At the Reformation two erroneous views concerning sins committed after Baptism were current: (a) Novatian had held that apostasy was the unpardonable sin, and certain Anabaptists, following his view, held that every mortal sin committed after Baptism is unpardonable.  St. John, following Jewish teaching,^[1] distinguished between ‘a sin unto death’ (mortal sin) and ‘a sin not unto death’.  But he seems to have been thinking of a kind of habitual sinning^[2] which merited exclusion from the Christian fellowship.  He did not enjoin the Christians to pray for such a sinner, but neither did he forbid prayer for him, or suggest that his sin was utterly unpardonable.  On the basis of his words, however, the name ‘mortal sin’ came to be given to any sin deliberately and wilfully committed with a full consciousness of guilt, as distinct from sins unwittingly committed.  The Article declares that not every mortal sin is unpardonable, and makes no attempt to define the unpardonable ‘sin against the Holy Ghost’.^[3]  The common assumption of the New Testament is that the faithful share in the universal feature of humanity, its sinfulness; they too need to repent and amend their lives.  Any claim to sinlessness is denied by the fact; but on the acknowledgement and confession of our sins, they are pardoned;^[4] the spiritually strong are to support their brethren when overtaken in a trespass;^[5] to be inconsiderate towards believers with a tender conscience is to sin against Christ;^[6] ‘our Lord’s patience with us is our salvation’,^[7] and it is not His wish that any should perish, ‘because it is not His will for any to be lost, but for all to come to repentance’.^[8]

(b) The Article also exposes the opposite error, already denied by Article XV, that it is impossible for the regenerate to sin.^[9]  ‘After we have received the Holy Ghost, we may depart from grace given, and fall into sin,... And therefore they are to be condemned which say, that they can no more sin as long as they live here.’