An End of Doctrinal Controversies, Chapter 10
CHAP. X. Of Original Sin.
§. 1. BY one man Sin entred into the World, and Death by Sin, and so Death passed upon all in that all have sinned.
§. 2. We were not in Adam distinct Persons really; for our Persons then existed not; and therefore did not inexist.
§. 3. God doth not repute us to have been what we were not; for he judgeth truly, and is not mistaken: Therefore he judged not Peter and Iohn to have been those Persons in Adam then, nor Adam's person the same with theirs.
§. 4. Therefore we were not then when he sinned persons guilty in Adam; for Non existentis non sunt accidentia.
§. 5. We were Seminally or Virtually in Adam when he sinned: Which is but that he had that Virtus generativa from which we naturally sprang in time; But to be Virtually in him, is Not to be personally in him, but Potentially, it being as to Existence terminus diminuens.
§. 6. As soon as we were Persons, we were Persons derived by Generation from Adam: Therefore with our Persons we derived Guilt and Pravity: For he could beget no better than himself.
§. 7. When Adam sinned his whole Person was guilty and no part innocent: Therefore his very Semen prolificum had its part in the guilt according to its Capacity; And though it was not a guilty Person, it was a part of a guilty Person; and a part that was the Semen personae; so that when that Semen became a p…rson (Cain) it became a guilty person, the guilt following the subject according to its Capacity: And so downward by Propagation to this day.
§. 8. God doth not impute Adam'sDr. Twisse frequently well openeth this. Sin to us because he will do it, without any real participation of ours; no nor beyond our true natural participation, but according to it: Otherwise God should have made us sinners, meerly because he …ould do so, and not Adam.
§. 9. We receive our Original Guilt and Pravity immediately from our next Parents, and but remotely from Adam: It could never have come to us but through them from whom we receive our Nature, from them we receive the guilt and pravity of our Nature.
§. 10. Therefore thus far at least our next Parents communicate Guilt and Pravity to us, and not Adam only: In which we see that God's Imputation goeth along with real Natural Participation.
§. 11. It seemeth to me a strange oversight in too many Divines who deny (or observe not) our Guilt of all the rest of our Parents
*Of this I have published a Disputation which proveth it.Sins, while we were in their Loins, as well as of Adam's; seeing 1. there is that same reason of both, save what the change of the Covenant maketh (of which after.) And, 2. Scripture is so full and express about it.
§. 12. 1st, If I have a guilty and deprayed Soul from my Parents, it is because I was once in them, Virtually or Seminally as truly and naturally as I was in Adam: And had not the Guilt been theirs it had never been mi…e: And if it be mine because it was theirs, why not one part of theirs as well as another?
§. 13. It will be said, Because God so Covenanted with Adam that he should stand or fall for himself and his Posterity: I Answer, That there was any such Covenant that if he stood his Posterity should all stand, or be Confirmed and Saved, is more than ever I found in Scripture or can prove, or do believe: But that it would have been to the benefit of his Posterity I doubt not. And that his fall was to the Guilt and Corruption of his Posterity I doubt not; but (as I said) not without and beyond their natural Interest in him, and Derivation from him as the reason of it: And we were as much naturally in our next Parents: And the Covenant of Innocency and the Covenant of Grace do not so far differ as to exempt us from the Guilt of our next Parents sins: For the difference lieth not in this, That the first only made Death the due reward of all Sin, nor that the first did interest Children in the Guilt of their Parents sin: But in this, that the first made us Guilty without a Remedy; But the second giveth us a Remedy presently for Pardon and Recovery, and so our Guilt is not so full, because it is but a half Obligation having the Pardon annexed. The first Law said, [If thou sin thou shalt be filius mortis, and so shall those that are Propagated of thee.] The second Covenant saith, [For thy Original and Actual Sin death is thy due, but I give thee a Pardon and Remedying Grace procured by the Righteousness of Christ.] But note, That this Covenant pardoneth our Original Sin as from Adam; And yet it followeth not that we had none because it is pardoned: Even so it pardoneth our guilt of our next Parents sins, and therefore we had it to be pardoned: Both are pardonable to us; therefore we had both.
§. 14. 2. And the Scripture is more copious, and as plain in making punishment due to Children for their next Parents sins, as for Adam's, though Adam's only was the Original of all Sin and Misery. I have elsewhere proved it at large: The Case of Cain's Posterity, and Cham's, and Ishmael's, and Esau's, and Achan's Family, and Ahab's, and many more do fully prove it: And more fully the Second Commandment, and God's declaration of his Name to Moses, Exod. 34. and many a Threatning to the Seed of the Wicked, and Christ's express Words in Matth. 23. 36. so that Scripture puts us out of doubt.
§. 15. The common Objection is, that their [Guilt would be greater on us towards the End of the World, than on them at the Beginning, because all our Ancestours Guilt would be ours: But I answer, 1. If it were so, it would be but many Obligations to the same Punishment, when it amounteth to that which God seeth our Nature capable of: For a Finite Worm is not capable of more Suffering than is proportioned to his Nature. 2. And this Objection vainly supposeth, that none of our Ancestours Sins were pardoned: Whereas all are pardoned to the Faithful and their Seed, and much Temporal Punishment is pardoned to many of the Unsanctified: And God himself by limiting it to the third and fourth Generation, seemeth to set bounds to his own Justice. 3. And the Guilt of our Parents Sins being of a more Diminute Nature duplicate page duplicate page than that of our own Actual Sin (Coeteris paribus) it falleth not so fully on us, as it did on the Committers themselves, nor as our own do. 4. And God offereth us the full pardon of our own and all together: And as long as the Law which tells us of our desert of punishment, doth also give us a free pardon, we have no Cause to complain.
§. 16. That we have all Original Sin is proved, in that else Infants should be saved without a pardoning Saviour, or a cleansing Sanctifier; which cannot be.
§. 17. He that seeth the universal inclination of Mankind to Evil even in their Childhood, and their backwardness to Good, even that Evil and that Good which Nature it self assureth us are such, must needs believe Original Pravity, or else think hardly of God's Work.
§. 18. He that seeth still that Drunkenness, Gluttony, Lust, &c. do vitiate both the Soul and Bodily Temperament of the Sinner, and how frequently a diseased, distempered Body, inclining Men to particular Vices, and an extraordinarily vitiated Soul, is in their Children the plain fruit of the Parents Sin, may the easilier believe that we drew down Pravity from Adam also, when we derive so much from nearest Parents.
§. 19. And they that consider, that Mans Soul being made Holy, for God, this unholiness is not only a Negation but a Privation, not of Sensitive and Natural only, but of Moral Rectitude, will not deny but that the name of Sin or Moral Pravity belongeth to it.
§. 20. And they that consider, that Parents Cause not Children as an Artificer maketh an Engine, but by Generation, which is a Communication of their own Essence, and what Natural Interest Parents and Children have in each other, and that it is real Sin that is in both, and that the Moral Privation in its Nature, containeth much of Mans misery, will easily grant that it is both a Sin and Punishment, and a Moral Cause of further punishment, properly enough so called.
§. 21. They that lay that Reason of their denying Original Sin,Mr. W. Fenner put his Opinion for the Traduction of Souls, into his Catechismes: But the Publisher left that out. upon the difficulty of understanding whether Souls are new Created or Derived from Parents, do too little suspect their frail understandings▪ and their own …deductions, and too▪easily suspect the Word of God. And I think that I have elsewhere proved that Generative Traduction of Souls, and yet God's present, yea, immediate Causation of their Essence (which may be called Creation) are here Consistent▪ Which here I must not now repeat: Vid. Meth. Theol. and Reasons of Christian Religion.