"Original sin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be true even of the pronounced types of unsocial individuals of whom we had occasion to speak at the outset. The criminal is, socially considered, a man of poor judgment. He may be more than this, it is true. He may have a bad strain of heredity, what the theologians call "original sin"; he then is an "habitual criminal" in the current distinction of criminal types; and his own sense of his failure to accept the teachings of society may be quite absent, since crime is so normal to him. But ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose there's no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I'm full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But don't you think the trying so hard ought to count for something? ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... diversity of opinion regarding them, viz., that the Godhead is single and absolute, not triune; that Christ was not God, but a perfect being inspired with divine wisdom; that there is no efficacy in His vicarious atonement, in the sense popularly recognised; and that original sin and eternal damnation are in accordance with neither the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... each other badly in their efforts to lay hold of his money-bags. "You'll never go over to yonder lot," said one. "They're holding to election—a soul-destroying doctrine." "A respectable man can't join himself to Cowley's gang," said another. "They're denying original sin, and aren't a ha'p'orth ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... generally, demands temporal satisfaction from the sinner, is evident from many instances in scripture, such as those of David (2 Sam. XII) of Moses (Deuteron. XXXII compare Num. XIV) to say nothing of Adam (Gen. III) and all his posterity, who endure the temporal punishment of original sin, even when its stain has been washed away by baptism. Now the church by virtue of the ample authority with which Christ has invested her (Matt. XVIII, John XX) and in particular her chief pastor (Matt. XVI) has from the beginning exercised the power of remitting ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... a Sermon of a Conventual in the Church of Rome, on those Words of the Wise Man, I said of Laughter, it is mad; and of Mirth, what does it? Upon which he laid it down as a Point of Doctrine, that Laughter was the Effect of Original Sin, and that Adam could not laugh before ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... There is no possible way by which Darwin and Moses can be harmonized. There is an inexpressible conflict between Christianity and Science, and both cannot long inhabit the same brain. You cannot harmonize evolution and the atonement. The survival of the fittest does away with original sin. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... how you startled me! I was deep in original sin, I believe. The Blakes? Oh, I told young Blake to come up to dinner to-night; I want Michael to see him. Very well. Give my respects to Mrs. Blake; and if there be any service we can render her, be sure you offer it;' and Dr. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery which is absolutely without human solution." Hence that admirable writer postulates some "terrible original calamity"; and thus the hateful doctrine, theologically called "original sin," becomes to him almost as certain as that "the world exists, and as the existence of God." Similarly the "Schedule of Doctrines" of the most liberal Christian Church insists upon the human depravity, and the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... full of genius as it is of wisdom. Yet there is an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it. The height of moral argument' which the author has maintained in the intervals of passion or blended with the more powerful impulses ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... Court prospects were never happy from this time.—His dedication of the Shepherd's Week to Bolingbroke, Swift used to call the "original sin", which had hurt him with the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... she does show. As, for instance, when the Christian Endeavorers fought the question of prize-fight moving-picture shows and won out or when a Parkhurst fought bravely for a clean police force. Even if the world today does not vex itself so much as formerly about predestination, original sin, the "actual presence," or even the correct mental attitude to insure heaven hereafter, the churches may surely count it as a product of their work that the people do trust God more simply for the past and future, and are more in ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... things that on man's part are the cause he receiveth not the gospel of Christ, and so life by him—1. They see not their state by nature, how polluted they are with original sin (Eph 2:2). 2. They see not the justice of God against sin; they know not him that hath said, 'Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense' (Heb 10:30). 3. They cannot see the beauty of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4:4). 4. Unbelief being mighty in them, they dare not venture their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sent here and there; old Miss Craydocke, up in the mountains, got one, and came down a month earlier in consequence, and by the way of Boston. She stayed there at Mrs. Frank Scherman's; and Frank and his wife and little Sinsie, the baby,—"she isn't Original Sin, as I was," says her mother,—came up to Z—— together, and stopped at the hotel. Martha Josselyn came from New York, and stayed, of course, ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... realise what a strange uncanny being, after all, is a snake: and as you watch him, lying, as it were, in wait, beautiful exceedingly, but with a beauty that inspires you with a shudder, his eyes full of cruelty and original sin, and his tongue of culumny and malice, you begin to understand his influence in all religions. I was wholly absorbed in their snaky evolutions, and buried in mythological reminiscences, when my garuda roused me suddenly, ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... A.D. 1170, was said to be the offspring of an immaculate conception. He was free from original sin and was regarded as the adopted son of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and unregarded—in excess of morality and modesty—on the beach, to be honey-combed by white ants or to rot? or to honestly own up to that sentiment which is the most human of all? Without affectation or apology, I confess that I was overjoyed—that my instincts, pregnant with original sin, received a most delightful fillip. I wallowed for the time being in ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... of us, has been obliged to face the various social problems that arise from original sin, but which vote-getters are pleased to ascribe to industrial progress. In our country, with a population of some thirty to the square mile, while in the kingdom of Saxony the density of the population ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Original Sin ... is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man ... whereby man is far gone from original righteousness and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... infallibility. To degrade human nature was to attack the very base of the New Learning; and his attack on it called the foremost of its teachers to the field. But Erasmus no sooner advanced to its defence than Luther declared man to be utterly enslaved by original sin and incapable through any efforts of his own of discovering truth or of arriving at goodness. Such a doctrine not only annihilated the piety and wisdom of the classic past, from which the New Learning had ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... that children habitually experience the normal consequences of their conduct, without putting artificial consequences in place of them, now commands the assent of most persons whose minds have been freed from the theological dogmas of original sin and total depravity. Spencer did not expect the immediate adoption of this principle; because society as a whole was not yet humane enough. He admitted that the uncontrollable child of ill-controlled adults might sometimes have to be scolded or beaten, and that these barbarous ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... direction of the ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had not the posturing cormorants introduced a note of absurdity and the tainted breath of the mud-flats a wholesome reminder of original sin. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... as she could smile. For Jess was a minx—there is no denying the fact. Yet even slow Saunders admitted that, though she was nothing to Meg, of course, still there was something original and attractive about her—like original sin. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... golden-curled, lisping, and croupy period; being too good and sweet and exquisite for this wicked and rough world. But, according to certain entries in the Prince's own diary—his first, begun in his sixth year—he at that age happily revealed some hopeful signs of saving naughtiness and healthful "original sin." ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... each generation? Isaiah's contemporaries are 'a seed of evil-doers,' spring from such, and in their turn are 'children that are corrupters.' The fatal bias becomes stronger as it passes down. Heredity is a fact, whether you call it original sin or not. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of the Utopian religion is the repudiation of the doctrine of original sin; the Utopians hold that man, on the whole, is good. That is their cardinal belief. Man has pride and conscience, they hold, that you may refine by training as you refine his eye and ear; he has remorse and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Original Sin. How, if at last everything were to convince us that man standing on the first and lowest step of his humanity, is not so entirely master of his actions as to be ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... he will be correct in so doing." And his work closes with the following sentence, worthy of so distinguished an individual: "We believe, with religion, that the water of baptism purifies the soul from its original sin; let us believe also, with experience, that it is for our corporeal sins the redeemer of the human body." If Bigel, Physician to the late Grand Duke Constantine, is identical with Bigel whom the "Examiner" calls Physician to the Emperor of Russia, it appears ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... arrangements had been made, the bishop of Zibu, who has charge of this archbishopric, gave his blessing to the royal fleet. The fleet took as patroness the immaculate conception of our Lady, who was conceived without the stain of original sin. It left the port of Cavite in charge of Don Juan Rronquillo del Castillo, [4] on Saturday, on the eighth day of the month of April, one thousand six hundred and seventeen, to find the enemy, who was stationed at Playa Honda [5] with six vessels. There, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... in the guilt of Adam's first sin the want of original righteousness and the corruption of his whole nature which is commonly called original sin together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.' There's a wasp on your shoulder, father,—there's two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... restrains humanity with the shackles of "original sin." Man is not born in sin. There is no such thing as sin. Man is innately more prone to good than to evil; and the path of his destiny ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... evil that has its origin in a will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. Now, this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine will; it must, therefore, be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call original sin. It is a mystery—that is, a fact which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but can ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... pathological, that he and this goodness of his have exactly the same claim upon Lombroso, let us say, as the born criminal. He is born good, a congenital good example, a sufferer from atrophy of his original sin. The only hope I can see for Bagarrow, short of murder, is forcible trepanning. He ought to have the seat of his ideals lanced, and all this wash about doing good to people by stealth taken away. It may be he might prove a very decent fellow then—if there was anything ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... vacuum, to neglect the most vulgar facts, and the most common instances of resistance, nor to lose one's self in abstraction. The correctives of applied Political Economy either may not wipe out this original sin, or else they run great danger of covering up the principles themselves. In ballistics, again, we may measure the resistance which the medium in which we are obliged to operate, makes the force of impulsion and the target both ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... production of evil" (President Hyde). Men are morally lazy; they have to be pushed into what is good for them, and the "pushee" is almost sure to resent the pushing. The idea that men ardently desire what is rational and noble is pernicious fiction. They want to be let alone. This is part of original sin. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... themselves in his mind before he began. He was to vindicate the Protestant cause in Ireland, and to his own satisfaction he vindicated it. If I may apply a phrase coined many years afterwards, Froude assumed that Irish Catholics had taken a double dose of original sin. He always found in them enough vice to account for any persecution of which they might be the victims. Just as he could not write of Kerry without imputing failure and instability to O'Connell, so he could not write ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... "an infant cannot endure a companion to feed with him in a fountain of milk which is richly abounding and overflowing, although that companion be wholly destitute, and can take no other food but that." This is the Original Sin, inherited, innate, unacquired; for this are "babes span-long" to suffer, as the famous or infamous preacher declared. "Where, or at what time, was I ever innocent?" he cries, and hears no answer from "the dark backward and abysm" of the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... it is called Original Sin: a term wherewith they brand whatever frisks and butts with rude goatish horns against accepted maxims and trim theories of education. In the abstract, of course, this fitful stirring of the old yeast is no more sin than a natural craving for a seat ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... by declaring: "So important is it to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the Church take this as its starting point. Were this article taken away there would be no original sin, the promise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be destroyed." The Westminster divines in drawing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as necessary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created not only ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young, but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is best to get the original sin out in ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... In the filling up, which the shape of the altar-piece made necessary over these panels, there are small subjects in chiaroscuro: over Adam, the sacrifice of Cain and Abel; over Eve, the death of Abel—death, therefore, as the immediate consequence of original sin. ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... transacting the public business of a great nation in a way which would ruin both the trade and the character of a small huckster, of proceeding upon the theory—for such is the theory of the spoils system—that a man should be put in charge of a locomotive because he holds certain views of original sin, or because he polishes boots nimbly with his tongue—it is a folly so stupendous and grotesque that when it is fully perceived by the shrewd mother-wit of the Yankee it will be laughed indignantly and contemptuously away. But the laugh must have the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Jiminy! yes, I will!" cried the little black delinquent, the full tide of original sin taking an unfair advantage of her ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... friends. There were those who believed that his domestic infelicities were the result of his unsympathetic nature; it never occurred to any one (but himself probably) that they might have been the cause. In those Sierran altitudes, as elsewhere, the belief in original sin—popularly known as "pure cussedness"—dominated and overbore any consideration of passive, impelling circumstances or temptation, unless they had been actively demonstrated with a revolver. The passive expression of harshness, suspicion, distrust, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... injustice, who can 'fall in dump and foam like a boar' at a moment's notice, or Damon cannot be judged worthy of death for his offence. The clown, whose sins, when he committed any, were always rather the product of evil influence than of original sin, is ennobled to the standing of an honest faithful slave, simple in his notions, shrewd to save his own skin, overjoyed at being made a freed man, and withal one who keeps good time by his stomach; ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... mythological beliefs with those recorded in the Hebrew scriptures may also be briefly noted. There is an age of virtue and happiness, a garden with a tree bearing 'apples of immortality,' guarded by a winged serpent (dragon), the fall of man, the beginnings of lust and war (the doctrine of original sin), a great flood, virgin-born god-men who rescue man from barbarism and endow him with superhuman attributes, discipleship, worship of a Virgin Mother, trinities, monasticism, celibacy, fasting, preaching, prayers, primeval Chaos, Paradise, etc. For details ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... due effects, that they were acceptable from me; for they must unavoidably be received from somebody, unless a minister were omniscient—yet I soon had good reason to believe I was not designed for the man, whatever the original sin could be that made me incapable of such a trust, and which I now begin to suspect. Without direct answers to my proposals, how could I know whether I helped my friends elsewhere, or betrayed them contrary to my intentions! and accordingly I have for some ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Job speaketh, chap. xiii. 26, and so bring upon them, or suffer conscience to charge them, with their old sins formerly repented of and pardoned. And this is more terrible: David is made to remember his original sin, Psal. li. ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... broke forth into murmurs. For that love of long sermons which was strong in the Scottish commonalty was not shared by the Scottish aristocracy. The Parliament had already been listening during three hours to dry theology, and was not inclined to hear any thing more about original sin and election. The Duke of Hamilton said that the Estates had already done all that was essential. They had given their sanction to a digest of the great principles of Christianity. The rest might well be left to the Church. The weary majority eagerly assented, in spite ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... man, for they are not supposed to know anything about it, and there is always a Giroudeau or a Philippe Bridau to be found. A bravo of this stamp finds up somebody who has his own reasons for not wanting to be talked about. Plenty of people have a few peccadilloes, or some more or less original sin, upon their consciences; there are plenty of fortunes made in ways that would not bear looking into; sometimes a man has kept the letter of the law, and sometimes he has not; and in either case, there is a tidbit ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... instance of the solemn law by which the fathers' sins are inherited by the children who prove themselves heirs to their ancestors by repeating their deeds. It is fashionable now to deny original sin, and equally fashionable to affirm 'heredity,' which is the same thing, put into scientific language. There is such a thing as national character persistent through generations, each unit of which adds something to the force of the tendencies which he receives and transmits, but ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... 'and, for all you give, you will be repaid a thousandfold!' Oh the utter meanness of such a motive, to be put before men who do know what self-sacrifice is, who can appreciate generosity and heroism! Talk of Original Sin!" he went on with increasing bitterness. "Can you have a stronger proof of the Original Goodness there must be in this nation, than the fact that Religion has been preached to us, as a commercial speculation, for a century, and that we ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... again from that spiritual death in which my parents buried me when they begot me in sin, and in which I have pierced even to the jaws of hell by multiplying such heaps of actual sins upon that foundation, that root of original sin. Yet take me again into your consultation, O blessed and glorious Trinity; and though the Father know that I have defaced his image received in my creation; though the Son know I have neglected mine interest ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... commonwealth, which being without trade, the general poverty of its members could afford no interest for loans; but it was not forbidden the Israelite to take usury from "the stranger." Or they were quoting from the Fathers, who understood this point, much as they had that of "original sin," and "the immaculate conception;" while the scholastics amused themselves with a quaint and collegiate fancy which they had picked up in Aristotle, that interest for money had been forbidden by nature, because coin in itself was barren and unpropagating, unlike corn, of which every grain will ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... conscience was troubled he cheerfully doubled His matinal dose of discipline;— A deuce of a scourging, sufficient for purging The Devil himself of original sin. ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... was certainly one of original sin, if these poems are to be believed. Every page in this volume is drenched with blood, and from this book, as from Gray's poems and the other Old Norse imitations of the time, a picture of fierceness and fearfulness was the only one possible. Percy intimates in his preface that ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... be something like this:—"OCTOBER: Indian Summer; now is the time to get in your early Vedas." What, then, is his secret? Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes us all? that he is equally at home with the potato-disease and original sin, with pegging shoes and the Over-soul? that, as we try all trades, so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his mysticism gives us a counterpoise to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... be a treat, for compliments do grow so hackneyed; I sometimes agree with the poet," she added gaily, "'that there is nothing original in us, excepting original sin.'" ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... of Browning's theory is a kind of Original Sin in us, a natural defectiveness deliberately imposed on us by God, which prevents us attaining any absolute success on earth. And this defectiveness of nature is met by the truth, which, while we aspire, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... thought, which lift them here and there into the finer ether of purely emotional or imaginative art. He dwelt rather upon the terrors than the comfort of the word, and his chosen themes were the dogmas of predestination, original sin, total depravity, and eternal punishment. The titles of his sermons are significant: Men Naturally God's Enemies, Wrath upon the Wicked to the Uttermost, The Final Judgment, etc. "A natural man," he wrote in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... lady of Lynn, Who was deep in original sin; When they said, "Do be good," She said, "Would if I could!" And straightway went at ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... regard the story of Creation, as given in the Book of Genesis, as anything more than a myth, containing a germ of truth. Neither can we accept, as historically true, the story of the temptation in the Garden of Eden. And yet, upon this is made to rest your whole theory of the Fall, of Original Sin, and of Christian Redemption. As for the history of the Jewish people, we can see in it nothing but one long story of cruelty and bloodshed; how can a Creator, a God of Love, be supposed to have permitted ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... more deplorable than it did evidently to them. Their attention merely wandered. Three hundred years ago they would have been frightened; but not in this electric day. I saw Scipio stifling a smile when it came to the doctrine of original sin. "We know of its truth," said Dr. MacBride, "from the severe troubles and distresses to which infants are liable, and from death passing upon them before they are capable of sinning." Yet I knew he was a good man; and I also knew that ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... and children. The palaeontologist might tell us if some such case of ischial approximation by natural mechanical causes has not caused the probable extinction of whole genera of vertebrates. "If we are to believe that for our original sin the pangs and labor of childbirth were increased, and if we also believe in the disproportionate contraction of the pelvic space being an efficient cause of the same difficulties of parturition, the logical inference is that man's original sin consisted in his ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... original sin[398], in consequence of the fall of man, and of the atonement made by our SAVIOUR. After some conversation, which he desired me to remember, he, at my request, dictated ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... holy baptism, to receive new names, and begin new lives in the righteous likeness of God Himself?—that as by nature they had been the children of wrath, so in baptism they might become the children of grace; that as from their forefathers they had inherited a corrupt nature, original sin, and the likeness of the foul and ravenous beasts which perish, they might have power from the Spirit of God to become the sons of God, conformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ, in peace, and love, and ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... that covers up from our sight our just instinctive perceptions,—makes us drive them out before the mechanical conclusions of mere reason; and when our reason, our special human pride, has failed us, we say in our sorrow, I see now; if I had only trusted my first impulse!—What is this cloud? Is it original sin? I asked my husband. He was writing his sermon. He stopped and told me with serious interest,—"This cloud is that original or inbred sin which we receive from Adam; obscuring and vitiating the free ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... cannot be made that original sin is capable of explaining this unequal retribution; but then, ought not the very absurdity of the consequences due to such sin to justify one in refusing to examine this argument? What soul could admit that the innocent should be punished for the guilty? Does human justice, in spite ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... by the sarcasms of my friends, so I shudder when I contemplate the probability that this animal frame, when its restless appetites shall have ceased their importunity, may be cut up also (horrible suggestion!) to determine in what system of solids or fluids this original sin of my constitution lay lurking. What work will they make with their acids and alkalines, their serums and coagulums, effervescences, viscous matter, bile, chyle, and acrimonious juices, to explain that cause which Nature, who willed the effect to punish me for my sins, may no less have ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... is, is the problem that confronts theologians. They won't think of it as simian-ness; they call it original sin. They regard it as the voice of some devil, and say good men should not listen to it. The scientists say it isn't a devil, it is part of our nature, which should of course be civilized and guided, but should not be stamped out. (It might mutilate ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... FOUR preliminary SYMPTOMS of that dismal business. "As to the primary CAUSES of it," says one of my Authorities, "these lie deep, deep almost as those of Original Sin. But the proximate causes seem to me to have been these two: FIRST, That the Jesuit-Priests and Principalities had vowed and resolved to have, by God's help and by the Devil's (this was the peculiarity of it), Europe made Orthodox again: and then SECONDLY, The fact that a Max of Bavaria ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... regarding the Holy Spirit); Irenaeus' doctrine of the Logos; (Conceptions regarding the Holy Spirit); The views of Irenaeus regarding the destination of man, the original state, the fall and the doom of death (the disparate series of ideas in Irenaeus; rudiments of the doctrine of original sin in Tertullian); The doctrine of Jesus Christ as the incarnate son of God; Assertion of the complete mixture and unity of the divine and human elements; Significance of Mary; Tertullian's doctrine of the two natures and its origin; Rudiments of this doctrine in ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, Adam was clad ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... Dogma, that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of the Conception, by singular privilege and grace of God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved from all stain of original sin.' The senior cardinal then prayed the Pope to make this Decree public, and, amid the roar of cannon from Fort St. Angelo and the festive ringing of church bells, the solemn act was accomplished.'"[42] Here is an assertion regarding Mary's ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... burned most highly in Gasparo Contarini, who in 1541 was commissioned by the Pope to attend a conference at Rechensburg for the discussion of terms of reconciliation with the Lutherans. He succeeded in drawing up satisfactory articles on the main theological points regarding human nature, original sin, redemption and justification. These were accepted by the Protestant theologians at Rechensburg and might possibly have been ratified in Rome, had not the Congress been broken up by Contarini's total ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... think that the Gospels assert a miraculous Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension; and that the Epistles teach Original Sin, and a vicarious Sacrifice. If this be doubted by our authors, it is sufficient for us to say that such is the impression they have created on all ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... originalities, and originalities. To invent a new thing, which is also a precious thing; to be struck by a divinely-guided Rod, and become a sudden fountain of life to thirsty multitudes—this is enviable. But to be distinct of men in an original Sin; elect for the initial letter of a Lie; the first apparent spot of an unknown plague; a Root of bitterness, and the first-born worm of a company, studying an original De-Composition,—this is perhaps not so enviable. And if we think of it, most human originality ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... seems to be the source of our most portentous follies and absurdities. This is the original sin upon which St. Austin and Calvin descanted. Certain Arabic writers seem to have had this in their minds, when they tell us, that there is a black drop of blood in the heart of every man, in which is contained the fomes peccati, and add that, when ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... says Franck, 'in the name of St. Augustine, and in that of Aristotle; in the name of the latter by showing that there are two races of men, one born to command, and the other to obey; in the name of the former in affirming that slavery had its origin in original sin; that by sin man has forfeited his right to liberty. Further, we must admit slavery as an institution not only of nature and one of the consequences of the fall, we must admit a third principle of slavery which appears to St. Thomas as legitimate as the other two. War ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... and left behind, well-instructed members of this generation ought to comprehend. Yet in saying that, we are dealing with the same fundamental fact which Paul was facing when he said, "as in Adam all die"; we are handling the same unescapable experience out of which the old doctrine of original sin first came; we are facing a truth which it will not pay us to forget: that humanity's sinful nature is not something which you and I alone make up by individual deeds of wrong, but that it is an inherited mortgage and handicap ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... Still the time that scientists have worked on the problem is short and the data imperfect, and many years of patient study will be needed before there can be worked out the broad theories of responsibility for and treatment of crime which will replace the long accepted doctrines of original sin, and the expulsion of devils from the wicked by cruelty ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... "The pit of original sin," Hallam named it, advising her to give over the task of purification. "You've sprinkled pounds of chloride, splashed whitewash galore, swept and scrubbed and worn yourself out, and it's hopeless. Well, I never heard that any of the Ingrahams died of pestilence bred down ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Roman, Greek, Anglican, Calvinistic, and Lutheran Churches, and of all ranks and grades in society, who, though they may differ from each other in points of religious discipline, form and ceremony, agree in the one grand and principal point: that there is no salvation from the punishment due to original sin but through vivid faith in Christ, manifested and proved by good works, such being the amount of the doctrine found in those inspired writings known as the New Testament which contain the words of the Saviour whilst resident in flesh on earth, ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... must a man have, you know, or else it will not be well with him. It is a tribulation to good men to feel in themselves the conflict of the flesh against the soul and the rebellion of sensuality against the rule and governance of reason—the relics that remain in mankind of old original sin, of which St. Paul so sore complaineth in his epistle to the Romans. And yet may we not pray, while we stand in this life, to have this kind of tribulation utterly taken from us. For it is left us by God's ordinance to strive against it and ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... only ill; there is also the evil that we do and the evil that others do us. Crime and pain are terrible arguments against God. Now the Christians hold that the first is the product solely of the human will, of liberty corrupted by original sin, and that the other is permitted by God as a means of purifying souls. Of course, this was a solution, but it implied a belief in the dogmas of the Fall and of the Redemption. Augustin did not accept them yet. He was too proud ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... that struck me when I saw him, and it strikes me more and more, was, how could any one have got the idea of original sin? The people who believe in it can never have looked into a baby's eyes. I love to watch them, and sometimes fancy I can see a faint shade of reminiscence in them, as if he had still some memories of another life, and could tell me things if he could only speak. One day as I sat ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... shake their puny hands at heaven because not provided with a terrestrial Paradise, when they ought to be giving thanks that I'm not the party who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand. I'd make good Baptists of the whole caboodle—would hold them under water long enough to soak out the original sin. A man complains because Fortune doesn't empty her cornucopia into the pockets of his pantalettes while he whittles a pine box and talks municipal politics instead of humping himself behind an enterprising mule in the cotton-patch. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote:—"What are the essential doctrines of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, and the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of the Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed without knowledge and steadfast meditation. By the unlearned, they may be worthily received, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... anonymous periodical paper, who accused M. de Montesquieu of Spinozism and deism (two imputations which are incompatible); of having followed the system of Pope (of which there is not a word in his works); of having quoted Plutarch, who is not a Christian author; of not having spoken of original sin and of grace. In a word, he pretended that the 'Spirit of Laws' was a production of the constitution Unigenitus; a preposterous idea. Those who understand M. de Montesquieu and Clement XI. may judge, by this accusation, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... concerning the rite differed. Although the Founder of Christianity was circumcised, St. Paul, who aimed at a cosmopolitan faith discouraged it in the physical phase. St. Augustine still sustained that the rite removed original sin despite the Fathers who preceded and followed him, Justus, Tertullian, Ambrose and others. But it gradually lapsed into desuetude and was preserved only in the outlying regions. Paulus Jovius and Munster found it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... fathers of the church made mention of original sin until Augustine came, who made a difference between original and actual sin, namely, that original sin is to covet, to lust, and to desire, which is the root ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... computation, to the great event. There were, of course, various letters written to Lord George. Lady Sarah wrote very sensibly, suggesting that he should go to Mr. Stokes, the family lawyer. Lady Susanna was full of the original sin of that unfortunate visit to the Disabilities. She was, however, of opinion that if Mary was concealed in a certain room at Manor Cross, which might she thought be sufficiently warmed and ventilated for health, the judges ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... moral region lay the real greatness of the man. His conscience was original and he had no original sin. ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... this last question that the dispute raged hottest in the Gorham Case. The High Church party, represented by Dr. Phillpotts, asserted that the mere act of baptism conferred regeneration upon the recipient and washed away his original sin. To this the Evangelicals, headed by Mr. Gorham, replied that, according to the Articles, regeneration would not follow unless baptism was RIGHTLY received. What, then, was the meaning of 'rightly'? Clearly it implied not merely lawful administration, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and belongs to the vertebrate stem; but the chain of his ancestry goes upward instead of downward. In the beginning "God created man in his own image," as the prototype of the perfect vertebrate; but, in consequence of original sin, the human race sank so low that the apes branched off from it, and afterwards the lower Vertebrates. When this theory of degeneration was consistently developed, its supporters were bound to hold that the entire animal kingdom was descended from ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... to affirm here that The Boy did not acquire his occasional swear-words from "The Shorter Catechism." They were born in him, as a fragment of Original Sin; and they came out of him innocently and unwittingly, and only for purposes of proper emphasis, long before the days of "Justification," and even before he knew his ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... "with the exception of a penchant for petty peculations" the young offender "has always been a model girl, industrious and truthful," thus justifying the belief of the eminent specialist, that he could "wipe out the original sin" in her. But the child is mother to the woman, and those of us who have been gradually and conscientiously convinced of the total inadequacy of the Government's policy towards Ireland, cannot but recognise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... eternal punishments, was the sin of our first parent Adam, [832]in eating of the forbidden fruit, by the devil's instigation and allurement. His disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, incredulity, curiosity; from whence proceeded original sin, and that general corruption of mankind, as from a fountain, flowed all bad inclinations and actual transgressions which cause our several calamities inflicted upon us for our sins. And this belike is that which our fabulous poets have shadowed unto us in the tale of [833] Pandora's box, which ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to comfort and gladness; and the sensuality receiveth new savour and sweetness in all creatures.[161] And right as beforetime the likings in the sensuality were fleshly, vain, and vicious, for the pain of the original sin; right so now they are made ghostly and clean, without bitterness and biting of conscience. And this is the goodness of our Lord, that sith the soul is punished in the sensuality, and the flesh is partner of the pain, that afterward the soul be comforted in the sensuality, ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... but original sin comes to man with his birth. But imprudence comes to man with his birth, wherefore the young are imprudent; and yet it is not original sin which is opposed to original justice. Therefore imprudence is not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... be startling: it may be simply entertaining. Some people, perhaps, remembering certain French and other fiction, would say that it may even be deliberately wicked. That I do not believe. On the contrary, it is much to the credit of a world which is declared to be so rotten with original sin, that deliberately wicked writing finds so little lasting favour with it. It does gladly let such writing die, however well written. Interest fails, and admiration of the literary skill is speedily swallowed up in disgust. Moreover ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... as thoroughly Christian as if belonging to the primitive Church, spiritually fed by her readings from the "Golden Legend," she gave herself up entirely into the hands of God, with only the spot of original sin to be cleansed from her soul. She had no liberty of action or freedom of will; God alone could secure her salvation by giving her the gift of His grace. That grace had been already manifested by bringing her to the ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... to suppose it true, for my part, See reasons and reasons: this, to begin— 'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart At the head of a lie,—taught Original Sin, The Corruption of ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and gloriously struggling onward towards better things, but there is always the gravitational pull of original sin which scientists denominate "reversion to type." The saving grace in the individual is the divine gift of faith, hope and charity implanted in every soul. These every man must guard and cherish for they are the way of advancement in character. But society is man in ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... studied the whole of Aristotle's works, and attempted to construct a Christian theology on the basis of them. Even at this time the young Italian's life was so saintly that his master (so it is reported) said of him that he seemed to have been born without the taint of original sin. He graduated in the same year as Thomas Aquinas, and immediately afterward began his career as a public teacher under the auspices of the Franciscan order, while Thomas did the same under those of the Dominican. These two men, the greatest ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... operation manifestly presupposes a certain weakness of the human will, i.e. concupiscence, which is an effect of original sin. Actual grace exercises a healing influence on the will(27) and is therefore called gratia sanans sive medicinalis. "Unless something is put before the soul to please and attract it," says St. Augustine, "the will can in no wise be moved; but it is not in man's power to bring this about."(28) ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... banishment. His imagination is for ever captive. His horizon is for ever bounded. He is fettered by routine, and paralyzed by tradition. His very ideas must put on the livery of his predecessors; for in a profession where originality of thought stands for the blackest shade of original sin, skill—mere skill—must be the end ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... with the presupposition of original sin, they quietly assert that the soul of man is inherently bound up in the Life and Nature of God, and that goodness is at least as "original" as badness. They fly in the face of the age-long view that ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Carmichael does not love Christ, for I hef seen the Lord in his sermons like a face through a lattice. Oh yes, and I hef felt the fragrance of the myrrh. But I am not liking his doctrine, and I wass thinking that some day there will be no original sin left in the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even his unbelief, in everlasting torment; nay, more, it makes this almost universal damnation the natural effect of original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of the Fall. This is a result which must have been foreseen by him who made mankind, and who, in the first place, made them not better than they are, and secondly, set a trap for them into which he must have known they ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer |
