Article VII — Of Original or Birth Sin

The Text

Article VII is the diagnosis the rest of the document is the cure for. It makes one claim and refuses one error. The error: that original sin “standeth… in the following of Adam” — that we are sinners merely because we imitate a bad first example (the Pelagian account). The claim: original sin “is the corruption of the nature of every man,” inherited, “whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.” It is a doctrine of nature, not imitation — a condition, not a habit. Wesley kept the doctrine and shortened the article, and the shortening is itself a Wesleyan tell: he filed the forensic edges off the sentence while writing, separately, the longest treatise of his life to defend exactly what it says.

Translation Notes

“standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk).” The article names its enemy. Pelagius taught that Adam’s sin injured only Adam; each person sins by freely imitating. The article rejects this by definition: original sin is precisely not imitation. Everything turns on this clause — it is the difference between a humanity that is sick and one that merely has bad role models.

“the corruption of the nature of every man.” Nature, not will-acts. The claim is ontological: what is inherited is a corrupted nature, prior to any chosen sin. “Of every man” — universal, no exceptions, the ground on which the gospel is offered to all.

“very far gone from original righteousness… inclined to evil, and that continually.” “Very far gone” (the Latin quam longissime distet) is strong but is, notably, not “wholly destroyed.” The phrase, and Wesley’s deliberate omission of the Thirty-Nine’s “it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation,” leave room for what Article VIII will supply: prevenient grace. The diagnosis is grave but the sentence is, by Wesley’s editing, aimed toward the remedy, not sealed in condemnation.

Historical Context

Article IX of the Thirty-Nine was Augustine against Pelagius, made subscribable, with the sixteenth century’s added forensic edge: not only corruption but, “therefore… God’s wrath and damnation,” and the insistence (against the perfectionist radicals) that the infection “doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated.” Wesley’s abridgment keeps the Augustinian core and removes those two clauses. This is not Wesley going soft on sin — the opposite. The Discipline’s ¶103 lists Pelagianism among the heresies the Articles (I, II, IX/VII) were the wall against, and Wesley’s own The Doctrine of Original Sin (1757) — answering John Taylor of Norwich, the era’s most able denier — is the longest treatise he ever wrote, an unrelenting defense of inherited depravity against Enlightenment optimism. He cut the clauses about damnation and remaining corruption because those questions belonged, in his theology, under prevenient grace (Article VIII) and Christian perfection (a Wesleyan distinctive the Articles deliberately omit) — not because he doubted the doctrine. The edit relocates; it does not retract.

Lines of Interpretation

The disputed question: how total the corruption is, and whether “very far gone” leaves any capacity Article VIII must then qualify.

Patristic

Tradition: Augustine vs. Pelagius

Article VII is Augustine compressed: sin as an inherited condition (peccatum originale), not chosen imitation; the will in bondage. The Fathers East and West agreed humanity is wounded; Augustine gave the West the strong inherited-guilt form the article echoes.

Strengths

• States the patristic anti-Pelagian core exactly and names the heresy by name
• Grounds the universality of grace in the universality of the wound

Weaknesses

• The Eastern Fathers held a less juridical “ancestral sin”; the article’s Western edge is one option, not the whole tradition
• Augustinian inherited guilt, pressed, produces the infant-damnation clause Wesley deliberately cut

Reformed

Tradition: total depravity; Westminster, the Canons of Dort

The Reformed read “very far gone… inclined to evil… continually” as total depravity — every faculty corrupted, no saving capacity left in the natural man. The article’s strength, Reformed-read, is its refusal of any native goodness.

Strengths

• Takes “of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually” with full seriousness
• Coheres with Article VIII’s “no power to do good works… without grace”

Weaknesses

• “Total” misheard as “utter” overstates the article’s “very far gone” (not “wholly destroyed”)
• Pushed alone it tends toward the predestinarian scheme Wesley deleted; Article VII must be read with VIII’s prevenient grace

Anglican

Tradition: the Thirty-Nine; the moderate Augustinian settlement

Anglicanism holds the article as serious but not despairing Augustinianism — real corruption, real need of grace, without necessarily the full Reformed decretal apparatus.

Strengths

• Matches Wesley’s own editing: grave diagnosis, edges filed, aimed at the remedy
• Keeps original sin without committing to limited atonement

Weaknesses

• “Moderate” can drift toward the optimism the article (and Wesley’s treatise) exist to crush
• Leaves “how far is far gone?” unspecified — Article VIII must answer

Modern / Ecumenical

Tradition: the recovery of “the one empirically verifiable doctrine”; against perfectibilist optimism

Modern theology, after a century of catastrophe, often grants original sin the grim status of the doctrine most confirmed by history. Read so, Article VII is realism about the human condition against every utopian anthropology.

Strengths

• Recovers the doctrine’s explanatory power for a culture that denied it and then watched the twentieth century
• Reframes “corruption of nature” as honest anthropology, not morbid pessimism

Weaknesses

• “Empirically obvious” can detach the doctrine from its Adamic/covenantal frame the article asserts
• Sociologized, it loses the guilt dimension and becomes mere tragedy

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s relation to this article is the clearest case in the whole document of the edit and the conviction pulling the same way. He shortened the sentence — and then defended its substance at greater length than anything else he wrote. The Doctrine of Original Sin (1757) is his longest treatise, a sustained demolition of John Taylor’s Enlightenment denial, and its thesis is the article’s: human nature is, of itself, corrupt and “inclined to evil… that continually.” His famous summary is the strongest sentence in Wesleyan theology on this head: “Allow this, and you are so far a Christian. Deny it, and you are but a heathen still.” For Wesley, original sin is not one doctrine among many; it is the line between the Christian gospel and mere moral philosophy, because a gospel of grace is unintelligible to a humanity that does not know it is ruined.

So why cut the “wrath and damnation” and “remaining in the regenerate” clauses? Because of where Wesley put their content, not because he denied it. The damnation question he answered with prevenient grace (Article VIII): no one is left in mere nature; grace goes before all, so the article’s diagnosis is never God’s last word over anyone. The remaining-corruption question he answered with his doctrine of Christian perfection and the repentance of believers — sin’s guilt and power broken at justification, its remaining root addressed by sanctifying grace — a Wesleyan distinctive the Articles, by design, do not contain (the document essay’s central point). The cut clauses are not lost; they are moved to the parts of the Wesleyan system the Articles leave to the Sermons. This is the recurring grammar of the abridgment: Wesley keeps the catholic diagnosis and relocates the contested forensic and perfectionist questions to where his theology actually works them out.

The deepest Wesleyan note is the link to the General Rules. The “one condition” of admission to the societies is a desire to flee from the wrath to come, to be saved from their sins ([[general-rules/the-one-condition]]). That desire only makes sense on Article VII’s anthropology: people groaning for redemption (General Rules preamble) because they have felt, in themselves, exactly the “corruption of nature… inclined to evil… continually” this article names. Original sin is the felt premise of the whole Methodist movement; the awakened sinner of the General Rules is Article VII experienced before it is confessed. A Wesleyan Christianity that loses Article VII does not merely lose a doctrine; it loses the reason anyone would come groaning to the societies at all.

Hymnody

The Wesleyan hymnody of original sin is the hymnody of the bondage felt and broken. Charles Wesley’s “And can it be” — “long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night” — is Article VII in the first person: not bad choices but a nature imprisoned. “Depth of mercy! can there be mercy still reserved for me?” is the corrupt nature crying for the grace Article VII makes necessary. “O for a heart to praise my God, a heart from sin set free” asks precisely for the reversal of “inclined to evil, and that continually” — a heart re-inclined. The Wesleyan songbook has no hymn of native human goodness; its entire anthropology is Article VII felt at the depth, which is why the same hymns turn, always, to the grace that the diagnosis demands.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The first pastoral use is to preach the diagnosis without which the cure is unintelligible. A congregation persuaded by the surrounding culture that people are basically good cannot hear the gospel of grace as anything but optional self-improvement. Wesley’s line is the pastoral hinge: allow original sin and you are so far a Christian; deny it and the cross is a sentiment. The preacher’s task is not morbid wallowing but honest naming — the bend in every will, including the preacher’s — so that grace can land as rescue, not advice.

The second use is the Wesleyan balance the article’s editing models. Preach “very far gone” — really gone, not lightly damaged — but, with Wesley, never abandoned: the next article (prevenient grace) means no one is left in mere nature, and the cut “wrath and damnation” clause is answered, not by softening the diagnosis, but by the breadth of grace. Pastorally this protects the hearer from both errors: the optimism that needs no Savior and the despair that thinks the corruption is the last word. It is not.

The third use is realism as comfort. Counterintuitively, Article VII consoles. The believer crushed by the persistence of their own sin is not the exception to Christianity; they are its anthropology confirmed — “very far gone,” addressed by grace, not by their managing to be naturally good. Preached pastorally, the doctrine that sounds bleakest is the one that lets the struggling stop pretending and start receiving — which is exactly the movement from Article VII to Articles VIII and IX.

Further Reading

• Romans 5:12–21; Psalm 51:5; Genesis 6:5; Ephesians 2:1–3 — the scriptural ground
• Thirty-Nine Articles, Article IX (1571) — the fuller source Wesley abridged
• Augustine, On Nature and Grace; Against Julian — the anti-Pelagian root
• John Wesley, The Doctrine of Original Sin (1757) — his longest treatise, against John Taylor: “Allow this… or you are but a heathen still”
• John Wesley, Original Sin (Sermon 44) — the doctrine preached
• Oliver O’Donovan, On the Thirty-Nine Articles; D. Stephen Long, Keeping Faith — the article in commentary
• The remedy that keeps this from despair: [[articles-of-religion/article-8-of-free-will]]
• Why the awakened come “groaning”: [[general-rules/the-one-condition]]