Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/238

 original sin is to be understood “that transgression of God’s command, that departure of human nature from the law of God, and consequently from its aims, which was committed by our first parents in Paradise and which from them passed over to us. ‘Original sin,’ we read in the Orthodox profession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church, ‘is a transgression of the law of God, given in Paradise to our forefather Adam. This original sin passed from Adam to the whole human race, for we then were all in Adam, and thus through the one Adam the sin has spread to all of us. For this reason we are begotten and born with this sin.’ The only difference is that in Adam this departure from the law of God, and consequently from its destination, was free and arbitrary, but in us it is inherited and necessary: we are born with a nature which has departed from the law of God; in Adam it was a personal sin, a sin in the strict sense of the word,—in us it is not a personal sin, not really a sin, but only a sinfulness of our nature as derived from our parents; Adam sinned, that is, he freely violated the law of God and thus became a sinner, that is, caused his whole nature to deviate from the law of God, and consequently became personally guilty toward God,—but we have not sinned personally with Adam, but have become sinners with him and through him: By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners (Rom. v. 19); receiving from him our sinful nature we appear in the world as children of the wrath of God (Eph. ii. 3).

“Under the consequences of the original sin the church understands those consequences which the sin of our first parents produced immediately upon them, and which pass over from them to us, such as the dimming of the intellect, the abasement of the will, and the proclivity to do evil, diseases of the body, death, and so forth. (pp. 493 and 494.)

“This distinction of the original sin and of its conse-