Confession of Helvetia.
“We take sin to be that natural corruption of man derived or spread from those our parents unto us all; through which we, being not only drowned in evil concupiscences and clean turned away from God, but prone to all evil, full of all wickedness, distrust, contempt and hatred of God, can do no good of ourselves—no, not so much as think of any.”
Confession of Belgia.
“We believe that, through the disobedience of Adam, the sin that is called original hath been spread and poured into all mankind. Now original sin is a corruption of the whole nature, and an hereditary evil wherewith even the very infants in their [pg 023]mother's womb are polluted: the which also, as a most noisome root, doth branch out most abundantly all kinds of sin in men, and is so filthy and abominable in the sight of God, that it alone is sufficient to the condemnation of all mankind.”
Confession of Bohemia.
“Original sin is naturally engendered in us and hereditary, wherein we are all conceived and born into this world.... Let the force of this hereditary destruction be acknowledged and judged of by the guilt and fault involved, by our proneness and declination to evil, by our evil nature, and by the punishment which is laid upon it.
“Actual sins are the fruits of original sin, and do burst out within, without, privily and openly, by the powers of man; that is, by all that ever man is able to do, and by his members, transgressing all those things which God commandeth and forbiddeth, and also running into blindness and errors worthy to be punished with all kinds of damnation.”
French Confession (Protestant).
“Man's nature is become altogether defiled, and being blind in spirit and corrupt in heart, hath utterly lost all his original integrity. We believe that all the offspring of Adam are infected with this contagion, which we call original sin, that is a stain spreading itself by propagation. We believe that this stain is indeed sin, because that it maketh every man (not so much as those little ones excepted which as yet lie hid in their mother's womb) deserving of eternal death before God. We also affirm that this stain, even after baptism, is in nature sin.”
Moravian Confession.