trine.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PROPAGATION OF ORIGINAL SIN.

Ir will not be necessary to go to any length in explaining the way in which original sin is propagated from our first parents 1. The doc- to their seed. The principles upon which the result depends have been sufficiently developed already. Our first parents apostatized from God, and depraved themselves. Their posterity were "in their loins, as branches in the root," 11* -as members in the body; and, as the deed attached to all that was in them, it therefore belongs to us. "We existed, and consented and sinned, in our cause,-in the one Adam."† The common nature of all was in him. His sin was the apostasy from God of this common nature. And, as the nature, thus apostate and depraved, flows by ordinary descent to the successive generations of men, it everywhere verifies its identity by the corruption and enmity to God, which it conveys from the first parents to all. On this subject the argument is brief and simple, and the conclusion unavoidable. That the sin of Adam was a depravation of his nature, as well as an act of sin, we have demonstrated, and can scarcely be questioned. That there was in him any other than the depravity thus originated, no one will pretend. We have seen it to be the unanimous and unambiguous testimony of the Scriptures, that the sinfulness of his seed is derived from him. If this be so, then is it one and the same, numerically, with that which was in him. But, in him its elements were two, to wit:-apostasy, and corruption,-the entrance of depravity, and the depravity which entered. Both of these, therefore, are elements in that which flows from him to his pos

* Westminster Sum of Christian Doctrine, head i. 2 3. Confession, ch. vi. § 3. Van Mastricht, Lib. iv. cap. ii. 24.

terity. The corruption, which is found in all the race of man, is either numerically one and the same, in all the members of the race, or it is diverse in them severally. But if it be diverse, then each individual has a distinct and several depravity, original in and peculiar to him; and the corruption of the children is not derived from their parents, although it be like theirs, and that of the whole race. In this case, the doctrine of original sin,of the apostasy and depravation of the race, in Adam,-is repudiated, and the depravity is to be attributed to one of two causes, -either the creative power of God, or the personal and several apostasy of each individual. On the contrary, if the depravity be "conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation," as our Confession asserts, then it is, and continues to be, numerically, one and the same thing in Adam, and all the generations to whom it is conveyed from him. By a just judgment of God, the sin which our first parents embraced was left in possession of the nature which had yielded to its power; and, as we receive that nature, it comes not only burdened with the guilt of its crime, but bound under the depravity which then gained dominion.

Here, it is necessary carefully to distinguish between two things which widely differ, although not unfrequently confounded with each other, that is, the penal abandonment of the creature to the bondage of his already existing corruption, and the penal infusion of depravity into one as yet undefiled.

22. Sin is sometimes penal.

That, in the former sense, sin may be, and often is, the punishment of sin, is unquestionable. This it may be in two ways. (1.) The sin of one may be the punishment of the sin of another. Thus, God says to David, "Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.”—2 Sam. xii. 10. Hence the crimes and blood which thenceforward characterized the house of that man of God. So, in Isaiah we read, "O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against a hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge,

...

to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few. . . . Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat ones leanness; and under his glory he shall kindle a burning like the burning of fire."-Isa. x. 5–7, 16. (2.) Again, a person may be penally left to the unrestrained power of his own corruptions and sins, because of his love of them. Thus Paul declares, that, because men receive not the love of the truth, "God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."-2 Thess. ii. 11, 12. The language of the same apostle, in another place, illustrates his meaning, here:-"If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."-2 Cor. iv. 3, 4. If we need any further illustration of the meaning of all this, we have it from James:-"Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.”—James i. 13, 14. We may, then, lay down as unquestionable these several propositions:

1. Neither is God the author or efficient cause of sin, in any case; nor does he ever exert his efficiency in arousing sin into action, where it already exists.

2. Such is the constitution of moral agents, that sin cannot occur, unless the affections and the whole moral nature yield to its embrace. Hence, the very fact of sin existing implies such a state of the case as leaves nothing upon which to predicate the idea of the sinner's unaided return. By the act of apostasy he enslaves himself to the corruptions thus engendered. Hence, the natural tendency of the wicked is to a growing intensity of enmity against God, and habitually increasing indulgence in pollution and sin.

3. So far from God causing or cherishing sin, the reverse is

always the case. This side of hell, his hand is never withdrawn, but in every instance exerts a constant restraint, of greater or less extent, upon the corruptions of men,-only permitting them to have liberty so far as serves to accomplish his own holy designs. "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain."-Psalm lxxvi. 10.

4. Sin is not only evil, in that it is pursued with the curse of God, but it is evil in itself, though it had never been accursed, -the greatest evil in the universe. On the other hand, the best blessing which creature can receive, is the favourable presence, communion and smiles of his Maker, keeping him from sin, and upholding him in holiness. A modified form of the same blessing consists in that partial restraint upon the corruptions of sinners, which has just been mentioned. Hence, one element in the curse of the law, and among the most fearful, is the abandonment of the wicked by the gracious Creator;-the withdrawal of his restraining power and beneficent countenance, and surrender of the sinner to the tyranny of his own vile and malignant lusts and passions, for love of which he has rejected the truth, rebelled against God and apostatized from holiness.

5. God does often, in just displeasure, here on earth, thus deal both with individuals and communities; for their rejection of his testimony and refusal of his love, leaving them to their own delusions and to the snares of Satan. The penal fearfulness of such a dispensation consists in three things:-the abandonment of the creature by its blessed Creator, who is the fountain of all good and blessedness; the evil of the depravity and sin, the dominion of which is thus permitted; and the consequent heavier curse which reigning sin heaps up against the day of wrath.

6. In all this, we repeat it, God neither originates, cherishes nor excites into action, depravity, which he abhors. On the contrary, the very nature of that trait of his administration which is here considered implies, as essential to it, the pre-existence of sin in the subject of such dealing,-his prior free and spontaneous apostasy from God, and choice and embrace of corruption and enmity.

These principles, duly considered, will greatly assist in attaining to clearness respecting the propagation of original sin. In creating man, his Maker so guarded him around that sin and consequent misery were impossible unless the whole nature were surrendered to the malign and accursed influence. When man apostatized, God, by a dispensation of righteous judgment, left the depravity, thus generated, to full possession of the nature. He permitted it, unrestrained, to spread, with that nature and in it, to each succeeding generation to which the nature flows by ordinary descent. Thus, the propagation of original sin, as testified by the great body of the Reformed, is consequent upon the just judgment of God; but this, not by a punitive insertion of depravity, where it was not already; but by a penal abandonment of man to the corruption which he had embraced,—a declining to purge the already defiled nature and cleanse the polluted fountain of the race. And the nature whence all spring being thus left corrupt in the father of all, the depraved result was inevitable. "For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one."

The doctrine of Edwards, on the subject of second causes, involves him in inextricable difficulties on the whole subject of 3. Edwards the origin, propagation and actings of sin. If, as doctrine. he teaches, God be the immediate and only cause of all effects, then, evidently, he is the sole cause of sin, in every aspect of it. This conclusion, so fatal to his whole theory, Edwards attempts to evade by appeal to the distinction between a privative and a positive cause. He says that "to account for a sinful corruption of nature, yea, a total native depravity of the heart of man, there is not the least need of supposing any evil quality infused, implanted or wrought into the nature of man, by any positive cause or influence whatsoever, either from God or the creature; or of supposing that man is conceived and born with a fountain of evil in his heart such as is any thing properly positive.... The case with man was plainly this:-When God made man at first, he implanted in him two kinds of principles. There was an inferior kind, which may be called natural, being the principles of mere human nature, such as