But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was conceived without original sin? If Anglicans knew what we mean by original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original sin," with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word "sin;" it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; and they fancy that we ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others; that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake of Him who was to redeem her and us upon the Cross, to her the debt was remitted by anticipation, on her the sentence was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time came, as others. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty, from the very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. (John Henry Newman, Letter to Dr. Pusey, p. 47-49)
but through one can came sin, and death...
I guess what I am asking is do you believe people have the tendency to sin, are people corrupted, "sinful from the womb" as David admitted?
I find it interesting that Newman takes such a clear stance on the death of the Virgin. I had always understood that there was a strong (albeit not universal) tradition in Roman Catholicism that Mary did not die prior to the Assumption, and that she indeed could not have died, since she was without sin -- original or otherwise.
I heard a Catholic priest on Catholic television talking about this, saying that the declaration of the dogma of the Assumption was carefully worded in such a way that one could believe either the Eastern tradition that she died, or believe that she did not die, for the theological reasons mentioned.
There are still significant differences between Newman's description and Orthodox belief, but it has definite elements of interest.