Chapter 9 [IX.]—Sin Passes on to All Men by Natural Descent, and Not Merely by Imitation.

You tell me in your letter, that they endeavour to twist into some new sense the passage of the apostle, in which he says: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;”27    Rom. v. 12. yet you have not informed me what they suppose to be the meaning of these words. But so far as I have discovered from others, they think that the death which is here mentioned is not the death of the body, which they will not allow Adam to have deserved by his sin, but that of the soul, which takes place in actual sin; and that this actual sin has not been transmitted from the first man to other persons by natural descent, but by imitation. Hence, likewise, they refuse to believe that in infants original sin is remitted through baptism, for they contend that no such original sin exists at all in people by their birth. But if the apostle had wished to assert that sin entered into the world, not by natural descent, but by imitation, he would have mentioned as the first offender, not Adam indeed, but the devil, of whom it is written,28    1 John iii. 8. that “he sinneth from the beginning;” of whom also we read in the Book of Wisdom: “Nevertheless through the devil’s envy death entered into the world.”29    Wisd. ii. 24. Now, forasmuch as this death came upon men from the devil, not because they were propagated by him, but because they imitated his example, it is immediately added: “And they that do hold of his side do imitate him.”30    Ver. 25. Accordingly, the apostle, when mentioning sin and death together, which had passed by natural descent from one upon all men, set him down as the introducer thereof from whom the propagation of the human race took its beginning.

CAPUT IX.

9. Peccatum propagatione, non imitatione tantum transisse in omnes. Hoc autem apostolicum testimonium in quo ait, Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum, et per peccatum mors, conari eos quidem in aliam novam detorquere opinionem, tuis litteris intimasti; sed quidnam illud sit, quod in his verbis opinentur, tacuisti. Quantum autem ex aliis comperi, hoc ibi sentiunt, quod et mors ista quae illic commemorata est, non sit corporis, quam nolunt Adam peccando meruisse, sed anima quae in ipso peccato fit : et ipsum peccatum non propagatione in alios homines ex primo homine, sed imitatione transisse. Hinc enim etiam in parvulis nolunt credere per Baptismum solvi originale peccatum, quod in nascentibus nullum esse omnino contendunt. Sed si Apostolus peccatum illud commemorare voluisset, quod in hunc mundum, non propagatione, sed imitatione intraverit ; ejus principem, non Adam, sed diabolum diceret, de quo scriptum est, Ab initio diabolus peccat (I Joan. III, 8). De quo etiam legitur in libro Sapientiae, Invidia autem diaboli mors intravit in orbem terrarum. Nam quoniam ista mors sic a diabolo venit in homines, non quod ab illo fuerint propagati, sed quod eum fuerint imitati, continuo subjunxit, Imitantur autem eum qui sunt ex parte ipsius (Sap. II, 24, 25). Proinde Apostolus cum illud peccatum ac mortem commemoraret, quae ab uno in omnes propagatione transisset, eum principem posuit, a quo propagatio generis humani sumpsit exordium.