Annotation CCXXXVIII

”In whom all have sinned.” — Romans 5:12

Whether the sin of Adam passed to posterity not by propagation, but by imitation.

The author of the commentaries on Paul which are inscribed with the name of Jerome [pseudo-Jerome], in the interpretation of this chapter, is believed to be not far from the error of Pelagius. For he teaches that the sin of the first parents emanated to [their] posterity not by the propagation of [their] corrupted origin, but only by [their] example and imitation — and not indeed to all, but only to those who sinned after the likeness of the prevarication of

—[of Adam] sinned of their own accord. Which assertion the author himself expressed in these words: “THEREFORE into this world sin entered, and through sin death, by example or pattern [form]. And so death passed into all men, while they thus sin and die in like manner. For it did not remain [i.e. hold sway] in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — of whom the Lord says, ‘They all live.’ But here [Paul] therefore says that all [are] dead, because in so great a multitude of sinners, the few just [men] will not be excepted. As [it says] there: ‘There is none that doeth good, there is not even to one’; and, ‘Every man [is] a liar.’ Or, [death] passed into all those, because they lived by a human, not a heavenly, rite [manner of life]. Again, the Apostle here, by death, signifies the death of the soul, by which Adam, prevaricating, died — as the prophet says: ‘The soul that hath sinned, itself shall die.’ And then the Apostle adds, ‘In whom all have sinned’ — that is, in that [respect] that all have sinned, they sin after the example of Adam.” These [things] the author has in the exposition of the fifth chapter. But afterwards, in the exposition of the seventh chapter of the same epistle, upon that [verse], “Without the law sin was dead,” he descends more openly into the same opinion, writing thus: “LIKEWISE, if, when the law was not, sin was dead, they rave [are mad] who assert that sin comes to us from Adam by propagation [per traducem]. Therefore he says here, ‘Sin is dead,’ because in infants, who are without law, it does not live — that is, it is committed with impunity. For when an infant reviles [his] parents, it seems to be sin, yet not living, but dead. For although a boy sin, the sin is dead in him, because he is not subject to the law.” This error too, and this interpretation of the apostolic sentence, are condemned by the decree of the African Council, which in chapter 77 of its definitions is had in these plain words: “WHOSOEVER shall say that little ones draw nothing of original sin from Adam, which is to be expiated by the laver of regeneration — whence in them the form of baptism unto the remission of sins is understood [to be] not true, but false — let him be anathema. For [that] which the Apostle says is not to be understood otherwise — ‘By one man sin entered, and through sin death, and it passed into all men, in whom all have sinned’ — save as the catholic Church, everywhere diffused, has always understood [it].” To this decree subscribes the sacrosanct Synod of Trent, session five, canon 2, whose words are these: “IF ANYONE asserts that the prevarication of Adam harmed himself alone, and not his offspring; and [that] the sanctity and justice received from God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us also; or [that] he, defiled through the sin of disobedience, transfused into the whole human race the death and the punishments of the body only, and not also sin, which is the death of the soul: let him be anathema — since he contradicts the Apostle, saying, ‘By one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed into all men, in whom all have sinned.’”