A Treatise of Justifying Righteousness, Letter · Section 1
§. I. Between twenty and thirty years ago, I did in a private Disputation prove our guilt of the sins of our nearer Parents; and because many doubted of it, I have oft since in other writings mentioned it: About three years ago, having two Books of Mr. William Allens in my hand to peruse, in order to a Publication, (a Perswasive to Ʋnity, and a Treatise of the Two Covenants); in a Preface to the latter, I said, [That most Writers, if not most Christians, do greatly darken the Sacred Doctrine, by overlooking the Interest of Children in the Actions of their nearer Parents, and think that they participate of no guilt, and suffer for no original sin, but Adam's only, &c.] You fastened on this, and warned seriously the Juniors, not rashly to believe one that brings forth such Paradoxes of his (or that) Theologie, which you added to your [O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis]: The charge was expressed by [aliud invenisse peccatum Originale, multo citerius quam quod ab Adamo traductum est]. Hereupon I thought it enough to publish that old private Disputation, which many before had seen with various Censures: Now you send me in your Letter the strange tidings of the success: You that deterred your Juniors by so frighful a warning, seem now not only to agree with me, that we are guilty of our nearer Parents sin, and contract additional pravity from them as such, (which was my Assertion) but over-do all others, and Truth it self in your Agreement! Now you take it for an injury to be reported to think otherwise herein than I do: yea, and add, [Which neither I, nor any Body else I know of, denies as to the thing, though in the extent, and other circumstances, all are not agreed, and you may in that enjoy your Opinion for me]. This is too kind: I am loth to tell you how many that I know, and have read, deny it, lest I tempt you to repent of your Agreement.
But doth the World yet need a fuller evidence, that some Men are de materià agreed with them, whom they raise the Country against by their Accusations and Suspicious?
But surely what passion or spatling soever it hath occasioned from you, I reckon that my labour is not lost: I may tell your Juniors, that I have sped extraordinary well, when I have procured the published consent of such a Doctor. Either you were of this mind before or not: If not, it's well you are brought to confess the Truth, though not to confess a former Error. If yea, then it's well that so loud and wide a seeming disagreement is confessed to be none, that your Juniors may take warning, and not be frightned from Love and Concord by every melancholy Allarm.
Yea, you declare your conformity to the Litany, [Remember not our Offences, nor the Offences of our Fore fathers], and many words of indignation you use for my questioning it. All this I like very well as to the Cause; And I matter it not much how it looks at me: If you agree more angrily than others disagree, the Cause hath some advantage by the Agreement. Though me-thinks it argueth somewhat unusual, that seeming Dissenters should close by so vehement a Collision.
But yet you will not agree when you cannot chuse but agree, and you carry it still as if your Allarm had not been given without cause: Must we agree, and not agree? What yet is the Matter? Why it is [a n…w original sin]. My ordinary expressions of it may be fully seen in the Disputation: The phrase you laid hold on in a Preface is cited before, [That we participate of no guilt, and suffer for no original sin but Adam's only], I denied. And what's the dangerous Errour here? That our nearer Parents sin was Adams, I may presume that you hold not. That we are guilty of such, you deny not: That it is sin, I find you not denying: sure then all the difference must be in the word [ORIGINAL].
And if so, you that so hardly believe your loudnoised disagreements to be but verbal, must patiently give me leave here to try it. Is it any more than the Name ORIGINAL that you are so heinously offended at? Sure it is not: Else in this Letter purposely written about it, you would have told your Reader what it is. Suffer me then to summon your Allarm'd Juniors to come and see what a Spectrum it is that must affright them; and what a Poppet-Play or dreaming War it is, that the Church is to be engaged in, as if it were a matter of Life and Death? Audite juvenes! I took the word [ORIGINAL] in this business to have several significations. First, That is called [ORIGINAL] Sin, which was the ORIGO of all other sins in the Humane World: And that was not Adam's sin, but Eves.
2. That which was the ORIGO of sin to all the World, save Adam and Eve, communicated by the way of Generation: And that was Adams and Eves conjunct, viz. 1. Their first sinful Acts; 2. Their Guilt; 3. And their habitual pravity (making it full, though in Nature following the Act). This Sin, Fact, Guilt, and Habit, as Accidents of the Persons of Adam and Eve, are not Accidents of our Persons.
3. Our personal participation; 1. In the guilt of the sin of Adam and Eve; 2. And of a vicious privation and habit from them, as soon as we are Persons. Which is called Original sin, on three accounts conjunct; 1. Because it is a participation of their Original Act that we are guilty of; 2. Because it is in us ab Origine, from our first Being; 3. And because it is the Origo of all our Actual Sins.
4. I call that also [ORIGINAL] (or part of Original Sin) which hath but the two later only; viz. 1. Which is in us AB ORIGINE, from our first personal being; 2. Which is the Root or ORIGO in our selves of all our Actual Sins: And thus our Guilt and Vice derived from our nearer Parents, and not from Adam, is our Original Sin; That is, 1. Both Guilt and Habit are in us from our Original, or first Being; 2. And all our Actual Sin springeth from it as a partial Cause: For I may presume that this Reverend Doctor doth not hold that Adam's sin derived to us is in one part of the Soul, (which is not partible) and our nearer Parent's in another; but will grant that it is one vitiosity that is derived from both, the latter being a Degree added to the former; though the Reatus having more than one fundamentum, may be called diverse. That Origo & Active & passive dicitur, I suppose we are agreed. Now I call the vicious Habits contracted from our nearer Parents by special reason of their own sins, superadded to the degree, which else we should have derived from Adam, a part of our original sinful Pravity, even a secondary part. And I call our guilt of the sins of our nearer Parents (not Adam's) which you will, either a secondary Original Guilt, or Sin, or a secondary part of our Original Guilt. See then our dangerous disagreement: I call that ORIGINAL, which is in us ab Origine, when we are first Persons, and is partly the Root or Origo in us of all our following Actual Sin: though it was not the Original Sin of Mankind, or the first of Sins. The Doctor thinks this an Expression, which all Juniors must be warned to take heed of, and to take heed of the Doctrine of him that useth it. The Allarm is against this dangerous word [ORIGINAL]. And let a Man awake tell us what is the danger.
But I would bring him yet to agreement even de nomine, though it anger him. 1. Let him read the Artic. 9. of the Church of England, and seeing there Original Sin is said to be that corruption of Nature whereby we are far gone from Original Righteousness, and are of our own Nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit. The lust of the flesh called foreign, which some do expound the Wisdom, some Sensuality, some the Affection, some the desire of the Flesh, not subject to the Law of God]: Seing a degree of all this same Lust is in Men from the special sins of their Fore-fathers, as well as from Adam's; Is not this Degree here called Original Sin? (why the Church omitted the Imputed Guilt aforesaid, I enquire not).
2. If this will not serve, if he will find me any Text of Scripture, which useth the Phrase, [ORIGINAL Sin], I will promise him hereafter to use it in no other sense, than the Scripture useth it.
3. If that will not serve, if the Masters of Language will agree, (yea, to pass by our Lexicons, if the Doctors of that University will give it us under their hands) that the word [ORIGINAL] is unaptly and dangerously applyed to that sinful Guilt and Pravity which is in us ab Origine Nostrae existentiae, and is the internal Radix vel Origo of all our Actual Sin, in part of Causality, I will use that Epithete so no more.
4. If all this will not serve, if he himself will give me a fitter Epithete, I will use it: And now we over-agree in Doctrine, a word shall not divide us, unless he will be angry because we are agreed, as Jonas was that the Ninivites were spared, because it seemed to disgrace his Word.