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

In the next place (to our purpose in hand concerning original sin) it is ignorantly objected, That Actiones sunt suppositorum; For we do not say, Original sin is an action, it is in the nature of habits; So that this ariseth from a gross mistake, That a child doth actually sin in partaking of this nature-defilement; We say it doth contrahere peccatum, or receive this pollution with its nature, not that it doth actually sin in the reception of it. But then

In the next place (to our purpose in hand concerning original sinne) it is ignorantly objected, That Actiones sunt suppositorum; For we doe not say, Original sinne is an action, it is in the nature of habits; So that this ariseth from a gross mistake, That a child doth actually sinne in partaking of this nature-defilement; We say it doth contrahere peccatum, or receive this pollution with its nature, not that it doth actually sinne in the reception of it. But then

3. When it's called the sin of our nature, it is not meant, as if this nature did universally exist any where, that indeed would be a mere Chimera, or as if mans nature were any where but in a person, But that wheresoever the nature of a man is any where subsistent in individuums, there is also this corruption; Even visibility and mortality are the universal properties of the nature of man: There is no man but hath these affections; So also is original sin thus inseparably annexed to the nature of man, wheresoever it doth particularly subsist. To this purpose Julius Sirenius a Scholastical Writer (Promptu, Theolog. lib. 20. & 22.) When we say, Original sin is a siane of the humane nature, Non ita velim intelligas quasi naturae per se considerata actio aliqua convenire possit, &c. do not understand it as if any action could agree to nature, considered in it self; for not the action (which is of the suppositum) but the modus agendi belongeth the nature existent in the suppositum, for sin is not an action, but the mode, or rather the defect of the mode in an action. The Sum is this, A man is born thus in sin, not because he is this or that person, but because he is a man descending from lapsed Adam; So that by this we see, that it is the sin of our nature, and yet so as it is the sin of every person new born, but we are necessitated to call it, the sin of our corrupt nature, to distinguish it from all actual and habitual sins, which are the sins of one person, that they are not necessarily the sins of others; Every man is not necessarily a proud man, an unclean man, but every one is thus a defiled man, destitute of the Image of God; only this must always be remembered, That it is not our nature-sin, as we had it from Creation, but as vitiated by Adam's voluntary transgression, and if he would put it in the definition of man, that he was animal rationale mortal, we may adde ad peccata prenum, prone and inclining to sin; for we must consider