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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

I.—Of Sin

I.—Of Sin.

No one can read the six paragraphs of Chapter VI. of the Westminster Confession on the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof, and compare these with the proposed Article on Sin in the New Zealand Creed, without page 36 perceiving how masterly, comprehensive, well-knit together, solemn, and strong are the former, and how feeble, mild contracted, and ambiguous is the latter. The Westminster Confession explains what the New Zealand Article omits—viz., how sin entered into the world, viz., through the temptation by Satan and fall of our first parents. Indeed, the New Zealand Article leaves it open for anyone to deny this. The Westminster Confession declares that as a consequence of this sin our first parents lost their original righteousness and became utterly corrupt and defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. The New Zealand Article passes over this except in so far as it may be supposed to be included in what is affirmed about all men. The Westminster Confession asserts that the moral corruption of our first parents transmitted itself to all their ordinary descendants; the New Zealand Article appears to ignore this and to suggest that each individual sinks into a state of sin only through his own act of disobedience to the will of God. The Westminster Confession holds that this inherited evil nature, with which every man comes into the world, in other words, original sin, is the root of all actual transgressions; the New Zealand Article, I should say, while postulating nothing about this, permits original sin to be denied, and the doctrine to be embraced that men are born innocent, and do not become sinful till they actually sin. The Westminster Confession teaches that original, as well as actual sin, exposes men to condemnation; the New Zealand Article holds, or seems to hold, that only after each individual has sinned does he fall under just condemnation.

Whether the theology of the Westminster Confession on this subject be Scripture or not, the least observant reader can perceive that the New Zealand Article constitutes a wide departure from it.