Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/239

 quences must be firmly borne in mind, especially in certain cases, in order that the doctrine of the Orthodox Church may be properly understood.” (p. 494.)

92. The actuality of the original sin, its universality and manner of dissemination. “The sin of our first parents, the Orthodox Church teaches, with its consequences, spread from Adam and Eve to all their posterity by means of natural birth and, consequently, exists unquestionably.” (p. 496.)

All that is proved by Holy Scripture, for example like this: “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one, even though he hath lived but one day upon earth (Job xiv. 4, 5). Here, evidently, an unclean thing is meant, from which no man is free, and that, too, from his birth. What is this unclean thing? Since, according to Job's description, it appears as the cause of the calamities of human life (verses 1, 2) and subjects man to the judgment of God (verse 3), we must assume that a moral uncleanness is meant and not a physical one, which is the consequence of the moral uncleanness and cannot in itself make man subject to the judgment before God,—what is meant is the sinfulness of our nature, which passes over to all of us from our first parents. To the passages of the second kind belong: (1) the words of the Saviour in his conversation with Nicodemus: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John iii. 5, 6).” (p. 498.)

It is also confirmed by Tradition:

“For according to this rule of faith the babes, who have not yet committed any sin, are baptized indeed for the remission of sins, that through the new birth there may be purified in them what they have received from their old birth. Utterances of the individual teachers of