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XVII. The proposition stated in these words, "Taught by the apostle, we view death no longer as a natural condition of man, but in reality, as a just punishment of original sin,"—inasmuch as, under the name of the apostle, artfully adduced, it insinuates that death, which in the present state has been inflicted as a just punishment of sin, by the just withdrawal of immortality, had not been a natural condition of man, as if immortality had not been a gratuitous favour, but a natural condition: Captious, rash, injurious to the apostle, otherwise condemned.

XXIII. The doctrine of the synod, stating, "that after the fall of Adam, God announced the promise of a future redeemer, and wished to console mankind by the hope of salvation, which Jesus Christ was to bring, yet that God wished that mankind should pass through various states, before the fulness of time should come; and first, that in the state of nature, man left to his own lights should learn to distrust his own blind reason, and from his own aberrations should move himself to desire the aid of superior light,"—a doctrine, as it lies, captious, and understood of the desire of the aid of superior light promised in order to salvation through Christ, to conceive which, man, left to his own lights, may be supposed to have been able to move himself: Suspicious, favouring the semi-Pelagian heresy.

XIX. Likewise that which subjoins that man under the law, "when he was unable to observe it, had become a transgressor, not indeed through the fault of the law, which was most holy, but through fault of man, who under the law without grace became more and more a transgressor;" and superadds, "that the law, if it did not heal the heart of man, caused that he should know his own evils, and, convinced of his own weakness, he should feel the want of a