Состояние человека поврежденного называется еще смертью. Спаситель говорит: «остави мертвым погребсти своя мертвецы» (Мф. 8; 22). Мертвыми здесь Он называет людей плотских. Не видно, чтобы эти люди, о которых говорит Спаситель, были худы; но Он вообще так называет их. В этом смысле и апостол титулует нас: «и... сущих нас прегрешеньми мертвых...». (Еф. 2; 5). Значит, и себя ставит он здесь в разряд мертвых: кто же после этого исключит себя из сего состояния мертвенности? Мертвым называется человек, когда он недвижим, с закрытыми глазами, не видит и не слышит. Бывает иногда и на лице мертвого несколько времени румянец, иногда даже замечается некоторое движение. И в человеке естественном иногда приметно много суетливости, хлопот, даже самоотвержения, но все это — для пустяков. Взор у него открыт, но он ничего не видит в духовных вещах. Иногда предметы духовные как бы поражают его по глазам; он на них наталкивается и чувствует боль, например, при гробе отца, жены, брата и тому подобном; но после сего он опять остается нечувствительным. Иногда у людей порочных, плотских показывается стыдливость какая-то, но без жизни; у них движутся члены при раздавании милостыни, постройке церквей и тому подобном; но все это находится в движении как бы гальваническом. Например, умирает у такого человека жена, — он несколько тысяч отдает на церкви, но в сердце остается таким же порочным. Иногда развращенные люди попадаются к людям добрым и заимствуют от них некоторые благие наклонности, но когда они предоставляются самим себе, то опять остаются неподвижными истуканами.

 Человек поврежденный называется еще человеком «ветхим», древним, ибо произошел от Адама. И в начале-то он был уже ветх, а теперь и совершенно обветшал. В натуре человеческой, как в дереве, образуются свои слои. И как ботаники могут узнать по этим слоям, сколько лет известному дереву; так наблюдатель небесный по наростам в природе человеческой узнает древность повреждения ее. Ветхое платье линяет; главная нить, которой держится рубище, есть еще, но благолепия прежней одежды уже нет. Эта ветхость и готовность распасться, эта дырявость заметна в людях — больших и малых. Если чему надлежит быть прочному, то это образу правительства; но сколько употреблено трудов и усилий, например во Франции и Англии, для упрочения этого дела! Соберутся несколько сот людей, проведут несколько дней и ночей в рассуждениях и спорах, составят какое-нибудь правительство; а через полгода оно распалось... Так все обветшало!

 Порча человека естественного называется еще «грехом, живущим в человеке»; выражение многозначительное. Мало того, что человек грешит, — грех в нем живет, соделался в нем чем-то самостоятельным, живым, постоянным, имеющим личность, как господин, законодатель. И точно, обратив внимание на людей, тотчас увидишь, что они служат жилищем греху, что злое начало образовало в них свою жизнь. Еще называется эта порча «законом греховным, сущим во удех» (Рим. 7; 23). Всякая жизнь имеет свой закон, следовательно, и жизнь греха имеет свой закон греха. Этот закон есть самолюбие, — и действия сего закона чрезвычайно сильны. Даже образуется своего рода совесть греховная, так что грешник тотчас видит, что прикасается его самолюбию, и принимает другое направление. Например, в разговоре со сребролюбивым дайте хоть малейший намек, что вы хотите говорить о нестяжании, и он заранее постарается предотвратить вашу речь.

 Называется еще естественный человек «образом перстнаго». Явно, что в этом выражении прежде всего имеется в виду тело; но и внутренность души человека перстного — перстна. Ум его перстен, ибо все познания его сняты с тленных вещей. Образ деятельности его также перстный: она направлена к благам земным, тленным, преходящим, которые и теперь только мелькают, а в будущей жизни и совсем не будут иметь места. Адам составил себе свой образ вместо Божественного, и теперь все потомки его носят эту личину.

 Называется еще человек естественный «душевным». В дух он редко заходит, а живет воображением, памятью, чувствами; до созерцаний духовных, до Бога, до вечности он почти не касается: там ему холодно, он бежит оттуда. Animals homo с сей стороны действительно сходен со всеми животными; некоторые животные (animalia) даже превосходят его со многих сторон. Апостол говорит, что некоторые люди работают только чреву, что «им бог чрево», — и все животные непрестанно работают только чреву. Называется еще человек «внешним», в противоположность внутреннему. И у естественного человека есть своя глубина; но это глубина зла и греха: обыкновенно же внешность, видимость управляет им. Отсюда человек худой называется пустым. Еще именуется он «чадом гнева по естеству», которое он сам себе устроил — чадом, на которое Отец Небесный не мог взирать без гнева, потому что это чадо растет и трудится во зле. Называется еще «телом греховным плоти» (Кол. 2; 11). Все тело наше становится орудием греха, его телом. Человек имеет руки, простертые на грабительство, ноги, чтобы ходить по путям беззаконным, глаза, чтобы смотреть на соблазны мира, слух, чтобы принимать хулы. Называется еще порча «удами яже на земли» (Кол. 3; 5), членами, посредством которых человек так и стремится в ад, куда после и действительно низойдет.

 Если сложить все эти черты, то составится образ человека самый ужасный: это свиток, виденный Иезекиилем, «в котором написано рыдание и жалость и горе». Да не подумает кто-либо, что так изображает человека только Священное Писание. Нет, и сам человек не лучше себя описывает. Много есть жалоб на это у древних греческих и римских писателей, и у новых. Итак, в Священном Писании нет преувеличения; даже оно не открывает еще всей бедности нашей, потому что и невозможно теперь показать нам ее вполне, ибо пал весь мир, и пал давно и глубоко. Посему Церковь премудро воспевает: «едине ведый» человеческаго существа немощь".

 Из описаний человека естественного, находящихся в Священном Писании, открывается, что состояние его очень худо, противно намерению Божественному и несчастно. В отношении к нравственности это состояние беззаконное; в отношении к чувствам — состояние бесчувствия, смерти. Еще не было примера, чтобы какой-нибудь добрый и благонамеренный человек отвергал развращение природы человеческой: это постоянный голос всех внимательных и добрых людей. Например Сократ в своем разговоре явно признает нужду — всю жизнь очищаться; и взгляд на настоящую жизнь, как на поприще очищения, есть взгляд всемирный, а не христианский только. В большей части людей зло господствует решительно: жизнь их слаба, они дремлют и в дремоте им иногда нельзя бывает делать зла; но когда они выйдут из сего состояния усыпления, когда воля их облечется мощью гражданской или физической, то происходит от них зло ужасное.

 Christianity has tamed much of this evil. Although there are many evil people in it, they are all fewer in comparison with evil people in the pagan world. For example, look at Asia and its rulers: do they look like humans? Ancient pagan societies present innumerable imperfections. Terrible ferocities took place among uneducated peoples. For example, Genghis Khan, having decided to pour blood on the whole world, goes with an innumerable army, devastates cities and villages, and feasts on the corpses of the killed with his companions. Finally, at the moment of the awakening of thought, he says that he is the wrath of God. And in educated societies... What, for example, does Greece represent? All the disputes and conversations between Athens and Lacedaemon are like a fight between children: they fought and fought until they put out each other's eyes and fell under the dominion of Macedonia and Rome. In Rome it was the same: for example, in the time of Cicero, the best citizens, the fathers of the fatherland, were killed without mercy. And who ordered Cicero himself to be killed? Caesar is the first member of society. Modern times provide even more proofs of the corruption of man. That is why, with all efforts, all human codes disintegrate and disappear. In France, for example, there have been several constitutions for seven years, and all of them have been pushed off the stage by the foot of Napoleon.

 Finally, in the whole nature of the world, in many cases, traces of an unnatural state are clearly revealed. In the animal kingdom we see such vices as in humans. We ourselves admit that vices – cunning, cruelty, gluttony – are contrary to nature; Therefore, we must admit that even in the animal kingdom these phenomena are not natural. Did the Creator not give animals any other food than to torment other animals? We see people neglecting their duties; but some birds, such as the cuckoo and others, throw their children into other people's nests. We see terrible gluttony in animals: for example, some of them give birth and devour what is born (snakes, pigs). We see in them selfishness, forgetfulness of work and services. For example, bees: drones, as long as they need them, are fed, and then killed. We also see a trick: a spider, for example, weaves its webs cunningly in order to seize other insects like itself and devour them. Animals are driven by instinct, and therefore their instinct is damaged, just as our mind is damaged. In the plant kingdom there is also a noticeable unnaturalness, for example, unlawful abduction: whole families of plants, the so-called aliens, live at the expense of others, by the death of others. Stealing from another is seen in the roots of many plants; The suppression of the weak by the strong is also seen in many plants. If we descend lower, to the inorganic kingdom of minerals, then even there, under the guidance of natural scientists, corruption can be found. Hence the irritability in some substances, which, when confronted with others, produce explosions and thunders. If we look at our entire earth, it will also present us with a painful condition. At the poles it is dead from the cold, and wants to warm itself with a little northern lights; but her experiments somehow fail. In the middle, it is barren from heat. Here she wants to cool herself with terrible storms; But this does not help either. And its full life is only in the intervals between the middle and the extremes. But perhaps someone will think that it cannot be otherwise? No, it could be otherwise. For example, in Siberia there are traces that it was once warm there. In the middle of the earth, there are even more transformations. And what proves most of all its depravity is that it is filled with fire within; She looks like a person covered with artificial ulcers.

 Where did this condition start from? From the first person. The sin of man was disobedience to the will of God. And just as in the will of Adam was contained the will of the entire human race; then the falling away of Adam's will from the will of God is assimilated to all mankind. In the physical world, everything is held together by the law of gravitation: the circle is connected with the center. If something breaks away from the village, it will wander around the whole world, and cannot calm down: if the earth loses its relationship to the sun, it will not recover by itself. It is the same in the human world in relation to God. Adam's act of sin was most terrible, for it decided the fate of all existence. How does this evil spread? Originally by birth: all mankind was in the loins of Adam. This is evident from experience: from a bad tree cannot come a good tree; A sick father cannot give birth to a healthy son. How is sin born? Sin, as a free action, is not born, but only the inclination to sin is born, the source of all sinfulness, and is born not only to the will, but to the whole being of man, and with the development of man's powers it develops itself. From this we can understand the relation of the sin of our ancestors to us. Ambrose says: "We are not only born in sins, but also give birth..." Augustine provides a remarkable example in this respect. He says that he saw two babies taking away their mother's breasts, and when one sucked, the other turned pale with envy. Kant also presents a remarkable experience: he says that there are no two friends, one of whom does not feel a secret pleasure when he sees that his friend has fallen into misfortune. Of course, he will feel sorry for him, help him, but inwardly he will rejoice: this is how egoism has penetrated man. It is from this innate evil that it is explained that saints who had spent several years in asceticism, as, for example, Macarius of Egypt or Anthony the Great, suddenly had a serpent in their bosom, some evil thought, against which it was difficult for them to fight. No matter how you heal this evil, it can all regurgitate from time to time. Each person can be a hotbed of sin, one that will become for the whole world. On the other hand, everything external can incite a person to sin, for example, some animals can incite him to cruelty. So Attila, looking at a spider mercilessly devouring insects, was encouraged to cruelty. Everyone suffers from this sinfulness; not one will come out into the middle and say: I am sinless. No matter how proud a person is, he has not yet reached such unscrupulousness that he does not recognize himself as a sinner. Both kings and subjects say that they are sinful and offer sacrifices. Thus God shut everyone up in resistance, in order to bring everyone to public guilt — to force them to repent publicly; and this is in order to have mercy on everyone.

 The damage extends to all the abilities and powers of man: a simple view of life serves as a guarantee of this. True, experience also presents something contrary to this. Some, for example, people are naturally more kind, others are more evil. This phenomenon may lead some to believe that perhaps the evil inheritance of Adam is not equally shared by all his descendants. But in essence they are still evil. It is possible to assume, or it is possible not to assume this inequality of evil. But if we do not assume this inequality, then how can we explain its signs in experience? By the fact that in people who are outwardly kinder, evil is only hidden further and deeper, but in some cases it can be revealed terribly. That is why people often wonder how such a good person suddenly became so evil; Cases of such a change are quite frequent. If we assume the inequality of evil, then will it be in accordance with God's Providence? For it is necessary that all men should be either equally good or equally evil, for evil began to flow from Adam through all the conductors, and of necessity flows in the same measure. There can be two reasons for inequality. Is it not the inequality of souls themselves that is the cause of this? Is there not the same thing in the human world as there is in the angelic world? In essence, human souls are the same, but in quality they may perhaps be different. All people borrowed death from Adam, but the expression of this mortality may not be the same for everyone. However, this reason is unclear and not decisive. Another reason: a person is directly born of parents; but a series of preceding parents may be one or the other. Humanity, passing through the generations, is more or less Spoiled. A number of virtuous parents also give virtuous children, and vice versa, a number of vicious parents also give vicious children. Only it is not necessary to imagine this chain of parents physically, that is, necessarily united, for even the most righteous at other moments are almost inferior to ordinary sinners; For this reason their children, who are conceived or carried in the womb at such moments, are subjected to the greater influence of evil and are born bad. And philosophy says: as the beginning, so is the consequence. Yet does the evil that came from Adam change? It changes, but this change does not depend on nature itself, not on reason, but on religion, on Christianity. In the patriarchs, for example, and in other holy men, Revelation greatly weakened the power of evil. Historically, we can hardly judge the actions of original sin. We cannot even imagine the image of fallen and unrestored man now. The whole human race took poison, but, so to speak, the poison was reduced at its very first appearance. It is not at all easier for a man who has inherited less evil; it is necessary to look at the consequences, and not at the source. A great inclination to evil is a kind of talent given for cultivation. Whoever inherits a greater evil, therefore, can defeat this evil. To complain about this would be the same as to complain to a soldier or a commander who has been instructed by his superiors to go to a dangerous place for battle, knowing that he will come out of there with success. And in judgment less is required of such a person, and a better crown is prepared for him. The lord of the harvest will be glad, so to speak, if a few fruits grow in this wild land, though less than in the other land. However, it seems more correct not to assume this inequality of evil. People are good by nature, if they are not satisfied with worldly morality, which is not far away, but want to live according to the rules of the Spirit of God, they will find something to work on in their hearts. Experience shows that the natural goodness of such people is expressed for the most part only in worldly love, in helpfulness, but is almost never revealed in true self-denial.

 Examining human nature in parts, we discover the damage in each of them. Holy Scripture finds different parts in man; in its entirety it represents it as consisting of soul, body, and spirit. "May the God of peace Himself sanctify you who are all perfect (in all things): and may your spirit, soul, and body be perfect without blemish at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:23). These words of the Apostle represent the most complete description of man. In other places of the Holy Scriptures there is no such distinction; it speaks either of two opposite parts, soul and body, or of only two higher parts, soul and spirit; or about two opposing ones – the spirit and the body. This is because man is usually divided into two sides, the inner and the outer, and that in man the spirit and the soul are as it were merged into one, and in him there is a great opposition between the spirit and the body, the visible and the invisible. But the tripartite nature of human composition has always made itself felt. Thus, in ancient times, philosophers, in addition to the spirit and the body, ascribed to man the soul and called it the animal, irritable, dominating soul (Plato, Aristotle and others). In modern times, psychologists have solved this ancient question of human composition easily – they have turned to the commonly used division into soul and body. But those who have delved deeper into the nature of man even now admit in man the spirit and the soul. At the same time, it is only necessary to note that the spirit is usually called that part which in psychology is called the highest cognitive and moral faculty, the highest pure mind and rational will with their principles; but by the soul they understand what is known in logics under the name of reason, and in moral philosophy under the name of the lower will. But the main feature is that in our spiritual being it is necessary to distinguish two sides: ours and not ours. Ours consists in freedom; not ours, inviolable for us, these are the laws of the mind, its moral and theoretical ideas; we look only at them, we conform to them, but we cannot change them. This is the realm of the spirit, something inaccessible, Divine. Hence, in the Scriptures, our spirit is presented as something else good: it could not be damaged much, because it serves as a bond between God and us. Yet all other parts of man are too corrupt. There is nothing to say about the depravity of the body. Even in antiquity it was said that the source of moral evil lies in the body, that it is the product of the evil principle, that the perfection of man consists in the separation from the body. All pious people who wanted to soar to heaven felt that the body was a burden for them. The soul consists of reason, will, and heart, and all these faculties are bad according to the Scriptures. Experience shows this. Reason, even when educated, in reasoning about higher subjects, lives, so to speak, by sophistry, nourishes doubts, builds syllogisms as fortresses, against the immortality of the soul, against the truths of faith. For the most part, the will is low, the heart is impure. Almost all the activity of worldly, worldly people consists of cunning, deceit, and deception. It would be more proper for the soul to strive after the spirit, and yet it is in an incessant struggle and opposition to it. The goal of her aspirations is to move the spirit and remain one with the body. In philosophical systems, for the most part, they try to establish empiricism, reject ideas, decapitate man, and brutize him. For this reason the Holy Scriptures condemn the soul to a great and heavy penance; and worldly wisdom, though in a silent but firm voice, says that the lower will must submit to the higher: this is the same as in the language of the Scriptures it speaks of the destruction of the soul, of the taking away of its life. Finally, even in the spirit, Holy Scripture finds a kind of defilement. It commands us to strive to acquire a contrite spirit and a renewed heart. The spirit has become hard, petrified, whereas it is destined to be the connection of man with God, and therefore must be, as it were, pervasive, soft; he became insensible to receiving sensations from above and to communicating them to the other faculties of man. Some letters of the law remained on it, but as on a stone; and therefore it must be melted down, remade, as artists do with some damaged tools.

 We have already said that according to the Scriptures, all spiritual faculties are bad, that is, sick, impure, and damaged. And indeed, it speaks of the heart, for example, as the source of all evil. It says that serpents nest in it, that evil thoughts proceed from it, and therefore advises how one can guard one's "heart, for from these proceed the life" (Proverbs 4:23). Even in the antediluvian world, this came out in all its thinness (Gen. 6:5); and now, if we examine the thoughts of men, the greater part of them will turn out to be evil. Apparently, a person sometimes turns his thoughts not to evil, but to good; but if we pay attention to its ends, to the means, and so on, we will see evil here as well. A merchant, for example, thinks about the successful conclusion of a well-known trade—there seems to be nothing wrong with it. Then he thinks about building himself a house, and this does not seem to be evil. But the evil is in the purpose for which he undertakes all this and how he will use it all afterwards.

 Further, the Holy Scriptures ascribe darkness to the human mind, and impurity to the will; he also ascribes vanity to the mind, dead deeds to the conscience, and so on. It is impossible not to pay attention here to the fact that the source of everything in man in the Holy Scriptures is called the heart, the feeling. Apparently, this name is a consequence of the sensory view (anthropomorphism) of the object; But in fact, the reason for this is deeper. The basis of mental movements and actions is not the mind, not the will, but feeling. Feeling is combined in the heart; the heart sees, hears, and feels rather than other faculties; A thought, conceived in the mind, passes through the heart, appears in the form of wishes. If we pay attention to the human mind, we find that in millions of people it is occupied with absolutely trifles. For example, as many as millions of people are tied to the land – farmers. Of course, we will not degrade this work, which is now the most natural and necessary: in the Gospel, Jesus Christ Himself took many parables from the fields and fields; only the people who practice this art do not always use its lessons. Nomadic peoples are engaged in catching animals; hence their language is the language of these animals. The concepts of merchants and industrialists have been removed from those objects that are in their hands. Even people with a high mind have very few unearthly concepts. Hence worldly writers, when they begin to talk about spiritual subjects, babble like a baby, and sometimes admit that this cannot be understood. But should it be so by nature? In man there is a higher faculty, which, if well revealed, would not be dead and humiliated as it is now. Each person loves himself very much, and often forgets about his present and future state. Everyone knows that he will surely die, but what will happen to his soul — how many have tried to find out? So little are we disposed to spiritual things..