Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent/Session V/Original Sin

by the Council of Trent

SESSION THE FIFTH.

Celebrated on the seventeenth day of the month of June, 1546.

DECREE CONCERNING ORIGINAL SIN.

That our Catholic faith, without which it is impossible to please God,^[1] may, errors being cleared away, continue in its own perfect and undefiled integrity, and that the Christian people may not be carried about with every wind of doctrine;^[2] whereas that old serpent,^[3] the perpetual enemy of the human race, amongst the very many evils by which the Church of God is in these our times disturbed, has also stirred up not only new, but even old dissensions touching original sin, and the remedy thereof; the sacred and holy, œcumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the three same legates of the Apostolic See presiding therein,—wishing now to come to the recalling of the erring, and the confirming of the wavering, following the testimonies of the sacred Scriptures, and of the holy fathers, and of the most approved councils, and the judgment and consent of the Church itself, ordains, confesses, and declares these things touching the said original sin:—

1. If any one does not confess that the first man, Adam, when he had transgressed the commandment of God in Paradise, immediately lost, the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted; and that he incurred, through the offence of such prevarication, the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, which God had previously threatened to him,^[4] and, together with death, captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil,^[5] and that the entire Adam, through that offence of prevarication, was changed as respects the body and soul, for the worse; let him be anathema.

2. If any one asserts, that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity; and that he lost for himself alone, and not for us also, the holiness and justice, received of God, which he lost; or that he, defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death, and pains of the body, into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul, let him be anathema; inasmuch as he contradicts the apostle, who says: By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.^[6]

3. If any one asserts that this sin of Adam, which in its origin is one, and being transfused into all by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his own, is taken away either by the powers of human nature, or by any other remedy than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ,^[7] who hath reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us righteousness, sanctification, and redemption;^[8] or, if he denies that the same merit of Jesus Christ is applied, both to adults and to infants, by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church; let him be anathema: For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must he saved.^[9] Whence that voice: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sins of the world;^[10] and that other,—As many of you as have been baptized have put on Christ.^[11]

4. If any one denies that infants, newly born from their mothers' wombs, even though they be sprung from baptized parents, are to be baptized; or says that they are baptized indeed for the remission of sins,^[12] but that they draw nought of original sin from Adam, which has need to be expiated by the laver of regeneration,^[13] for the obtaining life everlasting,—whence it follows, as a consequence, that in them the form of baptism, for the remission of sins, is understood to be not true, but false,—let him be anathema. For that which the apostle has said, By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned,^[14] is not to be understood otherwise than as the Catholic Church spread everywhere hath always understood it. For, by reason of this rule of faith, from a tradition of the apostles, even infants, who could not as yet in themselves commit any sin, are for this cause truly baptized for the remission of sins, that in them that which they have contracted by generation, may be cleansed away by regeneration. For, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.^[15]

5. If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or even asserts that all that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away, but says that it is only erased,^[16] or not imputed,—let him be anathema. For, in those who are born again, God hates nothing, because, There is no condemnation to those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism into death;^[17] who walk not according to the flesh, but, putting off the old man, and putting on the new one, who is created according to God,^[18] are made innocent, immaculate, pure, harmless, and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ;^[19] so that there is nothing whatever to retard them from entrance into heaven. But this holy synod confesses and is sensible, that in the baptized there remains concupiscence, or an incentive [to sin];"^[20] which, since it is left for us to strive against, cannot injure those who consent not, but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ; yea, he who shall have striven lawfully shall he crowned.^[21] This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin,^[22] the holy synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin, as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is of sin, and inclines to sin. And if any one is of a contrary opinion, let him be anathema. This same holy synod doth nevertheless declare, that it is not in its intention to include in this decree, where original sin is treated of, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary, the mother of God; but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV.,^[23] of happy memory, are to be observed, under the pains contained in the said constitutions, which it renews.

 

1. Heb. xi. 6.
2. Ephes. iv. 14.
3. Gen. ii.
4. Gen. ii. 17; iii. 17.
5. Heb. ii. 14.
6. Rom. v. 12.
7. Ephes. ii. 13; Coloss. ii. 13; 1 Tim. ii. 5, sq.
8. 1 Cor. i. 30.
9. Acts iv. 12.
10. John i. 29.
11. Gal. iii. 27.
12. Acts ii. 38.
13. See Tit. iii. 5.
14. Rom. v. 12.
15. John iii. 5.
16. Radi, to be scratched out, a metaphor taken from the ancient mode of writing, in which the flat end of the style rubbed out the marks which the sharp end had made upon a waxen tablet.
17. Rom. viii. 1; vi. 4.
18. Ephes. iv. 22, 24.
19. Rom. viii. 17.
20. Vel fomitem. I cannot help thinking this a mistake for "velut fomitem."
21. 2 Tim. ii. 5.
22. Rom. vi. 12; vii. 8.
23. Comp. Sess. vi. can. xxiii.