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

First,¹ There are and have been some in the Church following Origen, who also followed Plato, deriving many opinions from him, who did thus think to make this truth easy, By holding that the souls were created long before the bodies, and that upon their evil, and sin committed, they were adjudged to be put into bodies, and so from hence it is, that they say, man is so propense to all evil; Therefore they will not say, That the souls of men are either by traduction, or immediate creation and infusion into the body, but that they were created long before ⟨p. 187⟩the body, and while preexistent before it, they deserved to be put into this dark prison of the body, There was one Vincentius Victor, according to his name, bold and audacious, who disliked Austin for his cunctation and deliberation in the point of the traduction of the soul, which occasioned Austin to write four Books De origine animae, Now this Vincentius he affirmed, That the soul was created before the body, and did deserve to be made part of that man, who is a sinner, yea that it did deserve to be made peccatrix a sinner. Some have also thought, that this was a general received opinion amongst the Jews; and they prove it from that question proposed to Christ,² concerning the man born blind, yea they were Christs Disciples that did make that question; so that it seemeth they were still infected with that vulgar error, for Joh. 92, They say, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? They ask, whether the sins of the mans parents, or his own sins made him to be born blind, now he could not have any sins before he was born, unless his soul did preexist before his body, and it seemeth the Pharisees concluded, that they were his own sins, for they say ver. 34. Thou wast altogether born in sins. They did not (happily) mean original sin, for they say sins, which must be actual sins, either his own, or his parents.

First,¹ There are and have been some in the Church following Origen, who also followed Plato, deriving many opinions from him, who did thus think to make this truth easy, By holding that the souls were created long before the bodies, and that upon their evill, and sinne committed, they were adjudged to be put into bodies, and so from hence it is, that they say, man is so propense to all evill; Therefore they will not say, That the souls of men are either by traduction, or immediate creation and infusion into the body, but that they were created long before