Conscience and Sin: Daily Meditations for Lent, Including Week-days and SundaysBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Conscience and Sin: Daily Meditations for Lent, Including Week-days and Sundays
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Conscience; Lent -- Prayers and devotions; Sin
(_b_) The intelligence was darkened. Adam and Eve saw what was
before them, Death the consequence of Transgression, but allowed
themselves to be confused by the pleadings of the serpent, disputing
the consequences. Ever since, a confusion of the intelligence as to
consequences resulting from acts has existed in men; a lack of sharp
and decisive vision as to the relation of effect to cause, as to the
relation of result to act.
The confusion and obfuscation of the intelligence is removed to a large
extent by education, but only by such education as broadens the mind. A
narrow, illiberal education may do much harm by throwing partial lights
which tend the rather to confuse.
(_c_) The weakening of the human will. The will is not only inherently
weakened by having given way to evil, but it is continuously weakened
by the uncertainty it is in how to decide, by the darkening of the
understanding, so that duties are not always clear, nor consequences
certain. The will to do what is right is by no means strong, since Adam
and Eve turned their will away from God; the human will has acquired a
bent that inclines it not always to follow the right.
(_d_) And the undue elevation of sensuality tends to deceive the will
and induce it to follow the appetites of the body instead of the
promptings of the understanding. Adam and Eve went against Reason when
they partook of the fruit of the tree to satisfy a carnal curiosity
and gratify an animal appetite. Ever since then carnal curiosity and
animal appetite have obtained a dominating power in man, composed of
body, soul, and mind, quite out of proportion to what was purposed.
This undue elevation of Sensuality leads man to seek the gratification
of those appetites he shares with the beasts, at the expense of his
intellectual and spiritual powers.
(_e_) One other result of the Fall affects man's body. God made man to
be healthy, strong and happy. By his turning away from God, the source
of life, strength and blessedness, he became liable to decay, sickness,
pain, sorrow, and death.
2. We see, then, that the fall of man has led to the disturbance of
man's nature, and it has left man in such a condition that of himself
he is unable to attain to the knowledge of God and His Will, and unable
to fulfil God's Will even when He knows it. Consequently he fell more
or less completely under the dominion of the Evil One, who prompted to
error, and to that of Sensuality, which promised happiness to man in
the pursuit of his inferior appetites.
[Illustration]
Third Tuesday in Lent.
_THE EVIDENCE FOR ORIGINAL SIN._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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