"Original sin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a sin: the "original sin" for which we are all damned. Baldly stated, this seems ridiculous; nevertheless it corresponds to something actually existent not only in Paul's consciousness but in our own. The original sin was not the eating of the forbidden fruit, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... temperance and chastity; they wore a hair shirt and a hood, slept on the bare ground after long watching, prayed, sang psalms, and, in short, spent their days in works of penitence. As an atonement for original sin, they refused their body not only all pleasures and satisfactions, but even that care and attention which in this age are deemed indispensable. They believed that the diseases of our members purify our souls, and the flesh could put on no adornment more glorious than ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... to suspect evil, and cannot release himself.... He sees it where others do not; his instinct is divinely strengthened; his eye is supernaturally keen; he has a spiritual insight, and senses exercised to discern.... He owns the doctrine of original sin; that doctrine puts him necessarily on his guard against appearances, sustains his apprehension under perplexity, and prepares him for recognising anywhere what he knows to be everywhere."[100] There ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... good deeds or errors committed in previous existences. A stone, a plant, an insect, a demon, or a god are only illusory forms, each encompassing an identical soul on its way to deliverance, as it is caught at different stages of its long calvary and imprisoned through original sin and the instinctive desire for life. Whence we see emerging a new feeling of charity which embraces all beings. Their moral character is felt to be the same as that of man, their goal is the same, and in the vast world of illusion each seeks ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... to White Farm. He went, though not every Sunday, to kirk and sat with his aunt and with Strickland in the laird's boxlike, curtained pew. Mr. M'Nab preached of original sin and ineffable condemnation, and of the few, the very, very few, saved as by fire. He saw Jarvis Barrow sitting motionless, sternly agreeing, and beyond him Jenny Barrow and then Elspeth and Gilian. Out ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... uncomfortable and awkward and unwieldy character, as some men are born lame, or scrofulous, or dyspeptic. The child of a father over sixty, and of a very young mother; there was in him some indefinable imperfection of nature, some jar of character, or some great want, some original sin of mental constitution, which made him different from other men, disabled him from getting pleasure or profit out of the circumstances which gave pleasure or profit to them; and turned his youth into a long period of mental weakness and suffering, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... is in us like the beard: we are shaved to-day, and look clean, and have a smooth chin; to-morrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. In like manner original sin cannot be extirpated from us; it springs up in us as long as we exist; Nevertheless, we are bound to resist it to our utmost strength, and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... order to put them on paper. Loving literature, in his way, he was characteristically incapable of recognizing the literary instinct, and the symptoms of its early stages he mistook for inherent frivolity, for lack of respect for the truth; in brief, for original sin. At the age of fourteen I had begun secretly (alas, how many things I did secretly!) to write stories of a sort, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Infants are baptized before it is possible that they could have sinned. On the contrary, Augustine resisted these doctrines, resting himself on the words of Scripture that baptism is for the remission of sins. The case of children compelled that father to introduce the doctrine of original sin as derived from Adam, notwithstanding the dreadful consequences if they die unbaptized. In like manner also followed the doctrines ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... ordinary meaning, the dogma is revolting, for it comes to this: it condemns a man, who may be, perhaps, scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even his unbelief, in everlasting torment; nay, more, it makes this almost universal damnation the natural effect of original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of the Fall. This is a result which must have been foreseen by him who made mankind, and who, in the first place, made them not better than they are, and secondly, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... quantity of punishment. The total amount of evil suffered makes nice equation with the total amount of evil done; the extent of human suffering tallies precisely with the extent of human guilt. Of course you must take original sin into account, 'which explains all, and without which you can explain nothing.' 'In virtue of this primitive degradation we are subject to all sorts of physical sufferings in general; just as in virtue of this same degradation we are subject to all sorts of vices in general. This original ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... that great reservoir of all nastiness, his mouth! It is really a wonder how any human being can LIVE, and emit all the time a stream of such overwhelming and uninterrupted STENCH! You must permit me to christen this man as the But-Cut of Original Sin, and the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... asunder that a hatchet could not have done it better, so plentiful are they in their new-found words and prodigious terms. Besides, while they explicate the most hidden mysteries according to their own fancy—as how the world was first made; how original sin is derived to posterity; in what manner, how much room, and how long time Christ lay in the Virgin's womb; how accidents subsist in the Eucharist ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... of the Fall.—"'Mormonism' accepts the doctrine of the fall, and the account of the transgression in Eden, as set forth in Genesis; but it affirms that none but Adam is or shall be answerable for Adam's disobedience; that mankind in general are absolutely absolved from responsibility for that 'original sin,' and that each shall account for his own transgressions alone; that the fall was foreknown of God, that it was turned to good effect by which the necessary condition of mortality should be inaugurated; and that ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... their hearts to live as they would have lived had they been born in an earlier time. But whereas Basil nursed this disposition, regarding it as altogether laudable, Marcian could only see in it an outcome of original sin, and after every indulgence of such mundane thoughts did penance as for something worse than weakness. His father had died in an anguish of compunction for a life stained with sensuality; his mother had killed herself by excessive rigours of penitence; these ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... blame them. All men then held slaves: but the original sin was their ruin, though they knew it not. It helped, doubtless, to debauch them; to tempt them to the indulgence of those fierce and greedy passions, which must, in the long run, lower the morality of slaveholders; and which, as Totila told them, had drawn down on them the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... instruction—must be true. He resists doubt as inspired by the Evil One seeking his soul, and sure to get it unless faith comes to the rescue. Unfortunately he soon finds that faith is not exactly at his beck and call. Original sin he thinks must be at the root of this inability to see as he wishes to see, to believe as he wishes to believe. It seems clear to him that already he is little better than one of the lost. Of the elect he surely cannot ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... and parents it is called Original Sin: a term wherewith they brand whatever frisks and butts with rude goatish horns against accepted maxims and trim theories of education. In the abstract, of course, this fitful stirring of the old yeast is no more sin than ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... "A just God alloted life to men, making some slaves and some lords, that the liberty of ill-doing on the part of slaves might be restrained by the authority of rulers." Still he says that all men are equal before God, and that Christ's redemption has wiped away original sin, which ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... them as easily as she could smile. For Jess was a minx—there is no denying the fact. Yet even slow Saunders admitted that, though she was nothing to Meg, of course, still there was something original and attractive about her—like original sin. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the serious and candid Professors of Christianity on the following Subjects, viz. 1. The Use of Reason in Matters of Religion. 2. The Power of Man to do the Will of God. 3. Original Sin. 4. Election and Reprobation. 5. The Divinity of Christ. And, 6. Atonement for Sin by the Death of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... dumb from respect and admiration, they waited in deepest silence. The venerable Pontiff resumed in a strong voice, which shortly rose to a tone of enthusiasm: "We declare, pronounce and define, that the doctrine which affirms that the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved and exempt from all stain of original sin from the first moment of her conception, in consideration of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, is a doctrine revealed by God, and which, for this cause, the faithful must firmly and constantly believe. Wherefore, if any ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of the depravity of man and his inability to restore himself to God's favour ought to be maintained. The entire corruption of the human nature by sin, original sin, the dominion of sin in the unconverted, the power of sin even in the people of God, are all made known as by a sunbeam in the Divine word, consistent with the conduct of men, necessary to be admitted in order to the acceptance of the blessings of the great salvation, ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... in, as a victim, to tarry, With him, as with all, it is how to get out With no more of pain than you can't go without, Where all have original sin to carry; But his memory brightened, as strength waxed low, Of the grief he had borne ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... slim shoulders, his curly brown head rose proudly, his thin lips smiled a greeting to all the world around him, his brown eyes looked straight and true into the eyes of every man he chanced to meet. Only his sense of humour and his comfortable smattering of original sin could have saved Reed Opdyke from being insupportable. Beauty like his, albeit manly, is bound to be ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... had uttered no disgraceful taunt, and probably not inflicted a tithe of the pain he had himself to bear. It is true that he was flagrantly in the wrong, his victim as laudably in the right. Nevertheless, granting the original sin of the situation, and given this unforeseen development, even I failed to see how Raffles could have combined greater humanity with any regard for our joint safety; and had his barbarities ended here, I for one should not ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... blunt Scotch handmaiden could not abide men—"a puir-hearted, feckless lot," as she was wont to say. Of course the old master and Mr. Fergus were exceptions to this. Jean worshiped her master; and though she held the doctrine of original sin, would never have owned that Mr. Fergus had a fault. But to the rest of mankind she was suspiciously uncharitable. "To think he drove her from him—the puir bit lammie," she would say; "and yet the law can't have the hanging of him. Redmond, indeed! but he won't own to any such ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a book:—'Consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin the want of original righteousness and the corruption of his whole nature which is commonly called original sin together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.' There's a wasp on your shoulder, father,—there's two of 'em; I'll ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline. Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in sunshine, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... young lady of Lynn, Who was deep in original sin; When they said, "Do be good," She said, "Would if I could!" And straightway went at ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... if Christ did not put on that manhood which had endured death in punishment for sin, it will result that of no man's seed could ever one have been born who should be, like Him, without punishment for original sin. Therefore flesh like His was taken from no man, whence it would appear to have been new- formed for the purpose. But did this flesh then either so appear to human eyes that the body was deemed human which was not really human, because it was not subject ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... alike, into participation with the Deity. Father Hecker would talk by the hour of the need of bringing that view of our Lord's mission most prominently forward, the idea of redemption applying to innocent souls only on account of original sin, and by sympathy with their brethren infected by actual sin. And he would show that even hard sinners could often be brought to a good life more surely, and be enabled more certainly to persevere, by forcibly emphasizing the Incarnation and its benefits than by any other ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... same. All apparently admit the corruption of human nature. Justin Martyr speaks of a "concupiscence in every man, evil in all its tendencies, and various in its nature," [450:5] whilst Tertullian mentions original sin under the designation of "the vice of our origin." [450:6] Our first parent, says he, "having been seduced into disobedience by Satan was delivered over to death, and transmitted his condemnation to the whole ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... shore that night, and I rolled myself up in an Equetta cloth and went sound and happily asleep on the bamboo staging, leaving the canoe pitching slightly. About midnight some change in the tide, or original sin in the canoe, caused her to softly swing round a bit, and the next news was that I was in the water. I had long expected this to happen, so was not surprised, but highly disgusted, and climbed on board, needless to say, streaming. So, in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... original sin[398], in consequence of the fall of man, and of the atonement made by our SAVIOUR. After some conversation, which he desired me to remember, he, at my request, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... is properly only the action that is done with evil intent; and where this is present, where the mental consent (consensus) is clearly established, there is peccatum, though the action remains unexecuted. When the consensus is absent, as in original sin, there is only vitium; hence, a life without peccata is not impossible to men in the exercise of their freedom, however difficult it ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... pages appeared in 1757, written by Samuel Webster, the minister of Salisbury, with the title "A Winter Evening's Conversation upon the doctrine of Original Sin, wherein the notion of our having sinned in Adam, and being on that account only liable to eternal Damnation, is proved to be Unscriptural." It is in the form of a dialogue between a minister and three of his parishioners, and gives, as few other ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... Justification by Faith alone, Sanctification, Assurance and Perseverance, Original Sin, Sacramental ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... crosser. Nothing that he could do to the things seemed to please them or do them good. He tried coaxing, he tried slapping, he tried punching; they smiled back at him out of the tub unconverted, happy in their original sin. Once or twice he looked nervously over his shoulder at the barge-woman, but she appeared to be gazing out in front of her, absorbed in her steering. His back ached badly, and he noticed with dismay that his paws were beginning to ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... in that Catechism we heard not one word of these terrors of the law or of God's wrath hanging over us. We were taught that before we even knew right from wrong, God adopted us freely as His children, freely forgave us our original sin for the sake of Christ's blood, freely renewed us by His Holy Spirit, freely placed us in His Church;—that we might love Him, because He first loved us; trust Him because He has done all that even ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God but from my last repentance, sacra- ment, or general absolution; and therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I thank the goodness of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... eat? Do you put rusks in a feeding cup? Have you to mince its meat? Haven't I heard them speak of pap? Isn't there caudle too? How do you keep the thing on your lap? Why are its eyes askew? Is it a touch of original sin Causes an infant to squall, Or trust misplaced in a safety-pin Lost in the depths of a shawl? When do you "shorten" a growing child (Is it so much too long)? Should legs be lopped or the scalp be filed? Both in a sense seem wrong. "Kitchy," I think I have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... from original sin," says the tin-type man. "It comes out in the camery," he says. "You can't fool the camery. It tells ye the Bible truth," he says. "Nor I ain't expectin' anything from a broiled and frizzled country like this, where the continent's shaved down so narrow ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... the following passage:—"In both systems the same Creeds are acknowledged. Besides other points in common we both hold, that certain doctrines are necessary to be believed for salvation; we both believe in the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement; in original sin; in the necessity of regeneration; in the supernatural grace of the Sacraments; in the apostolical succession; in the obligation of faith and obedience, and in the eternity of future punishment" (Pp. 55, 56). So much I had ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... was troubled he cheerfully doubled His matinal dose of discipline;— A deuce of a scourging, sufficient for purging The Devil himself of original sin. ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... of all ranks and grades in society, who, though they may differ from each other in points of religious discipline, form and ceremony, agree in the one grand and principal point: that there is no salvation from the punishment due to original sin but through vivid faith in Christ, manifested and proved by good works, such being the amount of the doctrine found in those inspired writings known as the New Testament which contain the words of the Saviour whilst resident in flesh on earth, together ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... A.D. 1170, was said to be the offspring of an immaculate conception. He was free from original sin and was regarded as the adopted son of the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... upon men for a variety of reasons. In monarchical countries and in their colonies, the man who earns an extraordinary reward may even pass it on, in the shape of a title, to his descendants, as though it were original sin. But the giving of extraordinary rewards to all ordinary, normal persons would ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... (if not in deportment) of their grave, stern, God-fearing fathers. Though they were of the sedate Puritan blood, they were boys, and they wriggled and twisted, and scraped their feet noisily on the sanded floor; and I know full well that the square-toed shoes of one in whom "original sin" waxed powerful, thrust many a sly dig in the ribs and back of the luckless wight who chanced to sit in front of and below him on the pulpit stairs. Many a dried kernel of Indian corn was surreptitiously snapped at the head of an unwary neighbor, and many ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... evil that has its origin in a will. An evil common to all must have a ground common to all. Now, this evil ground cannot originate in the Divine will; it must, therefore, be referred to the will of man. And this evil ground we call original sin. It is a mystery—that is, a fact which we see, but cannot explain; and the doctrine a truth which we apprehend, but can ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... we were Adam's children, with his fallen nature in us, and original sin, which we inherited from him, we could not help longing more and more after what our parents had forbidden; we could think, perhaps, of nothing else; cared for no pleasure, no pay, because we could not get that one thing which our ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... securely in both hands, mimicked the minister's self-conscious entrance. She copied his pompous and anxious expression in the dim parlor in such delicious fashion that Miss Harriet, who could not always extinguish a ready spark of the original sin ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a small thing with thee. Look, O look on this twig from a guilty stock; poor, helpless, feeble creature, it can do nothing for its body, and still less for its soul. O God of the spirits of all flesh, give it a plunge in the blood of Jesus—cleanse, O cleanse him from original sin, and now, even now, in thy own sovereign and mysterious way, sow the grain of mustard ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... sinners, as it otherwise must have been; that in this way it might operate even in favour of those who had never heard of it: as to those who did hear of it, the effect it should produce would be repentance and piety, by impressing upon the mind a just notion of sin: that original sin was the propensity to evil, which no doubt was occasioned by the fall. He presented this solemn subject in a new light to me, [Footnote: My worthy, intelligent, and candid friend, Dr Kippis, informs me, that several divines have thus explained ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... I cannot except even these; for they acknowledge it an evil, though they contend it exists by divine ordination, just as they assert Original Sin to be the offspring of Eternal Decrees; but they no more convince the Slaveholder, that he loves his bondman as himself, than they convict him of the guilt of ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... of Wade's jib was unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister. He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwholesome black, like the same. His bronzed face was frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on Original Sin or Total Depravity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Christ to give grace." The number generally accepted was seven: baptism, confirmation, holy eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and matrimony. By means of the sacraments the Church accompanied the faithful throughout life. Baptism, the pouring of water, cleansed the child from original sin and from all previous actual sins, and made him a Christian, a child of God, and an heir of heaven. The priest was the ordinary minister of baptism, but in case of necessity any one who had the use of reason might baptize. Confirmation, conferred usually by a bishop upon ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... their instincts were right and their reasons wrong. They made the complete controversial mistake of calling Ibsen a pessimist; whereas, indeed, his chief weakness is a rather childish confidence in mere nature and freedom, and a blindness (either of experience or of culture) in the matter of original sin. In this sense Ibsen is not so much a pessimist as a highly crude kind of optimist. Nevertheless the man in the street was right in his fundamental instinct, as he always is. Ibsen, in his pale northern style, is an optimist; but for all that he is a depressing person. The optimism ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... theory is a kind of Original Sin in us, a natural defectiveness deliberately imposed on us by God, which prevents us attaining any absolute success on earth. And this defectiveness of nature is met by the truth, which, while we aspire, we know—that God will fulfil all noble desire ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Up and with my wife to church, where Mr. Mills made an unnecessary sermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself nor the people. Home, where Michell and his wife, and also there come Mr. Carter, my old acquaintance of Magdalene College, who hath not been here of many years. He hath spent his time in the North with the Bishop of Carlisle ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... thanksgiving. Then he rose in the beauty of his tranquil and noble old age, so touched with the message he had to proclaim to his people, that the three deep furrows on his forehead, which some said he owed to the three dogmas of original sin, predestination, and endless torment, seemed smoothed for the moment, and his face was as that of an angel ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a marginal scrap Mr. C. wrote:—"What are the essential doctrines of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as the necessitating occasion, and the redemption of sinners by the Incarnate Word as the substance of the Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed without knowledge and steadfast meditation. By the unlearned, they ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Sermon of a Conventual in the Church of Rome, on those Words of the Wise Man, I said of Laughter, it is mad; and of Mirth, what does it? Upon which he laid it down as a Point of Doctrine, that Laughter was the Effect of Original Sin, and that Adam could not ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... to see in the first years of life both a beginning of the earthly and a termination of the pre-earthly existence of the soul. The imperfections of his picture of man, however, led him to underestimate, even to deny, the significance of heredity and so of original sin in human life. For an age which no longer had any direct experience of the soul's pre-natal life, the doctrines of Augustine were undoubtedly more appropriate than those of Pelagius; Augustine was in fact the more ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... something like this, seems to be the source of our most portentous follies and absurdities. This is the original sin upon which St. Austin and Calvin descanted. Certain Arabic writers seem to have had this in their minds, when they tell us, that there is a black drop of blood in the heart of every man, in which is contained the fomes peccati, and add that, when Mahomet was in the fourth year of his age, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... I encouraged him. I didn't encourage him. A dog like that doesn't want any encouragement. It's the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... forbidden to meddle with the orchard; that they were tempted as God knew they were to be tempted; that they fell as God knew they would fall, and that for this fall, which He knew would happen before He made them, He fixed the curse of original sin upon them, to be continued to all their children. Why didn't He stop right there? Why didn't He kill Adam and Eve and make another pair who didn't like apples? Then when He brought His flood why did He rescue eight people if their descendants were ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the last to be affected. Throughout history it has been the aim of the enthusiast to make education conform to a single standard. Sometimes it has been the value of the disputation, sometimes of the sense of Original Sin, sometimes of the classics. At the close of the sixteenth century Original Sin had become an important factor in the theories of the expert, and its presence is marked in the Giggleswick Ancient Statutes ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... treatment of conduct. It had apparently accepted the sacramental remission of sins in baptism, and there is no trace in this of any allusion to original sin; the sins which are remitted had been committed by the Christian before his baptism, and there is no suggestion of any inheritance of sin. Hermas never contemplated infant baptism. The baptized Christian started with ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... in some way or another," said Mellish meditatively. "Some take it one way and some another. It is inherent in human nature, like original sin. The beginning of every business is a gamble. If I had $30,000 I would rather run my chance of doubling it at these tables here than I would, for instance, by starting a new newspaper or putting ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... than I thought fit to present hitherto, had I discovered, by due effects, that they were acceptable from me; for they must unavoidably be received from somebody, unless a minister were omniscient—yet I soon had good reason to believe I was not designed for the man, whatever the original sin could be that made me incapable of such a trust, and which I now begin to suspect. Without direct answers to my proposals, how could I know whether I helped my friends elsewhere, or betrayed them contrary to my intentions! and accordingly I have for some time been very cautious ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... is or becomes plenary and lasting, that no one amongst us can be sure of obtaining it, and that its award, determined beforehand on high, forever remains for us a State secret. Hence the prolonged controversies on Predestination, Free-will and Original Sin, and the profound investigations on man before, during and after the Fall. Hence, also, the accepted solutions, not very conclusive and, if one pleases, contradictory, but practical, average and well calculated for maintaining mankind in faith and obedience, under the ecclesiastical and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Original Sin, Justification by Faith and Regeneration, clearly stated from Scripture and Reason, and vindicated from the Doctrines of the Methodists; with Remarks on Mr. Law's late Tract on New Birth. By Thomas Whiston, A.B. Printed for John ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... at all, I have already commented on. It is perhaps best left to the laughter of the gods and the sorrow of men. I would like, however, to point out that when Mr. O'Connor, with the kind help of his assistant editor, states, as a possible excuse for his original sin, that he and the members of his staff 'took refuge' in the belief that the verses in question might conceivably be some very early and useful work of mine, he and the members of his staff showed a lamentable ignorance of the nature of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... But then of course one would have to be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose there's no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs. Lynde says I'm full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But don't you think the trying so hard ought to count for something? Mrs. Allan is one of the naturally good ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... successors did Jesus Christ impart the power to baptize all nations. By baptism is man purified from original sin—from his own personal or actual sins, if there be any; there is infused into him habitual or justifying grace, accompanied by faith, hope, charity, as well as the gifts of the Holy Ghost; and he is made the adopted child of God. The efficient cause of such spiritual regeneration is Jesus Christ; ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... it, for the ignorance that conceals from us the snares which we should avoid is—after the evil inclination that leads us into them—man's greatest misfortune, and the most disastrous of the effects of original sin. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... mist." For "an infant cannot endure a companion to feed with him in a fountain of milk which is richly abounding and overflowing, although that companion be wholly destitute, and can take no other food but that." This is the Original Sin, inherited, innate, unacquired; for this are "babes span-long" to suffer, as the famous or infamous preacher declared. "Where, or at what time, was I ever innocent?" he cries, and hears no answer from "the dark backward and abysm" of the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... made that original sin is capable of explaining this unequal retribution; but then, ought not the very absurdity of the consequences due to such sin to justify one in refusing to examine this argument? What soul could admit that the innocent should be punished for the guilty? Does human justice, in spite ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... interpretation the purifications practised in the mysteries were believed to wipe out the hereditary impurity of a guilty ancestor who had aroused the wrath of heaven against his posterity, much as the original sin with which Adam's disobedience had stained the human race was to be wiped out. The custom observed by the votaries of Sabazius of dedicating votive hands which made the liturgic sign of benediction with the first three fingers extended ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... interest not a moral economy, 82. Satisfaction the root-value, and intelligence the elementary virtue, 82. Incapacity, 83. Overindulgence the first form of materialism, 84. It is due to lack of foresight, 85. Or to the complexity of interests, 86. Overindulgence as the original sin, 86. ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... state was certainly one of original sin, if these poems are to be believed. Every page in this volume is drenched with blood, and from this book, as from Gray's poems and the other Old Norse imitations of the time, a picture of fierceness and fearfulness was the only one possible. Percy intimates in his preface that Icelandic poetry ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... instance, when the Christian Endeavorers fought the question of prize-fight moving-picture shows and won out or when a Parkhurst fought bravely for a clean police force. Even if the world today does not vex itself so much as formerly about predestination, original sin, the "actual presence," or even the correct mental attitude to insure heaven hereafter, the churches may surely count it as a product of their work that the people do trust God more simply for the past and future, and are more in earnest about securing justice for the downtrodden ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." At any rate, the sinner has a better chance than the saint of being hereafter remembered. We, in whom original sin preponderates, find him easier to understand. He is near to us, clear to us. The saint is remote, dim. A very great saint may, of course, be remembered through some sheer force of originality in him; and then ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... our contemporaries, "with the exception of a penchant for petty peculations" the young offender "has always been a model girl, industrious and truthful," thus justifying the belief of the eminent specialist, that he could "wipe out the original sin" in her. But the child is mother to the woman, and those of us who have been gradually and conscientiously convinced of the total inadequacy of the Government's policy towards Ireland, cannot but recognise in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... man. Marching hour after hour through the solitary night, he had time to think. Dyke talked to him but little: said once, "P'raps 't was as well the parsons had wakened up, and was mixin' with other folks. Gettin' into camp 'ud show 'em original sin, he guessed. Not but what this war-work brought out good in a man. Makes 'em, or breaks 'em, ginerally." And then was silent. Gaunt caught the words. Yes,—it was better preachers should lay off the prestige of the cloth, and rough it like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... is my daughter Phillis, of whom I have already made passing mention. She is six years old, and appears to be compounded of about equal parts of angelic innocence and original sin. In her dealings with her fellow-creatures she exhibits all the sangfroid and self-possession that mark the modern child. She will be a "handful" some day, the Twins tell me, and they ought to know. However, pending the arrival of the time when she will begin to rend the hearts of young men, ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... much to say about original sin. This original sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance that every ...
— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant
... of the settlers whose careers in South Africa were destined to be cut short on the threshold. The two men had been earnestly religious, but, like all the rest of Adam's fallen race, were troubled with the effects of original sin. They had disputed hotly, and had ultimately quarrelled, on religious subjects on the voyage out. One of them died before he landed; the other was the man of whom Orpin now spoke. The sudden change in the demeanour of the brothers Skyd surprised as well as gratified Sandy ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... doctrine, a slight excess or deviation to one side or the other will precipitate a heresy. The Pelagians, who were refuted by St. Augustine, emphasised the efficacy of human effort and belittled the importance of supernatural grace. The Calvinists emphasised the degradation of man through Original Sin, and considered mankind so corrupt that the will was of no avail; and thus fell into the doctrine of predestination. It was upon the doctrine of grace according to St. Augustine that the Jansenists relied; and the Augustinus of Jansenius was presented ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... of us, has been obliged to face the various social problems that arise from original sin, but which vote-getters are pleased to ascribe to industrial progress. In our country, with a population of some thirty to the square mile, while in the kingdom of Saxony the density of the population is 830.6 ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... purifying atmosphere of a Vermont village, and went so far as to turn up their noses because he lived about the Opera House and she in Boston, close to the very heart of the Hub, as if any woman could get further away from original sin than that. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... seed, yet were his temptations such, as it appeared frequently, that he, that hath grace enough for many men, may have too little for himselfe; the treasure he had being but in an earthen vessel, and that equally defiled with original sin, as any other ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... cycle of causes as described in early Buddhism. Avidya is placed at the head of the group; yet this avidya should not be confused with the Vedanta avidya of S'a@nkara, as it is an avidya of the Buddhist type; it is not a cosmic power of illusion nor anything like a mysterious original sin, but it is within the range of earthly tangible reality. Yoga avidya is the ignorance of the four sacred truths, as we have in the sutra ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... according to the vocabulary of his class, "found grace" at the age of sixteen, while still in the spiritual state of "original sin" and the political one of Missouri. He had not indeed found it by persistent youthful seeking or spiritual insight, but somewhat violently and turbulently at a camp-meeting. A village boy, naturally gentle and impressible, with an original character,—limited, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... "Ah," he said, "original sin! There's nothing that can excuse the suffering of good people on earth. It is ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... printer to work; you must take the three quarters he brings you and at least make believe begin printing, and he will immediately go to work and finish up the whole; otherwise what with lectures and the original sin of laziness, it will all be indefinitely postponed. I want to make a crisis that he shall feel that now is the accepted time, and that this must be finished ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... convey a flagrant denial of original sin, and I cannot listen to such an argument," Mr. Medlicott flashed, his anger now at white heat. "You would do away with a whole principle of ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... he observes very beautifully, "that the title Measure for Measure is in reality a misnomer, the sense of the whole being properly the triumph of mercy over strict justice:" but it is also true that there is "an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it."[12] Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our sympathy. But though she triumphs in the conclusion, her triumph is not produced in a pleasing manner. There are too many disguises and tricks, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... of original sin," Hallam named it, advising her to give over the task of purification. "You've sprinkled pounds of chloride, splashed whitewash galore, swept and scrubbed and worn yourself out, and it's hopeless. Well, I never heard that any ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... there is your way—the world lies before you, so troop, thou antiquated Eve, thou original sin! Hold, yonder is some fellow skulking; perhaps it is Antonio—go to him, d'ye hear, and tell him to make you amends, and as he has got you turned away, tell him I say it is but just he should take you himself; ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... at times penetrated with the spirit of true objective exhibition. Corneille gives us a masterly picture of the Spaniards in the Cid; and this is conceivable enough, for he drew his materials from the fountain-head. With the exception of the original sin of gallantry, he succeeded also pretty well with the Romans: of one part of their character, at least, he had a tolerable conception, their predominating patriotism, and unbending pride of liberty, and the magnanimity of their political sentiments. All this, it is true, is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin, committed by another ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Audrey, how you startled me! I was deep in original sin, I believe. The Blakes? Oh, I told young Blake to come up to dinner to-night; I want Michael to see him. Very well. Give my respects to Mrs. Blake; and if there be any service we can render her, be sure you offer it;' and Dr. Ross walked ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... yes, I will!" cried the little black delinquent, the full tide of original sin taking an unfair advantage of her excitement ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... find many resemblances to the Christian ordinance of baptism: the pouring of the water on the head, the putting of the fingers in the mouth, the touching of the breast, the new birth, and the washing away of the original sin. The Christian rite, we know, was not a Christian invention, but was borrowed from ancient times, from the great storehouse of Asiatic traditions ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... thing that struck me when I saw him, and it strikes me more and more, was, how could any one have got the idea of original sin? The people who believe in it can never have looked into a baby's eyes. I love to watch them, and sometimes fancy I can see a faint shade of reminiscence in them, as if he had still some memories ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... action or calculated inaction of the character above described is not to attribute to Irishmen any special measure of original sin. In every case where the executive power is divorced from the ultimate legislative authority such divergencies are likely to recur; and more than one instance may be found in our own recent history. In 1859 the Canadian Government warned the Home Government ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... altogether alien from Him. He is conceived in iniquity and brought forth in sin, and sin is far removed from the way of salvation. Man is condemned before his very birth. Damnatus antequam natus, says St. Bernard. He is born in the darkness of original sin and in the region of the shadow of death. But, being born again in the waters of Baptism, in which he is clothed with the habit of charity, the fire of the holy love of God is enkindled in him. Henceforth his real life, the life of grace and of spiritual growth, depends ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... an old friend of mine to me not long ago—'all my theology is out of Thomas Goodwin to the Ephesians.' Well, I find Thomas Goodwin saying in that great book that self is the very quintessence of original sin; and, again, he says, study self-love for a thousand years and it is the top and the bottom of original sin; self is the sin that dwelleth in us and that doth most easily beset us. Now, that is just what Academicus and Theophilus and Theogenes ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... preliminary SYMPTOMS of that dismal business. "As to the primary CAUSES of it," says one of my Authorities, "these lie deep, deep almost as those of Original Sin. But the proximate causes seem to me to have been these two: FIRST, That the Jesuit-Priests and Principalities had vowed and resolved to have, by God's help and by the Devil's (this was the peculiarity of it), Europe made Orthodox again: and then SECONDLY, The fact that a Max ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... hooligan. But no boy wants to be a hooligan unless he has a strong rebellion against authority. No boy is destructive if he is free to be constructive. I think that the difference between Mac and myself is this: he believes in original sin, while I believe ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... the matter by declaring: "So important is it to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the Church take this as its starting point. Were this article taken away there would be no original sin, the promise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be destroyed." The Westminster divines in drawing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as necessary to believe that all things visible and invisible ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... sprinkled with water when their names were given to them. This is certainly true, though the statement that they believed that the process purified them from original sin is probably a monkish fiction. Water was consecrated by the priests, and was supposed thus to acquire magical qualities. In the coronation of kings, anointing was part of the ceremony, as well as the use of holy water. The festival of All Souls' Day reminds ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... a hard saying for parents, and not a good precept for the young, but there is solid truth in it and a bit of common-sense too, for it is best to get the original sin out ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... recent horrid murder at the Castle, remains at large—" the rest but repeated the advertisement of Tuesday. "At large!" I set down the paper and turned to my landlady's library. It consisted of Derham's "Physico- and Astro-Theology," "The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin," by one Taylor, D.D., "The Ready Reckoner or Tradesman's Sure Guide," and "The Path to the Pit delineated, with Twelve Engravings on Copper-plate." For distraction I fell to pacing the room, and rehearsing those remembered tags of Latin verse concerning which M. de Culemberg had long ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... well-formed human mothers and children. The palontologist might tell us if some such case of ischial approximation by natural mechanical causes has not caused the probable extinction of whole genera of vertebrates. "If we are to believe that for our original sin the pangs and labor of childbirth were increased, and if we also believe in the disproportionate contraction of the pelvic space being an efficient cause of the same difficulties of parturition, the logical inference is that man's original sin consisted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... this grace: is it not easy to be perceived, that he would always have it if he was well educated; if he was honestly governed? There cannot well exist a wilder or a stranger system of morals, than that of the theologians who attribute all moral evil to an original sin, and all moral good to the pardon of it. It ought not to excite surprise if such a system is of no efficacy; what can reasonably be the result of such an hypothesis? Yet, notwithstanding the supposed, the boasted free-agency of man, it is insisted that ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... mass, they see it governed by some force that is not really human nature, but merely nature "red in tooth and claw," a process become a malignant goddess, who forces mankind to act contrary to their own desires, contrary even to their own interests. She has taken the place for us of the old original sin; and the belief in her is far more primitive than the belief in original sin. She is in fact but a modern name for all the malignant idols that savages have worshipped with sacrifices of blood and tears that they did ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... transported out of myself, and seized with the notion of writing a book—but what it should be about, I could not settle to my satisfaction. Sometimes I thought of an orthodox poem, like PARADISE LOST, by John Milton, wherein I proposed to treat more at large of Original Sin, and the great mystery of Redemption; at others, I fancied that a connect treatise on the efficacy of Free Grace would be more taking; but although I made divers beginnings in both subjects, some new thought ever came into my head, and the whole summer passed ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... hollow gaiety sounds almost cruel. In those days children were always regarded as if, to quote Mark Twain, "every one being born with an equal amount of original sin, the pressure on the square inch must needs be greater in a baby." Poor little original sinners, how very scurvily the world of books and picture-makers treated you less than a century ago! Life ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... were—and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was good. There stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks' work on the girders of the three middle piers—his bridge, raw and ugly as original sin, but pukka—permanent—to endure when all memory of the builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, had perished. Practically, ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... nothing else pleases them so well as dolls. We once tried the little yearlings with rattles, which we thought, it being noisy nuisances, would please them better; but save us! If any one doubts the doctrine of original sin and total depravity, they should have seen the three year-old babies fling down their rattles in a passion and go for the other babies' dolls, to seize and take them by force and violence; and the corresponding rage and resistance of ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... dyspeptic and evangelical man, who takes the gloomiest view of mankind and their prospects, and thinks the immense sale of the 'Pickwick Papers,' recently completed, one of the strongest proofs of original sin. Unfortunately, though Mr. Duke was not burdened with a family, his yearly expenditure was apt considerably to exceed his income; and the unpleasant circumstances resulting from this, together with heavy meat-breakfasts, may probably have contributed to his desponding views ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... can be proved; important things have to be felt and expressed. That is why people with things of importance to say tend to write poems rather than moral treatises. I make my critics a present of that stick. The original sin of dogmatists is that they are not content to feel and express but must needs invent an intellectual concept to stand target for their emotion. From the nature of their emotions they infer an object the existence of which they find themselves ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... farthing, which they never could pay. No. It would look to him as God's school- house, God's reformatory, in which he is training and chastening and correcting the souls of men, that he may deliver them from the ruin and misery which sin brings on them, both the original sin which is born in them and the actual sin which they commit. Then God appears to him a gracious and merciful father. He can see a blessed meaning and a wholesome use in all human suffering; and he can break out, as the Psalmist does in this glorious ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... state of unrest will be general," said Gourou, with perfect good-nature. "It will go very hard with Graustark if we fail to find her. And now, to return to our original sin: What are we to do about the ambitious Mr. Blithers? He is on my ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon |
