It is true that I find evil tendencies in me, which I did not cause; but I know, that, for whatever part I am not the cause, I am not accountable. For this part of my life I do not dread the wrath, but rather claim the pity, of my God. My nature I find to be diseased—not well; needing cure, and not merely food and exercise. I can, therefore, the more easily believe that God has sent me a physician, and that I shall be cured by him. I can believe in a future emancipation from these tendencies to vanity, sensuality, indolence, anger, wilfulness, impatience, obstinacy—tendencies which are, in me, not crime, but disease; and I can see how to say with Paul, “Now, then, it is no more _I_ that do it, but SIN THAT DWELLETH IN ME.” If, now, we return to the consideration of the Orthodox doctrine of the fall, as set forth by the Westminster Assembly, we shall find it to be half true and half false. It states _truly_ (chap. 6, § 1) that our first parents sinned, and also (§ 2) that by this sin they fell from their original righteousness; for this only means that the first conscious act of disobedience by man produced alienation from God, and degeneracy of nature. This was no arbitrary punishment, but the natural consequence. The creed also says _truly_ (§ 3) that this corrupted nature was conveyed to all their posterity; for this only means, that, by the laws of descent, good and evil qualities are transmitted; which all wise observers of human nature knew to be the fact. It is also _true_ (§ 5) that this corrupt nature does remain (to some extent at least), even in the regenerate, in this life. So far, so true. Sin, as disease, began with the first man, in his first sin, and has been transmitted, by physical, moral, and spiritual influences, from him to us all. But now we find complicated with these truths other statements, which we must need regard as falsehoods. Tried either by reason or Scripture, they are palpably untrue, and are very dangerous errors. The first error of Orthodoxy is in declaring transmitted or inherited evil to be total. It declares that our first parents “were _wholly_ defiled in all faculties and parts of soul and body,” and that _we_, in consequence, “are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.” This statement is indefensible. But we shall consider this in another section on “Total Depravity,” and only allude to it now in passing. Another error, however, and a very important one, is to attribute the _guilt_ of Adam and Eve to their descendants. This is the famous doctrine of _imputation_, which is now rejected by all the leading schools of modern Orthodoxy. That we can be _guilty_ of Adam’s sin, either by imputation or in any other way, seems too absurd and immoral a statement to be now received.