goodness and abhor sin, yet I let go that which I love, and do that which I hate. I do not accuse Thee, O Lord, for having created me with this inclination; but I confess before Thee my frailty, and open unto Thee my passions. I confess, and say, and cry out, and declare, that the man of dust cannot be justified but by Thy mercy, and through Thy compassion." From the Warda "on Repentance."
§ 7. "Thou knowest that in me there is no good thing, and that I do not merit grace. O Thou Righteous one, in whom there is no sin, bestow upon me Thy grace." From the Warda, as above.
See also Appendix B. Part II. c. 3.
REMARKS.
There is one passage in the Appendix referred to which taken alone seems to militate against the doctrine contained in this Article. It runs as follows: "And their [Adam and Eve's] children, also, because they walked in the self-same way of transgression, bound more tightly the yoke of the devil, and of death, on their necks; and these forgat their Creator, and walked after their own heart's lusts, and the desires of their own minds, and nourished iniquity, and strengthened rebellion,—who, being past feeling, gave themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.'" The phrase "their children, also, because they walked," &c. savours at first sight of Pelagianism, inasmuch as it represents the sin of the offspring of Adam to have consisted in following the disobedience of their father, not that they were born with a vicious inclination. But the whole tenour of the other extracts, (and many more such-like might be adduced,) enables us to put a very different construction upon the passage, and to understand it as conveying the idea, that by their own wilful transgression of the law of God the offspring of Adam "bound the yoke of the devil, and of death, more tightly on their necks."29
No language can more forcibly declare the utter corruption of human nature than the following, quoted under Article II. § 6, par. b. and p. "After the similitude of His hidden likeness had become corrupt, and the image of His mysterious Self had been utterly ruined, and after the model of His own
