THIS Article relates to another old error which was revived by the Anabaptists of Reformation times, that of Pelagius (a monk of British origin, A.D. 360-420), who denied any distinction between original or birth sin and actual sin, and taught that we begin life with the nature which Adam had when he was created, that is, a nature without a tendency to do what was contrary to God’s commands.  The followers of Pelagius, emphasizing the importance of free will, believed that men are capable by their own efforts of being perfectly righteous; there is nothing in us to prevent natural, spontaneous obedience, but in fact we simply choose to disobey.  This view springs from a totally inadequate conception of the nature of sin.  To Pelagius ‘sin’ was only a name for an act which, once committed, is over and done with and does not affect man’s nature.  Consequently, he did not believe that men could inherit any inborn tendency to sin.  Against this view, the Article asserts that every person ‘naturally engendered’^[1] possesses a corrupt nature ‘very far gone’ from righteousness and ‘inclined to evil’.  This estimate of human nature is fully endorsed by Scripture^[2] and by experience.  Our Lord did not explicitly state any doctrine of Original Sin, but He recognized the facts that the doctrine was formulated to express.  He always assumed that men are in a state of ‘fallenness’; that they are sick and need a physician;^[3] that evil is present in human hearts;^[4] and that men need redemption.^[5]

Pagan moralist and Christian Apostle alike testify to the frustrating contradiction which lies at the centre of our personalities.  ‘I see the better things, and approve them; I follow the worse’, says Ovid: ‘the good which I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I practice’, says St. Paul.^[6]  What is the cause of this weakness?  How is it that if man was made for fellowship with God, and the divine will is the law of his being, obedience is so hard and the besetting sin so easy?  The Article declares that it is the consequence of Original Sin.  Instead of being employed in following the course the Creator intended for him, which is the only full and satisfying life possible, man used his capacities for self‑centred ends, and they acquired an aberrant rebellious bent, which became hereditary.  Our careers do not start on an even keel; urges of self‑interest, clamant for expression, have got a start, and consciences and wills, dulled and vitiated by yielding to temptation, are incapable of checking them.

This ‘fallen’ state is the main practical fact about him in the biblical view of man, and although it is never connected in the Old Testament with Adam’s lapse, as it is by St. Paul, much that he says about man’s sinful condition has a parallel there.  The human heart is ‘desperately wicked’,^[7] and from youth its thoughts are continually evil.^[8]  ‘For from within, out of the heart of man’, says our Lord, ‘evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness: all these evil things proceed from within, and defile the man.’^[9]  Indeed, our nature is infected with evil from the very beginning.^[10]  In Romans 7:7‑25 St. Paul gives his classical description of the inner conflict between the impulsion of the flesh (‘the law of sin which is in my members’) and his moral judgement, which is also the law of God and approves the Commandments.  So far as our psychological makeup is concerned, the evil principle dominates.