He chose it. Satan worked through the serpent to draw in Eve, and through her Adam, but nobody compelled him - he broke the command wilfully. God permitted it, having purposed to order it to his own glory.

Both halves are asserted without an attempt to reconcile them further. He was not pushed, and it was not outside God's purpose. The confession states the two and stops, which is more honest than most attempts to explain it.

Confession 6.1

Original righteousness and communion with God - so that all people become dead in sin and wholly defiled in every faculty and part of soul and body.

Wholly defiled does not mean as bad as possible. It means no part is left untouched, including the mind and the conscience, which is why the problem cannot be fixed by the parts that are supposedly still working.

To those who are pure, everything is pure. But to those who are corrupt and don't trust God, nothing is pure - their minds and consciences are twisted.

Titus 1:15

Confession 6.2

Because he was the root of the human race, and stood by God's appointment in the place of all who would descend from him.

The claim is representative rather than genetic. He was acting on behalf of everyone, which is exactly the same logic used later for Christ - one man acting for many. Reject the principle here and the remedy goes with it.

Here's the thing: sin came into the world through one man, and death came because of sin. That's how death spread to everyone - because everyone sinned.

Romans 5:12

Confession 6.3

Two things at once - the guilt of Adam's sin counted to everyone descended from him, and the corrupt nature passed on to them. People are born already estranged from God, not merely liable to go wrong later.

The confession keeps both halves. If it were only the guilt, our actual sinning would be left unexplained; if it were only the corruption, there would be nothing to answer for until we acted. Justification and sanctification mirror it exactly in the other direction: the believer receives both a standing counted to them and a life worked in them.

Here's the thing: sin came into the world through one man, and death came because of sin. That's how death spread to everyone - because everyone sinned.

Romans 5:12

Confession 6.3

It leaves them wholly unwilling and unable towards spiritual good, opposed to it, and inclined towards evil - and every actual sin comes out of that.

The order matters. Sins are not the disease; they are the symptoms of it. That is why the confession will not treat salvation as a matter of correcting behaviour.

The old self's mindset is hostile to God. It doesn't submit to God's law, and honestly, it can't.

Romans 8:7

Confession 6.4

Original sin is the corrupt nature itself; actual sins are what comes out of it. The confession says every actual transgression proceeds from that original corruption.

The order is the whole argument. On this account people are not sinners because they sin, they sin because they are sinners, which is why the remedy has to be a new nature rather than better behaviour. It is also why a person in that state is said to be not merely unwilling but unable.

Confession 6.4

No. It remains during this life in those who are born again, though it is pardoned and put to death.

This paragraph is why the confession has no room for a doctrine of perfection in this life, and why it can be a relief rather than a discouragement. Ongoing struggle after conversion is what the document expects, not a sign that nothing happened.

Our selfish desires fight against the Spirit, and the Spirit fights against those desires. They're always at odds, so you don't end up doing what you really want to do.

Galatians 5:17

Confession 6.5

Actually sin. The confession says it is truly and properly sin, even though it is pardoned and being put to death.

The wording is pointed because the alternative was on the table: call the leftover something milder - a weakness, a tendency, a defect - and the Christian life gets easier to describe and much harder to live honestly. The doctrine of sanctification picks the same thread up and calls it a war that does not end in this life.

Confession 6.5