ginal sin is an animal, and
that, too, an intelligent animal. You must also add ears, eyes, mouth,
nose, arms, belly, and feet. Original sin laughs, talks, sews, sows,
works, reads, writes, preaches, baptizes, administers the Lord's Supper,
etc. For it is the substance of man that does such things. Behold, where
such men end!" Flacius replied in his _Christian and Reliable Answer to
All manner of Sophistries of the Pelagian Accident,_ 1572, protesting
that the doctrine ascribed to him was a misrepresentation of his
teaching. In the same year Wigand published _Reasons Why This
Proposition, in Controversy with the Manicheans: "Original Sin Is the
Corrupt Nature," Cannot Stand._ Here Wigand truly says: "Evil of the
substance and evil substance are not identical. _Malum substantiae et
mala substantia non sunt idem._" (Preger 2, 353. 410.)

In several publications of the same year Hesshusius asserted (quoting
testimonies to this effect from Augustine), that the Flacian doctrine
was identical with the tenets of the Manicheans, in substance as well as
terms. Flacius answered in _De Augustini et Manichaeorum Sententia, in
Controversia Peccati,_ 1572, in which he declared: "I most solemnly
condemn the Manichean insanity concerning two creators. I have always
denied that original sin is something, or has ever been something
outside of man; I have never ascribed to this sin any materiality of its
own." (355.) This book was followed by another attack by Hesshusius and
an answer, in turn, by Flacius.

In the same year Hesshusius, in order to prevent further accessions to
Flacianism, published his _Antidote (Antidoton) against the Impious and
Blasphemous Dogma of Matthias Flacius Illyricus by which He Asserts that
Original Sin Is Substance._ In this book, which was republished in 1576
and again in 1579, Hesshusius correctly argued: "If original sin is the
substance of the soul, then we are compelled to assert one of two
things, _viz._, either that Satan is the creator of substances or that
God is the creator and preserver of sin. _Si substantia animae est
peccatum originis, alterum a duobus necesse est poni, videlicet, aut
Satanam esse conditorem substantiarum, aut Deum esse peccati creatorem
et sustentatorem._" (Gieseler 3, 2, 256.) At this late hour, 1572, Simon
Musaeus, too, entered the arena with his _Opinion Concerning Original
Sin, Sententia de Peccato Originali._ In it he taught "that original sin
is not a substance, but the