Arminius on Actual Sins

submitted by SEA member, Roy Ingle

DISPUTATION 8

ON ACTUAL SINS

RESPONDENT, CASPER WILTENS

I. As divines and philosophers are often compelled, on account of a penury of words, to distinguish those which are synonymous, and to receive others in a stricter or more ample signification than their nature and etymology will allow; so in this matter of actual sin, although the term applies also to the first sin of Adam, yet, for the sake of a more accurate distinction, they commonly take it for that sin which man commits, through the corruption of his nature, from the time where he knows how to use reason; and they define it thus: “Something thought, spoken or done against the law of God; or the omission of something which has been commanded by that law to be thought, spoken or done.” Or, with more brevity, “Sin is the transgression of the law;” which St. John has explained in this compound word anomia “anomy.” (1 John iii, 4.)

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