Jeremy Taylor week: Unum Necessarium (III) Original Sin "did great hurt to us"

If, as we have seen, Unum Necessarium rejects the Augustinian assertion that humanity experiences eternal damnation because Adam's sin is imputed to us - as "properly, formally, and inherently a sin" - how, then, does Taylor understand Original Sin?

The issue, of course, is not the truth of Original Sin.  As Taylor states:

the question is not whether there be any such thing as Original Sin; for it is certain, and confessed on all hands almost. For my part, I cannot but confess that to be which I feel, and groan under, and by which all the World is miserable ... It is not therefore intended, nor affirmed, that there is no such thing as Original Sin; for it is certain, and affirmed by all Antiquity, upon many grounds of Scripture, that Adam sinned, and his Sin was personally his, but derivatively ours; that is, it did great hurt to us, to our bodies directly, to our souls indirectly and accidentally.

To state the obvious, therefore, Taylor is not denying Original Sin.  He is, however, rejecting the following account of Original Sin:

But concerning the sin of Adam, tragical things are spoken; it destroyed his original righteouſness, and lost it to us for ever; it corrupted his nature, and corrupted ours, and brought upon him, and not him only, but on us also who thought of no such thing, an inevitable necessity of sinning, making it as natural to us to sin as to be hungry, or to be sick and die; and the consequent of these things is saddest of all, we are born enemies of God, sons of wrath, and heirs of eternal damnation.

It is this account of Original Sin which he is revising:

In the meditation of these sad stories I shall separate the certain from the uncertain, that which is revealed from that which is presum'd, that which is reasonable from that which makes too bold reflections upon God's honour, and the reputation of his justice and his goodness.

At the heart of Taylor's account of Original is our loss, because of Adam's sin, of communion with the Tree of Life:

Adam's sin was punish'd by an expulsion out of Paradise, in which was a Tree appointed to be the cure of diseases and a conservatory of life. There was no more told as done but this, and its proper consequents. He came into a land less blessed, a land which bore thistles and briars easily, and fruits with difficulty, so that he was forc'd to sweat hard for his bread; and this also (I cannot say did descend, but) must needs be the condition of his children who were left to live so, and in the same place ... And thus death came in, not by any new sentence or change of nature: for man was created mortal; and if Adam had not sinned, he should have been immortal by grace, that is, by the use of the Tree of life; and now being driven from the place where the Tree grew, was left in his own natural constitution, that is, to be sick and die without that remedy ... It was a punishment of Adam's sin; because by his sin humane Nature became disrob’d of their preternatural immortality, and therefore upon that account they die; but as it related to the persons, it was not a punishment, not an evil inflicted for their sin, or any guiltiness of their own properly so called. 

Or, in Taylor's own pithy summary, "Nature makes us miserable and imperfect, but not criminal".  Original Sin is privation, not damnation. We have, because of Adam's sin, lost our Original Righteousness and our nature is now characterised by Concupiscence, defined by Taylor as "the first motions and inclination to sin":

Original Sin is not our Sin properly, not inherent in us, but is only imputed to us, so as to bring evil effects upon us: For that which is inherent in us, is a consequent only of Adam's Sin, but of itself no Sin; for there being but two things affirmed to be the constituent parts of Original Sin, the want of Original Righteousness, and Concupiscence, neither of these can be a sin us, but a punishment and a consequent of Adam's sin they may be ... thus it was, that in him we are all sinners; that is, his sin is reckoned to us so as to bring evil upon us; because we were born of him, and consequently put into the same natural state where he was left after his sin, no otherwise than as Children born of a bankrupt Father are also miserable, not that they are guilty of their Father's sin, or that it is imputed so as to involve them in the guilt, but it is derived upon them, and reckoned to evil events; the very nature of birth and derivation from him infers it.

As "children born of a bankrupt father" we do not repent of our first father's sins, but of those we commit in the environment which that first sin has placed us:

But our share of Adam's sin, either being in us no sin at all, or else not to be avoided or amended, it cannot be the matter of repentance ...  As Adam was not bound to repent of the sins of all his posterity, so neither are we tied to repent of his sins. Neither did I ever see in any ancient Office or forms of Prayer, publick or private, any prayer of humiliation prescrib'd for Original Sin. They might deprecate the evil consequents, but never confess themselves guilty of the formal sin.

And so at the Last Judgement, we are judged not for Adam's sin but for our own:

there is in holy Scripture no sign of it, nor intimation, that at the day of Judgment, Christ shall say to any, Go ye cursed Sons of Adam into everlaſting fire, because your Father sinn'd; and tho' I will pardon millions of sins which men did chuse and delight in, yet I will severely exact this of you, which you never did chuse, nor could delight in: This I say is not likely to be the event of things, and in the wise and merciful dispensation of God, especially since Jesus Chriſt himself (so far as appears) never spake one word of it, there is not any tittle of it in all the four Gospels; it is a thing of which no warning was or could be given to any of Adam's children.

This does not at all deny the reality of Original Sin, maintained by Taylor "against the Pelagians":

That therefore which I shall chuse to say is this, that the Doctrine of Original Sin, as I explicate it, is wholly against the Pelagians, for they wholly deny Original Sin, affirming that Adam did us no hurt by his Sin, except only by his example. 

A final point about Taylor's account of Original Sin is important to note: it recognises that humans by nature are mortal creatures.  What gave the pre-Fall Adam the life everlasting was the Tree of Life:

For that Adam was made mortal in his Nature, is infinitely certain, and proved by his very eating and drinking, his sleep and recreation; by ingestion and egestion, by breathing and generating his life, which immortal substances never do; and by the very Tree of Life, which had not been needful, if he should have had no need of it to repair his decaying strength and health.

This emphasises the "great hurt to us" of the Fall, of Original Sin, "which standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk)":

Adam turned his back upon the Sun, and dwelt in the dark and the shadow; he sinned, and fell into God's displeasure, and was made naked of all his supernatural endowments, and was ashamed and sentenced to death, and deprived of the means of long life, and of the Sacrament and Instrument of Immortality; I mean, the Tree of Life; he then fell under the evils of a sickly body, and a passionate, ignorant, uninstructed soul.