousness in the first man before the fall absolutely and simply? We say clearly that original sin includes both the loss of the acquired good as well as the establishing of the evil which had been introduced, something of which Bellarmine is not unaware, for he writes (De grat. primi hominis, ch. 5): “Our adversaries think that the uprightness in which Adam was created was natural to him in this way: that it was something like a sort of health due to [his] nature and that it was apt to be born of that well-established nature itself, that is, the noncorrupted nature. And now, people who have lost that uprightness lack what in Adam was a natural gift,” etc. To this opinion of ours he adds his own: “The corruption of [human] nature comes not from the lack of a natural gift nor from the coming of some evil quality but solely from the loss of a supernatural gift because of the sin of Adam.” With these words Bellarmine frees us from a threatened crime. Furthermore, we shall show clearly in its own place that concupiscence, in which the power of original sin is particularly conspicuous, is truly sin [On Actual Sins (Commonplace XIII), §§ 36–79].
1 habitus, or “habit.” A habit is a durable, accidental quality in the nature of a thing, or a disposition or inclination toward something. Cf. below, p. 260 n. 4.
2 Luther’s Bible translation renders this phrase as die weil, i.e., dieweil, “since” (WA DB 7:45).
3 Παρὰ τὸ πῆ καὶ ἁπλῶς. This is an invalid argument that takes something that was stated only in a certain manner or respect and applies it simply or absolutely.