True Christianity: A Treatise on Sincere Repentence, True Faith, the Holy Walk of the True Christian, Etc.Arndt, Johann
Religion
True Christianity: A Treatise on Sincere Repentence, True Faith, the Holy Walk of the True Christian, Etc.
Arndt, Johann
Christian life; Christianity
13. Learn, therefore, O man, duly to look into, and rightly to consider
the abominable filthiness of _Original Sin_, as the sink of all
abomination. For by this the hereditary righteousness of God was lost, and
the hereditary unrighteousness of the devil transplanted into men. Hence
the sinner was cast away from God, and doomed to an eternal death: and
this he must certainly undergo, except he obtain forgiveness of sin for
Christ’s sake through faith.
14. But to set the state of fallen man, both as to soul and body, in as
clear a light as possibly I can, I think it well to give a fuller
description thereof in this place; most earnestly entreating every one,
for the sake of God and of his own eternal salvation, to ponder again and
again, and seriously to revolve in his mind that original depravity which
has corrupted our nature. The consequence of this will be, that as a man
beholds his bodily face in a glass, and knows it, so he may also behold in
himself his own wretchedness, and original sin. This will daily influence
him to lament his own distressed condition, and to sigh after Him, who
alone is able to heal us.
15. For the whole Christian life is indeed nothing else, than a constant
wrestling with original sin, and a continual purging away of the same by
the aid of the Holy Ghost, and by true repentance. For, in proportion as
any one mortifies his natural propensity to evil, in that degree is he
renewed after the image of God, even day by day; and they who are not
inwardly mortified by the Holy Ghost, are at best no more than hypocrites,
let them make ever so great a show with an external profession of the
Christian faith. Neither can they expect to enter into the kingdom of God,
since they are not renewed into his image: for whatsoever is not dead to
itself, nor renewed into the image of God by his Spirit, is altogether
unfit for that glorious state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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