A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

First, As for that original sin called originans, viz. Adam's actual transgression made ours by Gods will and appointment, through imputation, that is, wholly known by revelation, so that no Heathens by the highest improvement and cultivage of nature could ever discern such things. That God made Adam righteous, giving him a command of trial in obedience, or disobedience, whereof all his posterity should be involved, this they had not the least him of, and the reason is, Because the truth of such things lieth not in nature, neither have second causes the least demonstration of this, but it is wholly discovered as a matter of fact by the Scripture; So that we Christians ought the more to bless God for the sight of his Word, seeing thereby a very Idiot amongst us may know more, then the wisest Aristotle or Plato amongst the Heathens.

First, As for that original sinne called originans, viz. Adam's actual transgression made ours by Gods will and appointment, through imputation, that is, wholly known by revelation, so that no Heathens by the highest improvement and cultivage of nature could ever discern such things. That God made Adam righteous, giving him a command of tryal in obedience, or disobedience, whereof all his posterity should be involved, this they had not the least him of, and the reason is, Because the truth of such things lieth not in nature, neither have second causes the least demonstration of this, but it is wholly discovered as a matter of fact by the Scripture; So that we Christians ought the more to bless God for the sight of his Word, seeing thereby a very Ideot amongst us may know more, then the wisest Aristotle or Plato amongst the Heathens.

Secondly, As for original inherent sin, it must necessarily be granted, That even the Heathens had some general confused knowledge about a mans natural defilement: Hence was their custom of a solemn washing, and lustration of their Infants in a religious way, implying hereby, that they came into the world polluted, and needed the propitious savour of their gods. This solemn religious custom of theirs, was some general confession of original sin; but as for the Philosophers, who were the wisest and most learned of them, some do speak more congruously to this point than others. That noble and learned Plessus in his Book of the Truth of the Christian Religion, Pag. 377. which he endeavoureth to prove even from Heathenish Authors, especially the Platonists, doth allege some things pertinently to our subject; For Plato holding, That the soul was put into the body, as into a prison and a dungeon, for former sins committed, through he grossly erred in the foundation, thinking souls pre-existent before the body, and for faults committed then adjudged to the body as a place of prison, which was an absurd error, yet there was some truth he did take notice of, for observing that the soul which should rule and command the body, was yet mancipated, and enslaved to it, he concluded there was some fore-going crime deserving this, though he was wholly ignorant of Adam's fall: Hence he saith, That the soul hath lost and broken her wings, which she had at first, and thereby doth only creep and crawl upon the ground. Thephrastus also Aristotle's Scholar, was wont to say, That the soul payeth a very dear rent for the house of her body, the body is such a clog and impediment to it. The Platonists do seem to acknowledge more truth herein, then Aristotle's, for Aristotle doth expressly deny, That either virtue or vice is in us by nature, the very same thing which Pelagin afterwards did use to say: Therefore the Schoolmen, though enslaved to Aristotle, yet when urging this Argument, That there cannot be a sin by birth in a man, because no man is to be reproved or beaten, for that which he hath by nature, but rather to be pitied, it is not his sin but misery; Which speech (if true) doth utterly contradict that of the Apostle, We are by nature the children of wrath.