ON ORIGINAL SIN.

JEREMY TAYLOR

Is there any such thing? That is not the question. For it is a fact acknowledged on all hands almost: and

or carnal mind) becomes the sophistic principle, the wily tempter to evil by counterfeit good; the pander and advocate of the passions and appetites: ever in league with, and always first applying to, the desire, as the inferior nature in man, the woman in our humanity; and through the desire prevailing on the will (the manhood, virtus) against the command of the universal reason, and against the light of reason in the will itself. This essential inherence of an intelligential principle

in the will

or rather the will itself thus considered, the Greeks expressed by an appropriate word,

This but little differing from Origen's interpretation or hypothesis, is supported and confirmed by the very old tradition of the homo androgynus, that is, that the original man, the individual first created, was bi-sexual: a chimera, of which, and of many other mythological traditions, the most probable explanation is, that they were originally symbolical glyphs or sculptures, and afterwards translated into words, yet literally, that is into the common names of the several figures and images composing the symbol; while the symbolic meaning was left to be decyphered as before, and sacred to the initiate. As to the abstruseness and subtlety of the conceptions, this is so far from being an objection to this oldest gloss on this venerable relic of Semetic, not impossibly ante-diluvian, philosophy, that to those who have carried their researches farthest back into Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian antiquity, it will seem a strong confirmation. Or, if I chose to address the Sceptic in the language of the day, I might remind him, that as alchemy went before chemistry, and astrology before astronomy, so in all countries of civilized man have metaphysics outrun common sense. Fortunately for us that they have so! For from all we know of the unmetaphysical tribes of New Holland and elsewhere, a common sense not preceded by metaphysics is no very enviable possession. O be not cheated, my youthful reader, by this shallow prate! The creed of true common sense is composed of the results of scientific meditation, observation, and experiment, as far as they are generally intelligible. It differs therefore in different countries, and in every different age of the same country. The common sense of a people is the moveable index of its average judgment and information. Without metaphysics 197 even those who will not confess it in words, confess it in their complaints. For my part I cannot but confess that to be, which I feel and groan under, and by which all the world is miserable.

science could have had no language, and common sense materials.

But to return to my subject. It cannot be denied, that the Mosaic narrative thus interpreted gives a just and faithful exposition of the birth and parentage and successive moments of phenomenal sin (peccatum phaenomenon; crimen primarium et commune), that is, of sin as it Reveals itself in time, and is an immediate object of consciousness. And in this sense most truly does the Apostle assert, that in Adam we all fell. The first human sinner is the adequate representative of all his successors. And with no less truth may it be said, that it is the same Adam that falls ill every man, and from the same reluctance to abandon the too dear and undivorceable Eve: and the same Eve tempted by the same serpentine and perverted understanding, which, framed originally to be the interpreter of the reason and the ministering angel of the spirit, is henceforth sentenced and bound over to the service of the animal nature, its needs and its cravings, dependent on the senses for all its materials, with the world of sense for its appointed sphere: Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. I have shown elsewhere, that as the Instinct of the mere intelligence differs in degree not in kind, and circumstantially, not essentially, from the vis vitae, or vital power in this assimilative and digestive functions of the stomach and other organs of nutrition, even so the understanding in itself, and distinct from the reason and conscience, differs in degree only from the instinct in the animal. It is still but a beast of the field, though more subtle than any beast of the field, and therefore in its corruption and perversion cursed above any--a pregnant word! of which, if the reader wants an exposition or paraphrase, he may find one more than two thousand years old among the fragments of the poet Menander. (See Cumberland's Observer, No. CL, vol. iii, p. 289, 290). This is the understanding which in its every thought is to be brought under obedience to faith; which it can scarcely fail to be, if only it be first subjected to the reason, of which spiritual faith is even the blossoming and the fructifying process. For it is indifferent whether I say that faith is the interpenetration of the reason and the will, or that it is at once the assurance and the commencement of the approaching union between the reason and the intelligible realities, the living and substantial truths, that are even in life its most proper objects.

Adam turned his back on the sun, and dwelt in the dark and the shadow. He sinned, and brought evil into his supernatural endowments, and lost the sacrament and instrument of immortality, the tree of life in the

I have thus put the reader in possession of my own opinions respecting the narrative in Gen. ii, and iii.

Or I might ask with Augustine, Why not both! Why not at once symbol and history! Or rather how should it be otherwise! Must not of necessity the first man be a symbol of mankind in the fullest force of the word symbol, rightly defined;--a sign included in the idea which it represents;--that is, an actual part chosen to represent the whole, as a lip with a chin prominent is a symbol of man; or a lower form or species of a higher in the same kind: thus magnetism is the symbol of vegetation, and of the vegetative and reproductive power in animals; the instinct of the ant tribe or the bee is a symbol of the human understanding. And this definition of the word is of great practical importance, inasmuch as the symbolical is hereby distinguished toto genere from the allegoric and metaphorical. But, perhaps, parables, allegories, and allegorical or typical applications, are incompatible with inspired Scripture! The writings of St. Paul are sufficient proof of the contrary. Yet I readily acknowledge that allegorical applications are one thing, and allegorical interpretations another: and that where there is no ground for supposing such a sense to have entered into the intent and purpose of the sacked penman, they are not to be commended. So far indeed am I from entertaining any predilection for them, or any favourable opinion of the Rabbinical commentators and traditionists, from whom the fashion was derived, that in carrying it as far as our own Church has carried it, I follow her judgment, not my own. But in the first place, I know but one other part of the Scriptures not universally held to be parabolical, which, not without the sanction of great authorities, I am disposed to regard as an apologue or parable, namely, the book of Jonah; the reasons for believing the Jewish Nation collectively to be therein impersonated seeming to me unanswerable. Secondly, as to the chapters now in question--that such interpretation is at least tolerated by our Church, I have the word of one of her most zealous champions. And lastly, it is my deliberate and conscientious conviction, that the proofs of such having been the intention of the inspired writer or compiler of the book of Genesis lie on the face of the narrative itself. 199 centre of the garden.** He then fell under the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate and ignorant soul. His sin made him sickly, his sickness made him peevish: his sin left him ignorant, his ignorance made him foolish and unreasonable. His sin left him to his nature: and by nature, whoever was to be born at all, was to be born a child, and to do before he could understand, and to be bred under laws to which he was always bound, but which could not always be exacted; and he was to choose when he could not reason, and had passions most strong when he had his understanding most weak; and the more need he had of a curb, the less strength he had to use it! And this being the case of all the world, what was every man's evil, became all men's greater evil; and though alone it was very bad, yet when they came together it was made much worse. Like ships in a storm, every one alone hath enough to do to outride it; but when they meet, besides the evils of the storm, they find the intolerable calamity of their mutual concussion; and every ship that is ready to be oppressed with the tempest, is a worse tempest to every vessel against which it is violently dashed. So it is in mankind. Every man hath evil enough of his own, and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own reason and conscience. But when he hath parents and children, friends and enemies, buyers and sellers, lawyers and clients, a family and a neighbourhood--then it is that every man dashes against another, and one relation requires what another denies; and when one speaks another will contradict him; and that which is well

** Rom. v, 14.--Who were they who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression; and over whom notwithstanding, death reigned? 200 spoken is sometimes innocently mistaken; and that upon a good cause produces an evil effect; and by these, and ten thousand other concurrent causes, man is made more than most miserable.