Conscience and Sin: Daily Meditations for Lent, Including Week-days and Sundays — John Shaqi
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
1. The existence of Original Sin in man is proved to us in the first
place by our very constitution. We have only to look into our own
selves to discern its presence. S. Paul, speaking of himself in his
condition under the law, says, "When we were in the flesh, the motions
of sin ... did work in our members." (Rom. vii. 5.) "That which I do,
I allow not; for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that
do I.... To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is
good, I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil
which I would not, that I do.... I delight in the law of God after the
inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin that
is in my members." Who does not know this truth by experience? Who has
not felt the conflict; realized that there are different and opposing
elements in his nature? There is a mixture of dignity and meanness,
of nobility and baseness, of the knowledge of what is right and a
love of what is evil, in all men. They have but to look steadily into
themselves to see that it is so.
2. Scripture affirms the existence of Original Sin. "Man born of a
woman is of few days and full of trouble ... who can bring a clean
thing out of an unclean? Not one." (Job xiv. 1, 4.) "Behold, I was
shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me." (Ps. li.
5.) "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so
death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (Rom. v. 12.)
3. The Church has always taught the existence of Original Sin, and
the Sacrament of Baptism, ever ministered, is a witness to this, for
Baptism is the means whereby men pass out of a condition of natural
incapacity to fulfil God's law into a state of grace in which they are
able to do those things God has commanded. The Sacrament of Baptism
was instituted as a corrective to Original Sin, to remedy the defects
produced in man by his filiation from Adam.
By nature--that nature degraded and corrupted through the fall--we can
do no good thing; but by Baptism we pass into the Kingdom of Grace,
and therein are enabled to stand, are strengthened, enlightened, and
cleansed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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