[The Common Places]
Peter Martyr Vermigli—born Piero Mariano Vermigli at Florence, 8 Sept 1499—was a vessel fashioned of Providence for the furtherance of Gospel light. Nurtured amid Tuscan splendor, he entered the Canons Regular of the Lateran and, at Padua, drank deeply of Aristotle and Aquinas, adding to these the tongues of Greece and Zion. Yet while he pored over the Fathers—especially blessed Augustine—he perceived that justifying righteousness is imputed by faith alone, not infused by sacramental artifice (Rom 3:28). Conscience, chafing beneath the Roman yoke, urged flight; and in 1542 he forsook Lucca for Strasbourg, that he might preach Christ without the fetters of popish tradition. Thereafter he served thrice‑notably: in Strasbourg with Bucer, in Oxford under Cranmer, and in Zürich beside Bullinger. Wherever he taught, he wed exact philology to sound doctrine, expounding Holy Writ with a lucid brevity seldom equalled. His Loci Communes distilled these labors into orderly heads, furnishing the Reformed churches with a scholastic armory against both papal transubstantiation and Lutheran ubiquity. In predestination he echoed the potent decree of Eph 1:11, yet held reprobation a passing‑by rather than an equal act with election. Having endured manifold exile for the truth’s sake, he fell asleep at Zürich, 12 Nov 1562, commended by Josias Simler as “integritas et pietas incarnata.” Thus ended the earthly pilgrimage of a faithful divine whose pen and pulpit still instruct the sons of the Reformation.
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¶ Look the like place in Genesis 8 at the end.
First they say, that the fall of Adam was sufficiently punished in himself, and that there is no cause why God will revenge it in his posterity; especially seeing it is written in the prophet Nahum, that God doth not twice punish one and the self-same thing: for it sufficeth him that he had once punished. Moreover, it is also written, that The son shall not bear the father's iniquity, but the soul that sinneth, the same shall die. Further, that the body, when it is formed in the womb, is the workmanship of God, and hath nothing that ought to be blamed; nay rather, which is not worthy of great admiration: that the soul also is either created or infused by GOD: and that the means of propagation cannot be accounted evil; because marriage in the holy scriptures is commended, and that from the beginning God commanded man to beget children. Wherefore among so many defenses of innocency, they demand by what entrances sin could insinuate itself.
They add also, that Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians, when he exhorteth the believing wife to abide with her unbelieving husband, if he will abide with her, among other things saith; Your children are holy. But they say, that they cannot be holy, if they be born in sin; and that therefore they which be born of faithful parents, cannot draw with them original sin. They affirm withal, that it is commonly said, that sin is a thing spoken, done, or lusted against the law of God; and that it is not sin, unless it be voluntary. And (as John saith in his first epistle the fourth chapter) Sin is iniquity, contrary whereunto is equity or right; and that this can be no other thing, than is contained in the law, and so that sin is a transgression of the law. All which things cannot fall into infants, when they be born. And they say further, that it seemeth not convenient which is spoken of some; namely, that this sin is by the flesh or body poured out from one to another: for that the flesh and the body are in their own nature senseless things, neither can they seem to be a meet subject for sin. And to establish their feigned devise, they said besides, that those things which are spoken by Paul, in the fifth to the Romans, must be extended unto the sins, which be called actual. But they say, that it is therefore said, that sin entered by one man into the world, because of the imitation and example which the posterity followed.
2 By these and such other like arguments they being led, deny that there is any original sin. But as for death, and the afflictions of this life, which are commonly brought as tokens whereby original sin is confirmed, they say that those consist of natural causes, such as in the temperature of the elements and of the humors. And therefore they say, it is a vain fable, that we refer them to the fall of Adam. And they think it to be a thing most absurd, to affirm, that to be sin, which by no manner of means can be avoided. Lastly they say, that if by that means we shall be said to sin in Adam, because we were in his loins, according as it is said of Levi in the epistle to the Hebrews, that He paid tithes in the loins of Abraham: by the like and self-same reason we may say, that we were in the loins of other our forefathers, from whom we have descended by procreation; and that therefore there is no cause why the sin of Adam hath been derived unto us, rather than the sin of our grandfather, great grandfather, his father, or of any other our progenitors. And that by this means the state of them, which shall be born in the latter days, would seem to be most unhappy; for that they must bear the offenses of all their forefathers. These things allege they, to prove that there is no original sin.
3 But we, on the contrary part, will prove by many testimonies of the holy scriptures, that there is such a sin. Thus God saith in the sixth of Genesis; My spirit shall not always strive with man, because he is flesh. And again; All the imagination of their hearts is only evil every day. And in the eight chapter; The imagination of their heart is evil, even from their very childhood. These things declare, that there sticketh some vice in our nature, when we be born. Also David saith; Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and in sins my mother hath conceived me. Nothing can be plainer than this testimony. Also Jeremie in the 17. chapter saith, that The heart of man is wicked, perverse, and stubborn. Yea the same Jeremie and Job also do curse the day wherein they were born into the world, because they perceived that the very original and fountain of vices sprang up together with them. But Job hath a most manifest testimony of the uncleanness of our nativity, for thus he saith; Who can make that clean, which is conceived of unclean seed? And our savior saith; Except a man be born again of water, and of the holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. And even as the potter doth not make any vessel anew, unless he perceive the same to be ill fashioned before: even so Christ would not us to be regenerated again, unless he saw that we were first unhappily begotten. Which he also testifieth in another place, saying; That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit, is spirit. By which words he would signify unto us, that therefore regeneration by the spirit is necessary, because we had before but only a carnal generation.