De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

There are, therefore, men of this age who, although not all, yet opposing a part of these arguments against the old opinion, have fallen away from it: saying that there are not in individual men individual original sins, but that one [sin] which the first parent committed is the original transgression, of which we are all guilty, and from which we are named sinners. The leader of these is considered Albert Pighius,¹ a man indeed both pious and learned. Who nevertheless hears ill of this, as if he altogether denied that sins are original in us. But neither will he, if he is heard soundly and without prejudice, be condemned of such ignorance, nor, if he had more sharply weighed the sense of the old opinion, would he perhaps have rejected it. First, therefore, if it is fitting to hunt the subject from the name, you would call original sin nothing other than sin transmitted by origin from the first parent to the offspring.

Wherefore from that sin our contagion is to be judged.² So that what was in him as the formal nature of sin may be recognized as left in us by way of habit. And the effects which were in him may be the same effects in us. Let us suppose, for example, that the first sin of Adam was the eating of the tree (for whether pride preceded it or not is irrelevant). The formal nature of that crime then³ was the obliquity and deflection of the soul through the will from the law and order of God. And because Adam bore the person of the whole of nature, which had received in him that benefit of justice, to remain in it as long as he did not sin, the whole in him was made guilty of that transgression, and was made ungrateful and hateful to God. Wherefore the same deordination and deformity (to use the school's words) of that act remained fixed in nature by way of habit: which obliquity accordingly we contract as one with the same nature. Wherefore just as it must be conceded that original sin is in us,⁴ so it must not be denied that as to its formal [element] it is the lack of original justice: provided that justice itself is similarly taken as formal. For we have already reported above in chapter 8 from St. Thomas⁵ 1st part, q. 95, that the formal signification of original justice is the rectitude of the soul towards God, but the material [significations] are the other rectitudes, namely of the inferior powers of the soul towards reason, and of the body towards the soul. In Adam, if you consider the matter carefully, the privation of justice as to the first order was not an effect of sin, but its very formal nature: but the privation of the same justice as to the other two orders was not the nature of sin, but an effect. In the same way the privation in us of the former rectitude is original sin: but the privation of the others is the effect of the same sin. Which distinction, if Pighius and his followers had examined, they would never have denied that original sin is in us. Yet,⁶ to add this word in his favour in turn, if either Pighius or anyone else had so denied that original sin is in us as to say that we contract only the guilt of punishments which we owe for Adam's sin, but not the guilt of fault, he would openly fight not only against Augustine but against Paul: as we demonstrated in the third confession of the preceding chapter, and shall repeat in the next chapter as well. But he who should say that we are defiled, when we are conceived, by no other guilt of fault than that of Adam's transgression, would portend no error, except that he would lightly and without reason deny that that guilt is the lack of justice, in the manner explained. And therefore most truly and most advisedly the holy Synod of Trent⁷ decided, session 5, canon 3, that the sin which is one by origin, and is transmitted by propagation, is in all, and is proper to each. Therefore by the things explained here are dissolved the objections which we made in the preceding chapter against the opinion of Anselm. But as far as the matter concerns Augustine,⁸ who seems to teach that concupiscence is original sin, he must first be interpreted not of the formal but of the material signification: as his faithful interpreter St. Thomas explained. Since the same [Augustine] says,⁹ that the guilt of concupiscence is loosed in baptism, while concupiscence remains: but guilt, at least in original sin, is the same as the form of sin. But neither is concupiscence¹⁰ to be considered as the matter or substratum signified of sin in such a way as the act is in actual transgression. For in actual sin the action is placed beneath the obliquity as its subject: since through the action itself we turn aside from reason and the divine rule: so that the action itself is properly denominated oblique and sin: as snow is white by its colour. But in original sin it is far otherwise: since the form of sin is in no way in concupiscence as in a subject, but in the soul, where original justice was, as we said above in chapter 5, or (as others think) in the will. Wherefore concupiscence is not so properly denominated sin, as the soul itself is sinful, or man a sinner. Yet because in this kind of sin a material [element] cannot properly be devised as in actual sin, and the motion of concupiscence was the first and nearest effect of departing justice, it pleased Augustine to call it in a certain way material sin,¹¹ so as to show that the thing is evil and harmful. And this especially against Pelagius, who denied that the rebellion of the flesh was an effect of sin: nay, he said it was a natural good: as is seen against Julian. And that this was Augustine's doctrine will become more evident in chapter 12. Where we brought him in interpreting Paul, that he called concupiscence sin in the sense in which it is an effect of sin. For if after baptism sensuality is not reckoned sin except because it is an effect of sin, it is certainly established that neither before baptism is it otherwise sin. Although then, on account of the guilt conjoined in the soul, of which concupiscence itself is the nearest effect, it is called the material signification of sin. And this is what the disputation proves, which we constructed in the preceding chapter to explain his mind against the words of Augustine.

An answer to those who wish original sin to be in us.— But yet it remains for us besides to answer the arguments of those who think that no original fault is formally in us, but that all are called sinners from that fault which was in Adam. First.¹² Paul says that we all sinned in that sin of Adam alone. Whence Augustine, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, book 1, chapter 10, on that word, In whom all have sinned. If you understand, he says, in what sin, it is certain and most manifest that there are other sins proper to each one, in which they so sin only as they are whose sins they are, and this one other, in which all have sinned, when all were that one man. But if you understand in whom one man, what, he says, is more manifest than this manifestation? For we read that those who believe in CHRIST are justified in CHRIST, on account of the hidden communication and inspiration of spiritual grace, by which whoever cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. Thus far Augustine, leaving to the reader the conclusion of the allusion, that he may understand that all sinned in Adam through the communication of his fault, in whom we were one flesh, as we are justified in CHRIST, in whom we are made one spirit. And in the Hypognosticon, book 2: When man sinned, he says, nature sinned: and nature has now been made sinful, that is, having the vice of sin. To the same point belongs that: By the transgression of one many died. And by the disobedience of one many were made sinners. Whence Augustine, book 1 of the Retractations, chapter 15, says (as we have already cited above) that we are involved in the guilt of Adam alone, by whose will that sin was committed which we draw originally. Therefore we contract by origin that one sin in which all have sinned, and not many.

To these things, however, and the like, we answer by conceding that we all sinned in that sin of Adam alone, as has been clearly shown, since when we receive a soul we do not sin, but are conceived in sin. Nor is anyone to be said to sin originally,¹³ but to draw sin originally with nature. Nor is it to be denied that the sin of Adam is that which we contract. Yet this happens through the fact that that guilt of sin (as we have said) has been left in the nature which sinned in Adam. And therefore just as we all draw nature from Adam, each receiving his own, so also we all contract his sin, through the fact that in each one there is that deviation and obliquity of soul from God, whereby accordingly we are all so infected by the contagion of fault that we each contract individual stains. Although that guilt in us is not a positive quality, but a mere privation of justice (as we have said) as to the formal element. Wherefore since in the remission¹⁴ of original sin grace is restored to us in order to God, but not the inferior powers in order to reason, St. Thomas says very well, as we cited above in chapter 5, that original justice is restored in baptism only as to the formal element. But in what way through the will¹⁵ all we then sinned in Adam, the same holy doctor elucidates by a most apt example, 1-2, q. 81, where he says that just as all members are one man, and therefore the will of the whole is reckoned as that of all the members, so we all were in Adam in a certain way one man, wherefore the voluntary inordination of his sin remains in the whole nature which we receive by generation. It remains, namely, by way of habit: just as in a man who has passed through an act of sin, the obliquity of the soul remains, until it is restored to order by grace.

The theologians add here besides¹⁶ an example to explain how we all sinned in Adam, concerning a most munificent king who enrolled a servant adopted as son as heir of a very ample substance, of which benefit all his posterity would obtain possession: yet on this law, that if he persisted in his grace; but as soon as he committed the first crime against the king, he would fall from that inheritance. The example is ancient, and by no means unsuited to the matter. For God had not in a wholly dissimilar way bestowed on our nature in Adam original justice, but Paul is my [authority],¹⁷ who seems to explain the matter best: where he says that Adam bore the figure of CHRIST who was to come. For thence the antithesis of the fault of Adam and the grace of CHRIST shines forth, where, when the new Adam comes to the water of baptism, the heavenly Father says, This is my beloved Son,¹⁸ in whom I am well pleased. For it is just as if he had said: As Adam was [the one] in whom alone all his nation displeased me, which succeeds him by natural generation, so (as an antidote) this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: that is, in whom alone, as many as have been reborn in him by baptism, reconciled to me in grace, shall please me. Which Paul also says: As by the disobedience¹⁹ of one man many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many are made just. Therefore that all sinned in Adam²⁰ is nothing other than that our nature, on account of the participation of his fault, is ungrateful and hateful to God. And therefore all his offspring are born children of wrath. Just as to be justified in CHRIST is that, on account of his grace participated in us, we are all pleasing to God. In whom accordingly we are reborn children of mercy.

By these things finally²¹ let it be clear in what way the original stain is transmitted by the perpetual series of generations from Adam. But it is Augustine²² who, out of hatred of the Pelagians, throws some doubt into the eyes, who frequently says that that concupiscence of the rebellious flesh, on account of its disobedience, is the instrument of propagating this kind of fault. For he says (as cited in the preceding chapter) in On the Merits and Remission of Sins, chapter 16, that from this disobedience of the flesh straying from reason, and from the bestial and shameful motion of the members, whoever is generated carnally contracts sin, from which he is to be washed by baptism. And book 1 On Marriage and Concupiscence, chapter 24, where he investigates how, since marriage is a good of nature, children are procreated in sin from spouses reborn by baptism, and especially where no sin is mingled with the conjugal act, he answers that it is not from the good by which marriages are good, but from the evil of concupiscence, which the spouses use well, and of which they are nevertheless ashamed, that the devil holds the children born as guilty. And below. From this, he says, concupiscence of the flesh, which although in the regenerate it is now not reckoned as sin, yet has not come to nature except from sin, whatever offspring is born is bound by original sin, unless it is reborn in him whom the virgin conceived without that concupiscence. Therefore when he deigned to be born in the flesh, he alone was born without sin. Everywhere, finally, when Augustine speaks of this matter, he makes that concupiscence rebellious to reason, as it were for the reason that it does not obey reason, the channel of the original stain. But there is an argument which anyone could raise against this opinion.²³ If some men were now created out of nothing, male and female (of whom we spoke in the third chapter), namely in mere nature without fault and grace, these indeed, however much they burned with lust and the rebellion of concupiscence, and blazed with vices, would nevertheless never transmit original fault into the offspring they begot: as is the consensus of all theologians, because they would not then be the offspring of Adam. But if on the contrary two descending by natural seed from Adam were, in the first instant of the infusion of the soul, infused with grace preventing sin (as is said of the most blessed virgin), and concupiscence were cut off from them, or wholly extinguished, so that it could no more insult reason than in the state of innocence, they would nevertheless transmit original sin into the children they begot. I say [this] if the grace conferred on the parents were only personal, and not for the whole succession. Therefore the rebellion of concupiscence is not in the cause of original fault. I do not indeed doubt²⁴ that it is as these reasons persuade: namely that in whatever way nature is transmitted from Adam after his sin, sin is also transfused. And if nature were not transmitted from Adam, but from a man now created out of nothing, children would be begotten without sin. Nay, the holy Synod of Trent²⁵ determines this very thing in session 6, chapter 3: that as no one receives his grace unless reborn in CHRIST. Wherefore that concupiscence is the channel of sin means nothing else than that concupiscence and the shameful motion of the flesh are the natural instrument of generation, through which the nature of the prevaricator Adam is propagated. Nor did the wise Augustine mean anything else. But because the flesh²⁶ would never titillate against reason unless the fault of Adam were in the cause, he says that by the rebellion of concupiscence it is the channel of sin.