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

¶. 1.

First, This controversy about mans mortality is very famous in the Church, and hath been of old solliciously disputed. The Pelagians as they denied original sin, so consonantly to that falsehood they affirmed, That death was not the punishment of sin, but did arise by the necessity of our natural constitution; Which Assertion was condemned by some Councils, and the Laws of Emperors, as injurious to God the Creator of men. For this experience, that Infants new born are subject to many miseries, and death it self, was a thorn in their sides, which they could not endure in, nor yet possibly pull out. Sometimes with the Stocks they would deny death to be an evil. Sometimes they would say, Children in the womb are guilty of actual sins, for which they deserved death: but that which they did most constantly adhere unto, was, That Adam was made mortal, and would have died, if he had not sinned, death being a necessary consequence (as they say) from a mans corporal constitution. The Papists, especially the Schoolmen of old, and the Jesuits of late (to whom Jansenius doth vehemently oppose in this point, [Greek or Hebrew], as the Greek expression is) say, That Adam was indeed by nature mortal, but by grace and superadded favour, he was immortal. So that both Papists and Protestants ⟨p. 508⟩agree in this, That Adam was made immortal in his Creation: Only the difference is, Whether as original righteousness, so immortality may be said to be natural or supernatural to Adam; We say it's natural, they say it's supernatural; and yet Bellarmine (De gratiâ primi Hom. lib. cap. 5.) in his explication of himself in this point cometh very near us, or at least speaketh contradictions to himself: For (he saith) if natural be taken for that which was put into man from his nativity, if natural be taken for that which was to be propagated to Adam's posterity; if natural be taken for that which is convenient, to perfect and prepare a man for his end, then they say original righteousness, and so by consequence immortality would have been natural to Adam's posterity; but if we take natural for that which doth internally constitute nature, or necessarily flow from the principles of nature, then (they say) immortality was supernatural, even as original righteousness.