EQUATION.
SIN, any wilful thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the law of God. This definition does not cover Original Sin (q.v.), save in so far as it was Adam's own trans gression: in distinction from original sin all other' sins are called actual sins. Offenses against purely human law may be crimes, mis demeanors, etc., and the same may be called sins; but a sin is not necessarily a crime, no matter how heinous it may be. For example, the most grievous sins may be sins purely of thought or of desire or intention : of these human law cannot take cognizance, and hence they are not crimes or misdemeanors. Sins are variously classed, namely, as of omission and of commission; as against God, our fellow-men or ourselves; as premeditated and unpre meditated; internal and external ; mortal and venial. Regarding these several kinds of sin and classifications of sins, theologians of all schools are in agreement, except the last di vision, that of mortal and venial. The divines of the Protestant churches in the time of the Reformation, while admitting a difference among sins so that some would be more heinous than others, looked on all sins alike as mortal; that is, deserving everlasting punishment. Thus
Calvin writes: "The sins of believers are venial, not because they do not merit death, but be cause there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ, their sin not being im puted"; even the daily falls of good men make them "liable to the penalty of death before the judgment seat of God" (Calvin, Inot. Chr. 4). In the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church it is taught that one guilty of sins which in their own nature merit eternal death cannot be in friendship of a holy God; hence a distinction is drawn between sins mortal and sins venial; mortal sins are against the very end of God's law, which is the love of God, and they deserve everlasting punishment; venial sins, the daily falls of good men, do not annihilate the friendship of the soul with God, and grace is still left whereby the sin may be repaired. Con sult