Adam's actual sin and so in the guilt of the actual sins of our neerer Parents as to meer desert For our nature was in him our persons though not existent were seminally in him we come not from Adam as our Creator that makes us of nothing nor as our Fabricator that makes us of an extrinsick pre-existent matter but as our Progenitor who deriveth a being to us by communication out of himself and therefore can give us no better than he had himself either qualitatively or relatively and therefore being a son of death he could not beget sons of life being guilty he could not beget persons that are innocent nor bring a clean thing from himself who was unclean Prop. 17. This natural interest in the guilt of Progenitors is only from those sins which they committed while we were in their loins or seminally in them and not from any that they committed after we were born but the reputative guilt which we have from the sins of societies whereof we are naturally or electively members may befall us as much and rather from the sins which they commit when we are at age and have the fullest use of reason therefore all men should be careful what society they voluntarily joyn themselves to or abide in and should diligently endeavour the reformation of such societies and when they are falling into ruine past hope of recovery should foresee the fall and save themselves Prop. 18. It is both these sorts of guilt which adhere to us in our infancy from our Parents sins 1. The guilt which followeth our natural interest as we are seminally in them adhereth to us all as soon as we have our being 2. The other is varied according to the several societies that we are members of 1. As we are members of the great Common-wealth of the World whereof God is the Soveraign so we are guilty by reason of the sin which mankind in our first Parents committed in the beginning For God dealt with Adam in his first Laws not only as an individual person but also as whole mankind he and his wife being then the whole World And so as we are first guilty of death because of our natural interest in Adam's sin as being his Progeny so next we are also guilty by reason of this civil or reputative interest as being members of the sinful World or of sinful mankind which later yet supposeth the former as its ground and doth not arise from any Covenant or Will of God to impute that to us which we were never guilty of by any natural interest of our own Not that we were personally guilty before we were personally existent but that we were then seminally guilty as we had a seminal being in the nature and person of our Progenitors and when our persons from that seed do first exist they are guilty persons as soon as persons And therefore when man had first sinned God that had given him a Law as being all mankind and the root of a Posterity in course of nature to spring from him did also in the same relation call him to judgment and sentence him for his sin and therefore passed such a sentence which we see by experience is executed on all mankind and as the individuals multiply from the first condemned root so doth the guilt and the sentenced punishment adhere to each individual And in the same relation was the promise of a Redeemer made to him As it was not Adam only but all mankind that is meant by God's sentence Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return c. yet only Adam as then personally existent and condemned and all others as seminally in him and the sentence makes its first seizure on their persons when their persons shall first exist and not before Even so is it by the guilt as it is by the sentence It was only Adam's person that was at first guilty but not only as a particular private person but as mankind and as the root of all that should succeed and therefore we were seminally guilty in him and are personally guilty from him when we first personally exist 2. And as we are thus guilty as members of sinful mankind so also as members of sinful Families and in that respect may for the sins of our neerest Parents lie under Family punishments 3. So are we also as members of wicked Common-wealths and particular subordinate Societies in those Common-wealths And therefore it is so common for God to punish men for common abhominations and provoking enormities which yet themselves did not commit 4. The like may be said of heretical impure and scandalous Churches whose members become liable to Church-punishments as those aforesaid to Common-wealth-punishments Prop. 19. It is one thing to be so far guilty or to deserve punishment as that God may in the execution of vindictive justice lay it on us as our due unless remedied and it 's another thing to be so far guilty as that God must punish us or else be unjust or not attain the ends of right Government by ordinary means It is the first guilt only which I say ariseth from the sins of our Parents to us the second I neither affirm nor deny as not intending now to meddle with that Controversy Prop. 20. Though according to the strict rigor of the Law of nature or works considered alone God might for the sin of Adam or our neerer Parents adjudge us to everlasting death as our due because of our forementioned participation therein yet hath he provided such a remedy in the Gospel that no man shall everlastingly perish for any such sin who is made partaker of that remedy And therefore though the Gospel findeth men under such a guilt by nature yet doth it not bind it on them but free them from it if they be in Christ therefore when God telleth men that if they repent and believe it is not their Fathers sins that shall damn them yet bids them take heed lest they perish by their own this doth not deny that we deserve death for Adam's or our other Parents sins but only that if we repent and be our selves evangelically righteous the deserved evil shall not befall us The remedy supposeth and not denieth the malady Prop. 21. A further difference may yet appear between the guilt of Adam's first sin and our guilt of his following sins or the sins of our neerer Parents if we distinguish between the Fundamentum and the Terminus of guilt and then observe that the Terminus is but one and the same but the Foundation is divers The punishment which we are guilty of or liable to by Adam's sin is the privation of our whole felicity The new guilt of our neerer Parents sin or Adam's further sins yea or our own actual sin can bring no new punishment on us according to the covenant of Works though according to the covenant of Grace which giveth new mercies whose privation we are capable of we may have new punishments
Adam's first sin on that account because we were seminally in him and are propagated from him then are we guilty of our neerer Parents sins on the same account But the antecedent is true go so is the consequent Here I suppose it granted that Adam's first sin is imputed to us and we guilty of it for I now deal not with those Divines that deny it but with those that maintain it For as I said before if we are not guilty of Adam's sin then I must give up my cause and confess that we are not guilty of the sins of our neerer Parents Supposing then the imputation of Adam's sin to us I must First prove that the reason of that imputation is because we are propagated from him and were seminally in him 2. That on the same reason we have the like guilt of neerer Parents sins 1. For the first I may safely premise this that as in all relations there must be a relate correlate and foundation and as to the disconformity of a crooked line from the rule there must be the crookedness of the line and the straightness of the rule and is the rule will not give you ground to denominate the line disconform or crooked unless it be truly so even so there must be merit on mans part consisting in performance or some participation in the evil before the Law which is the rule will judge him guilty The Law is first the rule of duty and then the rule of judgment And it first shews them to be guilty of the sin reos culpae before it shew their obligation to punishment reatum poenae This being so it seems clear that the doctrine of too many that lay the chief or only cause of man's guilt and punishment upon God's covenant is not sound They say God made a covenant with Adam that he should stand or fall for all his posterity that is as some expound it that his desert of life or death should be imputed theirs and as others that if he sinned he and his posterity should be guilty of death and if he did not sin that first sin of eating the forbidden fruit both he and his posterity should be confirmed in their happiness as the good Angels and never fall afterward And this covenant say they makes us guilty of Adam's sin though we have not a natural interest to make us guilty and so God imputeth it to us not because it was ours before the imputation but because he is pleased to make it ours by that imputation or by his covenant That it is not the imputation or covenant that primarily makes us guilty but determineth us guilty of the fault who are so in our selves and consequently determineth us guilty of punishment I prove thus 1. Else it should be God only or primarily that should make us sinners and not we our selves nor our Parents But that 's most false go The consequence is most apparent If a man be therefore a sinner because God by his covenant or imputation saith he is one and not because he is first made one by himself or Parents then God is the principal if not only cause of sin 2. Yea then God should make a man a sinner by that Law whose essential nature is to prohibit and hinder sin 3. Or else thus God's judgment by Law or Sentence is ever according to the truth of the thing He judgeth or pronounceth things to be as they are and not as they are not But if he should determine or pronounce a man a sinner that is not his judgment were not according to truth but he should make that which is false become true by judging it true which is no tolerable conceit 4. If it were without any antecedent ground in us that God's covenant doth judge or make us guilty of Adam's sin or God impute it to us but meerly because he will do it then on the same reason might God have made or judged the innocent Angels or the Lord Jesus Christ guilty of Adam's sin yea he might have imputed it to the Sun or Moon or any creature For if real innocency secure not us from being made sinners by God or reputed such then it would not secure them Or if God's will to impute it be enough without an antecedent interest to ground that imputation upon then there is no difference as to interest in that sin between them and us But that 's too gross a conceit to be defended 5. There is no such covenant of God with Adam mentioned in Scripture as lays the final standing of his posterity upon that first obedience or disobedience of his much less that determineth that they shall be judged guilty for his sake of more than they are guilty of indeed by natural interest The foundation of the relation is in our selves I conclude therefore that it is most certain that there is in man some sufficient ground or cause why God's Law should denominate or judge him guilty before it do so And this cause can be no other than one of these two either because we were seminally in Adam and are his children or because God making his covenant as the Rector of all mankind did make it upon supposition of a virtual consent contained in the very nature of man and so supposing that what we ought to do we would do and that if all men had then existed we ought to have consented to venture our felicity upon Adam's act and to run the hazardâ— of perishing with him on condition we might be saved with him if he stand and so such a supposed consent is the ground of our guilt But though I will not exclude this last ground yet certainly it is upon a supposition of the former or else it is none at all For man was not to exist till the fall was past and therefore could not be supposed to exist And if God had decreed to create every individual person to the end of the World of nothing as he did Adam without any derivation from him what virtual consent can be supposed or on what ground should it be presupposed that we would all consent to live and die with him any more than with the Angels that fell or any more than the good Angels might be supposed to consent to such a thing I conclude therefore that the first ground of our interest in Adam's sin or our guilt of it is our being his off-spring and then seminally in him and next that God might make one Law for him and all that should come of him as supposing the equity of their consent yet by that Law he hath not that I know of involved them in his first sin any more than in his second or third nor offered them happiness meerly on condition of his avoiding that first sin whatsoever they should afterwards do themselves nor yet promised to make them impeccable or prevent all after sin 2. It being then our natural interest that is the first ground of our guilt
upon our selves are but misery and not properly sin Sin may make a man sick or lame or blind or mad and yet these be no sins but the effects of sins Sin may kill us and yet death be no sin There must be therefore some other formal reason which can be nothing but the disconformity to the rule 2. Adam as was said before had original righteousness which was imputable to him as a moral good before his actions go it is not necessary to the morality or imputability of a principle that it be the consequent of our acts 3. Jesus Christ had moral good before his humane action go the same will follow 4. Infants that are sanctified have moral good that is not the consequent of their acts go c. 5. The dedication by believing Parents and entring the child into the Covenant of God is taken to all the ends thereof as if it were the infants act 6. Among men the will of the Parents is in many cases reputatively the will of the child and children receive good or are deprived of it and oft-times penally for the Parents acts Obj. 3. No righteous Judges do punish the children for the Parents sin Answ 1. It is not for the Parents only imputed but their own contracted that God doth punish them And he takes that cognisance of the heart that man doth not 2. And he is more holy and just than man 3. And yet all Common-wealths are directed by the light of nature to punish infants for their Parents sins as naturally participant The Laws do threaten the posterity of many offenders for the Parents sins and Judges sentence them accordingly As that Traytors or some other most odious offenders shall be deprived of their honours and estates and their children after them for ever It cannot be said here that this is but an affliction to the posterity and not a penalty or that it is a meer consequent of the Parents sin and not the effect for it is expressed in the Law and Judgment and is malum naturale propter malum civile vel morale and it 's on a subject And it 's a privation of the good that he should else have possessed and many positive evils of mind and body care sorrow want labour c. follow thereupon Obj. 4. But God hath told us that the soul that sinneth shall die and the child shall not die for the Parents sins Answ 1. go it followeth that children that do die have sin of their own 2. The text plainly speaketh of those children that see the evil of their Parents sins and do not after them but renounce them and live in righteousness themselves which is nothing to the present case Obj. 5. It seems to make God the Author of sin when he will cause us to be born of sinful Parents and infuse a soul into sinful flesh when we cannot help it Answ 1. I have proved that it is the denial of original sin that makes God the Author of sin resolving it into his workmanship or denial of sufficient or necessary grace so that no man in the World avoideth sin 2. But the true doctrine of original sin doth manifest that it is not of God as I have shewed God as Creator setled the nature of his creatures and the course of propagating them before man sinn'd and he was no ways bound to change the course of nature when man had corrupted it to prevent our being born sinners Though we know not fully the manner of God's concourse in our generation and how he causeth souls yet we are sure it is according to the first established course of nature appointed in the creation as much as the generation of any other creature is and that 's enough God was not the cause of Adam's transgression and his Law of propagation went before it and his concourse with the Parents maketh him no more the cause than the Sun is of the poison of a toad Obj. 6. But it seemeth cruelty to damn infants for that which they could not help Answ The deniers of Original sin do much more impute cruelty to God as I shall prove For 1. They confess as much of the misery and sufferings of infants as we assert 2. And they maintain that God inflicts all this without the least desert of theirs For the first they confess that infants die and they confess that God is not obliged to revive them and that without Christ they should have no part in glory If God may annihilate them or deny them an immortal life they cannot deny but he may cause their souls to live and their bodies to revive if he please and if so that he may inflict as much positive pain as shall be proportioned to the evil of annihilation And it is a great deal of suffering that man would choose to prevent annihilation They confess that God may make them to be toads when such creatures are what they are without sin and so continue them for ever And who would not endure much misery as a man rather than be a toad or serpent They confess that infants have immortal souls at least capable of immortality and that God is no ways bound to annihilate them and that he may shut them out of happiness which is half damnation and that in equality with the worst it being the same Heaven that all men lose and if they are rational creatures they must needs have the torment of positive grief in the despairing apprehension of their loss And for our parts we presume not to be so far acquainted with the secret judgments of the Lord as to determine whether infants shall have a greater degree of misery in their damnation than all this which the adversaries grant So that we differ not about the degree of suffering 2. And then for the cause of it there 's the difference We say that God inflicteth not all this but for their own desert by original sin And our Adversaries say that he doth it without the least fault or desert of theirs And then I would know whether there be any reason why God doth all this against infants but because he will do it If man had never sinned he might have done it according to them If it be said that he punisheth the Parents in the children I answer 1. What punishment to Parents is the everlasting loss or suffering of the children 2. Or what punishment is the present death of children to harlots and unnatural persons that desire to be rid of them 3. And how can he cause the subjects of his Kingdom to suffer so much without their own desert 4. And if their natural interest make them not in some measure partakers of their Parents sin what reason why they any more than other creatures should be chosen to the suffering And here I would propound this question What if God had left it in the beginning to Adam's free will whether he would beget a man or a toad or a serpent Would