: Je laenger, je aerger; je aelter, je kaerger (worse with time,
stingier with age). All such vices are so blatant and gross as to
become objects of observation and intelligence. What, then shall we
say of the inward vices when unbelief, presumption, neglect of the
Word, and wicked views grow up?

59. There are those who are and desire to be considered powerful
theologians, though they extenuate original sin by sophistry. But
vices so numerous and great cannot be extenuated. Original sin is not
a slight disorder or infirmity, but complete lawlessness, the like of
which is not found in other creatures, except in evil spirits.

60. But do those extenuators have any Scriptural proof to rest upon?
Let us see what Moses says. As I pointed out in explaining the sixth
chapter, he does not call such things evil, as lust, tyranny, and
other sins, but the imagination of the human heart; that is, human
energy, wisdom and reason, with all the faculties the mind employs
even in our best works. Although we do not condemn acts which belong
to the social or civil sphere, yet the human heart vitiates these
works in themselves proper, by doing them for glory, for profit, or
for oppression, and either from opposition to the neighbor or to God.

61. Nor can we escape the force of this passage by saying that those
are meant who perished by the flood. God uses a generic term which
denotes that the heart of man, as such, is meant. At the time this was
spoken there were no other people than those saved in the ark, and yet
the declaration is: the imagination of man's heart is evil.

62. Therefore, not even the saints are excepted. In Ham, the third
son, this imagination of the heart betrayed its nature. And the other
brothers were no better by nature. There was only this difference,
that they, believing in the promised seed, retained the hope of
forgiveness of sin, and did not give way to the evil imagination of
their hearts, rather resisting it through the Holy Spirit, who is
given for the very purpose of contending against, and overcoming, the
malignity of man's nature. Because Ham gives way to his nature, he is
wholly evil, and totally perishes. Shem and Japheth, who contend
against it in their spirit, though being evil, are not altogether so.
They have the Holy Spirit, through whom they contend against the evil,
and hence are holy.

63. It would seem here that God might be accused of fickleness.
Before, when he was about to punish man,