[This post first appeared at GospelEncounter.wordpress.com]
In a previous post, I shared some excerpts from Rev. Richard Watson stating that the origin of depravity was due to the withdrawing of the Spirit of God from man. I mentioned there that this was consistent with James Arminius.
Here is an excerpt from Arminius which deals with the issue directly:
V. The Spirit of grace, whose abode was within man, could not consist with a consciousness of having offended God; and, therefore, on the perpetration of sin and the condemnation of their own hearts, the Holy Spirit departed. Wherefore, the Spirit of God likewise ceased to lead and direct man, and to bear inward testimony to his heart of the favour of God. This circumstance must be considered in the place of a heavy punishment, when the law, with a depraved conscience, accused, bore its testimony [against them], convicted and condemned them.
VI. Beside this punishment, which was instantly inflicted, they rendered themselves liable to two other punishments; that is, to temporal death, which is the separation of the soul from the body; and to death eternal, which is the separation of the entire man from God, his chief good.
[…]
IX. But because the condition of the covenant into which God entered with our first parents was this, that, if they continued in the favour and grace of God by an observance of this command and of others, the gifts conferred on them should be transmitted to their posterity, by the same divine grace which they had, themselves, received; but that, if by disobedience they rendered themselves unworthy of those blessings, their posterity, likewise, should not possess them, and should be liable to the contrary evils.
This was the reason why all men, who were to be propagated from them in a natural way, became obnoxious to death temporal and death eternal, and devoid of this gift of the Holy Spirit or original righteousness. This punishment usually receives the appellation of “a privation of the image of God,” and “original sin.”
X. But we permit this question to be made a subject of discussion: Must some contrary quality, beside the absence of original righteousness, be constituted as another part of original sin? though we think it much more probable, that this absence of original righteousness, only, is original sin, itself, as being that which alone is sufficient to commit and produce any actual sins whatsoever.
XI. The discussion, whether original sin be propagated by the soul or by the body, appears to us to be useless; and therefore the other, whether or not the soul be through traduction, seems also scarcely to be necessary to this matter.
You can read the full section online here: BibleHub
