NOTE C.

The Greek Church believes the Blessed Virgin to have been conceived in original sin.

On this subject too, we are one with the Greek Church, and it is even, strange, that of all the Bishops who returned answers, one only mentioned the Greeks as likely to be kept away by this decision of the Latin Church apart, and he only, summarily to overrule the objection as of less account than if it had been the Protestants.

In regard to the belief of the Russian Church, my friend the Rev. G. Williams has furnished me with the following references. No exception is made, as though the Blessed Virgin had been exempt from the transmission of original sin to “all who are naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam.”

“1. Confessio orthodoxa of 1642, ‘3, which has very great authority in. the Church.”

“The sin from our first parents is the transgression of Divine law given in Paradise to our forefather Adam, when it was said to him, ‘Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat; but in the day that ye eat thereof ye shall surely die.’ This original (propatorikon) sin passed from Adam to the whole human race, since we were all contained at that time in Adam. And thus through the one Adam sin passed to us all. Therefore we are all conceived and born with this sin, as the Holy Scripture teaches, ‘By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed unto all men because in him all sinned.’ This original sin can be done away by no repentance, but only by the grace of God. But it is abolished by the dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Flesh, and the shedding of His precious Blood. And this takes place through the mystery of holy Baptism; for whoso is not baptized, he is not free from sin, but is a child of wrath and of everlasting punishment, according to what is said (John iii. 5), ‘Verily I say unto you, unless a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” — P. iii., qu. xx., Kimmel, Libri Symb. Eccl. Orient., pp. 272, 273.

In the Acts of the Synod at Giasion, in condemning Cyril Lucar for holding that “all had been guilty of actual mortal sin,” it professed that the teaching of the Church was that none was exempt from original sin.

“The sixth, that he includeth all human nature under sin, not only original (as our church confesseth), but also under that which springeth from it, being of free choice and deadly (troairetikhn kai qanasimon), which he calls the fruits of that, and exempting none from this (the deadly sin which maketh him who doeth it condemned), neither him who is the greatest among those born of woman, nor her the ‘blessed among women,1 the spotless and Ever-Virgin Mary, or certain Patriarchs or Prophets and Apostles, is condemned as alien from our faith.”—§ 6. Ib. pp. 410, 411.

“The Confession of Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem: ‘We believe that the first man, created by God, fell in Paradise, neglecting the Divine command: he obeyed the deceitful counsel of the serpent; and that thence, by succession, flowed original sin; so that no one is born according to the flesh who does not bear this burden, and who does not feel its fruits in this present hour. The fruits, we say, and burden, not sin, such as ungodliness, blasphemy, murder, adultery, fornication, hatred, and whatever else is gendered by wicked choice, not by nature, contrary to the Divine will. For many, both of the Patriarchs and Prophets, and very many others, both under the shadow [the Law], and the truth [the Gospel], the divine forerunner

(S. John Baptist), and especially the Mother of the Divine Word, the Ever-Virgin Mary, were not tempted by such and the like offences, but only [suffered] those things which the Divine righteousness assigned as punishment to men for the transgression, as the weariness of toil, afflictions, bodily weaknesses, pangs of childbirth, laborious life in our pilgrimage, and lastly, bodily death.’”—Decr. vi. pp. 432, 433.

A Russian layman, in vindicating the Greek Church on occasion of a “mandement” of the Archbishop of Paris, says remarkably:

“This last time has seen an obligatory decree on a dogmatic question emanate from the Pontifical throne. It is then an act completely ecclesiastic in the highest sense of the word; and, as being the only one for many years, it deserves special attention. This decree announces to all Christendom, and to ages to come, that the Blessed Mother of the Saviour was exempt from all, even original sin. But the Holy Virgin, did she not undergo death, like the rest of mankind? She did. And death, is it not (as the Spirit of God said by the Apostle) the penalty of sin? (lit. the wages of sin?) It is so no longer: by a Papal decree it has become independent of sin; it has become a simple accident of nature, and all Christendom is convicted of falsehood. Or the Blessed Virgin, has she undergone death like Christ, making herself sin for others? We should have two Saviours; and Christendom would again be convicted of falsehood. Lo, how Divine mysteries manifest themselves to the Roman Communion; lo, the heritage which she bequeathed to futurity!”—Quelques Mots sur les Communions occidentales (Leipz., 1855), pp. 88, 84.

THE END.