e punishment of sin.

On the other hand, the common idea of an imputation of Adam's guilt to
his descendants he expressly does not teach. Sin is not imputed or
reckoned as guilt to the individual apart from the knowledge necessary
to constitute responsibility[7]. It is extraordinary how the idea of
imputed _guilt_ can have come to be ascribed to St. Paul when he
expressly guards against it. What the descendants of Adam inherit is
an actual inherent weakness or sinfulness. Again, St. Paul does not
attempt to analyze the actual sin of the world so as to discriminate
between the factors of inherited {192} weakness on the one hand and
reiterated acts of rebellion on the other; but he recognizes both. His
language indeed here, and in chapter vii, would be satisfied by a very
moderate doctrine of the effects of original sin, that is, of the
transmitted effect of sin, considered apart from its repetition. There
is no warrant whatever in St. Paul for the idea that one man's sin
resulted in the total depravity of human nature. Once more he is
content, as usual, to teach generally and without exactness. Thus he
does not consider the exceptions to the universal law of death recorded
in the Old Testament--Enoch and Elijah--though he, no doubt, recognized
them. That in spite of these exceptions he still states the law with
such universality: 'Death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them
that had not sinned[8]' is a warning not to understand St. Paul's
universal propositions with an exactness only applicable to those of a
schoolman or a modern man of science.

2. So much for the substance of St. Paul's teaching; and now what is
to be said as to its sources? St. Paul states his doctrine of original
sin as if it were a commonplace which he could {193} assume and argue
from. Now the Book of Genesis certainly spoke of a primaeval
disobedience in our first parents, and of the infliction on them, as a
penalty for their disobedience, of conditions of strife and pain and
death. But the idea of the transmission of _sinfulness_ does not seem
to be suggested. Moreover, this narrative made remarkably little
impression on the Old Testament literature as a whole[9]. The
doctrine, however, of the introduction of _death_ through the
temptation and sin of Adam and Eve is found again in the apocryphal
literature: thus, 'God created man for incorruption, ... but by the
envy of the devil death entered into the world[10].' From a woma