It is taught among us that since the fall of Adam, all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from birth they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of God and true faith in God. This innate disease and original sin is truly sin and condemns to the eternal wrath of God all who are not in …

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness. This penitential Psalm, composed after David's sin with Bathsheba, is the most profound expression of repentance in all of Scripture. David pleads not his own merit but God's mercy alone. His confession — "in sin did my mother conceive me" — is not merely a personal statement but a declaration of the universal corrupti…

If anyone asserts that the prevarication of Adam injured himself alone and not his posterity; and that the holiness and justice received of God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone and not for us also; or that he, being defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death and pains of the body into the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the …

You must be convinced not only of your actual sins but of your original sin. We are conceived and born in sin. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint. We are by nature children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins. Until a man is truly sensible of his original depravity, he can never come to a true knowledge of himself.

Q. Then where does this corrupt human nature come from? A. From the fall and disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in Paradise. This fall has so poisoned our nature that we are born sinners — corrupt from conception on.

Human beings brought forth children of the same nature as themselves after the fall. That is to say, being corrupt they brought forth corrupt children. The corruption spread, by God's just judgment, from Adam to all his descendants — except for Christ alone — not by way of imitation (as the Pelagians of old asserted) but by way of the propagation of a perverted nature.

We believe that by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race. It is a corruption of the whole human nature—an inherited depravity which even infects small infants in their mother's womb, and the root which produces in humanity every sort of sin. It is therefore so vile and enormous in God's sight that it is enough to condemn the human ra…

We believe the first man created by God to have fallen in Paradise, when he disregarded the commandment of God and yielded to the deceitful counsel of the serpent. And hence hereditary sin flowed to his posterity; so that none is born after the flesh who beareth not this burden, and who experienceth not the fruits thereof in this present world. But by "burden" and "fruits of si…

The Formula affirms that original sin is not merely an absence of righteousness but a deep, corrupt condition of human nature inherited from Adam, rendering man spiritually dead and inclined toward all evil. It denies that original sin is a trifling defect or that human nature retains its powers intact after the Fall. Against both Pelagian minimizing and Flacianism (which equat…

Original sin is such a deep corruption of nature that no reason can understand it; it must be believed on the authority of Scripture. All that is born of flesh is flesh and is by nature a child of wrath. Neither works, law, nor human merit can remedy this condition — only the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Melanchthon affirms that original sin is a genuine depravity of human nature, not merely the absence of original righteousness but also a deep inclination toward evil — concupiscence that is truly sin, not merely a neutral condition. Humanity since the Fall lacks the fear of God, lacks trust in God, and is inclined to evil continually. This corruption is inherited from Adam and…