I. The enormous change produced by Adam’s sin in him could not be without effect on his descendants. A man of great energies may, with his blood, transmit his features and his character for generations; his family may grow into a tribe and even into a nation impressed with his likeness. A prepotent influence must belong to him who was created to be the father of all mankind. He inaugurated the line of human life, and its general direction was naturally permanent, whether divergent from the line ordained by God, or accordant with it. God had bestowed on our first father an additional supernatural life as a gratuitous gift. Adam held it at first on trial; he was called upon, as head of the race, to ratify this donation by his acceptance of it. He cast it away in his solemn probation, and chose the merely natural state. This he transmitted to us: and necessarily so, for it has never been claimed for heredity that it is able to perpetuate qualities that have not yet been acquired. The inorganic cannot generate the organic, nor the natural life beget supernatural life. We have inherited what our ancestor had to bequeath, all that belonged to the essence of human nature, nothing of that which was to have been superadded as a special reward for fidelity under trial. This state of privation of original justice is the state of sin. God has not allowed us to abide in this condition. In another way He restores what we had lost. Thank Him for His infinite goodness.
II. Original sin in us is not a personal guiltiness demanding punishment and requiring to be expiated by contrition and penance. It is not that we are made responsible for an offence committed by another person, or that his sin is imputed to us. It is not the loss of any grace that is rightfully ours as part of the necessary equipment of our nature. We have only lost that which we never had, which was not confirmed even to our first ancestor, which is not in any way due to us. We have failed to come into possession of a certain benefit which is quite beyond our natural requirements, desires and conceptions; that is, of the supernatural indwelling of God in us, with the habit of certain virtues, and certain mental and corporal privileges, such as fuller knowledge and immunity from death and disease. But as we are adapted for the reception of this grace, and were intended by God to have it, and require it for our full possible perfection, the loss constitutes a privation and a stain, which is called the state, although not the act, of sin. However, what you have lost without your fault you have also recovered without your merits, through Our Blessed Lord, substantially now, although not fully till hereafter.
III. But further, through original sin we suffer from blindness, ignorance, and error: also from weakness and vacillation in the will; and further from malice, or a propensity towards evil, and alienation from holiness and God. The dominion of grace is weakened over our reason, and the dominion of reason over our material nature; so that we are drawn strongly to those pleasures which are the chief incentives to action in the brute beasts. Hence the multitude of our sins, and the miseries which are consequent on them. However, we still retain our freedom, and God gives to those who ask, the strength and grace to resist all impulses to mortal sin. Men are still masters of their lives, and they make them what they are. We may trace all our evils to Adam, in a sense; but much more justly may we attribute them to ourselves. If we only had to endure the unavoidable consequences of Adam’s sin, the world would indeed be a Paradise. Faith and obedience can cure or at least mitigate most of our evils. But our individual perversity is the real source of all trouble, and the curse of this world.
II. Original sin in us is not a personal guiltiness demanding punishment and requiring to be expiated by contrition and penance. It is not that we are made responsible for an offence committed by another person, or that his sin is imputed to us. It is not the loss of any grace that is rightfully ours as part of the necessary equipment of our nature. We have only lost that which we never had, which was not confirmed even to our first ancestor, which is not in any way due to us. We have failed to come into possession of a certain benefit which is quite beyond our natural requirements, desires and conceptions; that is, of the supernatural indwelling of God in us, with the habit of certain virtues, and certain mental and corporal privileges, such as fuller knowledge and immunity from death and disease. But as we are adapted for the reception of this grace, and were intended by God to have it, and require it for our full possible perfection, the loss constitutes a privation and a stain, which is called the state, although not the act, of sin. However, what you have lost without your fault you have also recovered without your merits, through Our Blessed Lord, substantially now, although not fully till hereafter.
III. But further, through original sin we suffer from blindness, ignorance, and error: also from weakness and vacillation in the will; and further from malice, or a propensity towards evil, and alienation from holiness and God. The dominion of grace is weakened over our reason, and the dominion of reason over our material nature; so that we are drawn strongly to those pleasures which are the chief incentives to action in the brute beasts. Hence the multitude of our sins, and the miseries which are consequent on them. However, we still retain our freedom, and God gives to those who ask, the strength and grace to resist all impulses to mortal sin. Men are still masters of their lives, and they make them what they are. We may trace all our evils to Adam, in a sense; but much more justly may we attribute them to ourselves. If we only had to endure the unavoidable consequences of Adam’s sin, the world would indeed be a Paradise. Faith and obedience can cure or at least mitigate most of our evils. But our individual perversity is the real source of all trouble, and the curse of this world.
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