The Institution of Christian Religion

As the spiritual life of Adam was, to abide joined and bound to his creator, so his alienation from him was the death of his soul. ⟨image 82⟩Neither is it marvel if he by his falling away, destroyed all his own posterity, which perverted the whole order of nature in Heaven and in Earth.¹ All the creatures do groan, sayeth Paul, being made subject to corruption against their will. If one should ask the cause: no doubt it is for that they bear part of that punishment that man deserved for whose use they were created. Sith then the curse that goeth throughout all the costs of the world proceeded from his fault both upward and downward, it is nothing against reason, if it spread abroad into all his issue. Therefore after that the heavenly image in him was defaced, he did not alone suffer this punishment, that in place of wisdom, strength, holiness, truth, and justice, (with which ornaments he had ben clothed) there came in the most horrible pestilences, blindness, weakness, filthiness, falsehood, and injustice, but also he entangled and drowned his whole offspring in the same miseries. This is the corruption that cometh by inheritance, which the old writers called Original sin, meaning by this word Sin, the corruption of nature, which before was good and pure. About which matter they have had much contention, because there is nothing farther of from common reason, than all men to be made guilty for one mans fault, and so the sin to become common. Which seemeth to have ben the cause why the oldest Doctors of the church did but darkly touch this point, or at least did not set it out so plainly as was convenient. And yet that fearfulness could not bring to pass, but that Pelagius arose, whose profane invention was that Adam sinned only to his own loss, and hurted not his posterity. So through this subtlety, Satan went about by hiding the disease, to make it incurable. But when it was proved by manifest testimony of Scripture, that sin passed from the first man into all his posterity, he brought this cavillation, that it passed by imitation, but not by propagation.

As the spirituall life of Adam was, to abide ioyned and bounde to his creatour, so his alienation from him was the death of his soule. ⟨image 82⟩