time to amend it And I thought it not amiss to add to it another Disputation then used of original Sin as derived from Adam and only to assist the Reader 's understanding of them by these following notes entreating his pardon if he meet with some things repeated in one which were in the other seeing this twenty years silence may inform him that they were not intended to speak out to the world though this extortion now will justifie their publication Sect. 9. I. I do hold that the State of an Infant as a meer Child of Adam is not the worst that an Infant is capable of on earth And that nature in such is not in the utmost degree of its depravation Custom in actual Sin may make it worse in the adult for they are not so bad as those in hell And Parents Sins may make it worse in some Infants than otherwise it would be Sect. 10. II. Therefore I hold with Wickliffe Trialog li. 4. c. 11 12. which I cited to Mr. Danvers that Original Sin is not equal in all as he inferreth from his assertion that the penalty is not equal Sect. 11. III. I do hold that besides all said in the following disputation to prove the thing asserted the true Nature and Tenor of the Law of Grace and the terms of Life and Death determined by it will fully prove it Sect. 12. IV. And I may well here suppose that it is a Law of Grace that is now Norma officii Judicii to all the world which obligeth them as Subjects and by which they be judged For 1. Were it not a Digression I would prove that no man is under the meer Covenant or Law of Innocency which commandeth Innocency as the condition of life it being now naturally impossible to the guilty 2. And that the World is not under the Jewish Law of Moses as such 3. And that those are not under the Gospel or Law of Grace in the last Edition by Christ incarnate who never had it nor could have 4. And that the World is not outlawed or out of the relation of subjects to God 5. Nor yet are they as the damned under a meer remediless sentence but are under an obligation to receive and improve mercies and use some means which tend to their recovery as such 6. And therefore that all that never had or can have the Law of Grace in the last edition are under the first edition of it which was given to fallen mankind in Adam first and afterward in Noah saving that since the Messiah is come none are bound to believe in him as yet to be incarnate as if he were not come But they are under the remaining part of the Law of Grace the tenor of which is plainly enough expressed in God's proclaimed name Exod. 34. 5 6 7. and in many other places of the Scripture 7. For we were and therefore are accordingly accounted as truly in Adam when the Law of Grace or Promise was made to him as when the Law of Innocency was given him 8. And that Law is never since repealed or nullified saving by a more perfect edition to them that have the Gospel 9. And Christ that came not to destroy or condemn the World but to save them came not to bring most of the World without their fault into a worse condition than he found them in yea so much worse as to nullifie the universal Law of Grace which was before in force and to leave them remediless as the devils and damned are Sect. 13. V. All things being delivered now into the hands of Christ and all power given him in Heaven and Earth and all men being his subjects as to obligation though not as to consent and all being under the Law of Grace of the first or second edition as made as truly with all mankind as the Law or Covenant of Innocency was as that by which they must live and be judged and so Nature it self now being redeemed Nature and neither innocent lawless nor utterly desperate accordingly all the World of sinners hath some sort and degree of Grace or mercy contrary to merit from and by the Redeemer which Grace or Mercy in the natural tendency and usefulness of it is apt to diminish and restrain their natural pravity and doth make them better by preparing them for saving regeneration usually before they are so regenerated if adult And both adult and infants are capable of a commoner sort of Grace who have not special saving Grace Besides that even infants may have true saving Grace it self Sect. 14. VI. And as thus it is evident that even infants are not all in one state or degree of pravity but may some be worse and some better so it is evident that now under a Law of Grace not to be better than Adam maketh them much more to become worse which may be and oft is is not a meer penalty or fruit of the violated Law of Innocency but a privation of that Grace which they were capable of by Christ and so may be a penalty of the Law of Grace Now the World hath a Physitian not to be healed is a privation of Grace and not a meer negation only For an infant now not to be regenerate justified saved is not only a negation of that which he never had any hopes or possibility of as it is to the damned but it is a privation of that which he was made capable of by Christ yea which was conditionally given by a sealed Law of Grace to all mankind And this privation is not causeless on his part God doth not deprive infants of this mercy only as they are the seed of Adam for then all the seed of Adam should be so deprived of it And to cast all upon meer secret election and reprobation as if infants were no subjects under Law as the rule of their right I have in a Treatise now in the Press proved to be the inlet of Anabaptistry and an opinion in which we ought not to symbolize with the Anabaptists Sect. 15. VII It followeth therefore that as God dealt with Adam and his seed under the Law or Covenant of Innocency and we have our guilt of violating that Law from him as being in his loins so God joyneth children with their Parents variatis variandis under the Covenant of Grace and we are in infancy de jure the better or worse for what our Parents were are or did And that not to be healed not to be justified and saved is not now to infants a penalty of Adam's sin alone but of those Parents or pro-Parents in whom the Law of Grace doth judge the infant to have been or done or not done what was necessary Sect. 16. VIII But no one was the universal Head and Father of all mankind but Adam as none is the universal Head of the regenerate but Christ the second Adam He was the first sinful man in him all mankind sinned And so he was the original cause
good as good so far as he perceived it and go with the greatest inclination to the greatest good but to man in his natural integrity God appeared as the greatest good otherwise the understanding could not have discerned that truth which the whole creation manifested which is not to be imagined Moreover man by nature was inclined to his own felicity formally and objectively so far as he knew it but by nature he knew God to be objectively his felicity though he might not know the immediate vision he could not but know that it was his happiness to be accepted and beloved by his Maker and enjoy him according to his capacity go c. Moreover no creature can satisfie the mind of man or fulfil his desire go Man in his natural integrity was inclined to God who only can satisfy Moreover it is natural for the creature to desire the perfection of that which it had in imperfection but it cannot be denied but Adam had some knowledge of God as God and so as the chief good and consequently some inclination to him suppose it never so small go he naturally desired to know and love him perfectly and go it must needs be that God was his end and he had Original Righteousness Arg. 6. Man was naturally obliged to love God above all and serve and please him with all his powers go he was naturally disposed hereunto The Antecedent is plain in that God by meer Resultancy having made man a rational free agent was related to him as his Creator Lord and Ruler and Benefactor and man related to him as his creature as his own as his subject and as his Beneficiary and go must needs be bound by virtue of this relation to love God with all his heart and be thankful to him and devoted to his will and service The consequence is proved in that God fitteth all his creatures to their use not only by a naked power but by a convenient inclination for the actuating of that power go he did so by man he did not lay all this duty on him without giving him an aptitude and disposition suitable thereto Arg. 7. The contrary Doctrine too much favoureth Infidelity as to mans immortal happiness with God For 1. If mans nature as compleated by the Creator was not made for and suited and disposed to the fruition of God in immortality super-added Grace and Redemption must be conceived to make man as it were another creature and give him another nature and so that God should presently change the nature that he had newly made and that Grace were to make man holy as if it were to make a beast to be a man and elevate him above the tendency of all his natural perfections which will seen improbable 2. It denieth all the arguments for the immortality of the soul that are fetch'd from nature which is not to be done If the nature of the soul can prove its immortality it must accordingly prove its immortal happiness or misery for a neutral state cannot thence be proved and go it must prove that happiness to be in the love of God and so that the soul was inclined to it Arg. 8. There is no word of God that mentioneth the super-adding of Original Righteousness by any following gift of God distinct from our creation go it cannot by divine Faith be believed that such a following gift there was Arg. 9. Regeneration is mans reparation and restoration to God go man fell from God and so from the love of God and it is the reparation of that Image of God in which he was created Col. 3. 10. Eph. 4. 24. Arg. 10. It is expresly said Eccl. 7. 29. that God made man upright but his righteousness was his uprightness go he also made him righteous So much of that question 2. As to the next question Wherein Original Righteousness doth consist 1. It consisteth in the souls inclination to God as God that is in the habit or disposition or propensity of the soul to love God for himself as the infinite good and also as our felicity 2. In the understandings disposition to know God as one to be thus beloved 3. In a holy vivacity Godward 4. In the ordination and subjection of all the inferior faculties to the understanding and will thus inclined 5. And relatively in the innocency hence resulting And now we may hence see what original sin is In Adam himself the first sin was actual and thence followed the habitual pravity in us the first in order of nature is Adam's sin imputed justly because we were in him and in our immediate Parents who derived it from him and herewith is conjoyned the pravity or corruption of our nature which containeth these things following 1. The privation of the true love of God as our principal end to be loved for himself and as our felicity and herewith the privation of the love of holiness his image and so of the rectitude of the will 2. The privation of the true and savoury knowledge of God and his image and estimation of them Here note that it is the privation of the inclination disposition or habit that I speak of and not of the act 3. In a deadness and inactivity Godwards 4. In the inordinate adhesion or inclination of the sensitive appetite to its objects 5. In the inordinate inclination of the will to our selves especially our carnal interest The matter of original sin is in these II. For the explication of the Thesis I desire that these things may be noted besides what is said 1. It is original sin increased by our sinful acts that hindereth us from knowing original sin As it is the ophthalmie or gutta serena or suffusion that hindreth the eye by the glass to see its own disease Original sin lieth very much in an inordinate self-love or selfish inclination and the more any man hath of that the more unwilling and unapt he is to know it and much more unapt to be truly humbled for it and go unsanctified men that are strangers to true self-denial are apt to plead against the being of original sin and are hardly brought to know it in themselves 2. Sin is a word that 's usually and properly taken so largely as to contain all moral evil or all defects inclinations and actions contrary to the rule of holiness and righteousness and deserving any punishment and thus we take it in the question But sometimes sin is taken more narrowly as signifying only the actual transgression of the Law but we take it not so narrowly here for one kind of sin only 3. Some sins have a greater degree of sinfulness or malignity in them than some others have and so when we say that infants have original sin we do not equal it in degree of malignity with the sins of the adult Materially there is more malignity or opposition to God in original than in ordinary actual sins but formally there is more culpability in many actual sins than
in original sin because they are more fully voluntary and in our power Yet the confirmed sinful habits of the adult where original sin is strengthened by actual are worst of all so that as Accidens is said to be called Ens but by analogy of attribution as having a less participation of the kind and yet it is truly Ens so the original sin of infants is called sin by such an analogy as having a less participation of the common nature of sin in the form and culpability 4. In such a degree as infants are subjects of Christ's Kingdom in such a degree also their original pravity is properly sin 5. In such a degree as their Parents righteousness would have been imputable to them if none of their Ancestors from the creation had sinned and as their own inherent holiness is imputable to the sanctified infants as a moral good in such a degree also is their progenitors sin imputed to them and their original pravity imputed to them as a moral evil 6. We do not assert that any of the adult are damned for original sin alone nor that their original sin is a remediless evil but that a remedy is provided and means appointed for men to use in order to their deliverance from the guilt and pravity which if they refuse they lie under a double guilt 7. Original sin and the misery deserved and due to the subject is a remediable evil in infants themselves As their Parents have propagated a sinful guilty nature to them so if their Parents will unfeignedly dedicate them to Christ and offer and engage them to God in the holy Covenant which Baptisme is the sign and seal of they shall be accepted by God according to the tenor of his promise 8. Our question extendeth not to the degree of infants punishment whether they shall have more or less whether pain of loss only or of sense also or how far 9. An ordinary occasion of seducing many into the denial of original sin is the equalling God's Laws with the Laws of man which yet afford much matter for their confutation Man's Laws meddle not so much with the heart and are not a rule for mens secret thoughts dispositions and inclinations as God's Laws are for man knoweth not the heart nor is made the judge of it further than it is manifested by words or deeds but the heart is as open to God as the actions and the distempers of it as loathsome to him and go his Laws condemn even vitious dispositions and habits as such 10. The will is the first defiled faculty and seat of sin and all the rest of the faculties are capable of sin but secondarily and by participation from the will and there is a threefold voluntariness 1. There is an actual voluntariness or volition 2. An habitual or dispositive voluntariness 3. A moral that is a reputative voluntariness This last may be in several cases distinct from the two former 1. In case a man by contract engage himself to stand to what another doth though that other do somewhat that is against his will in the thing yet his consent to the general hath made him guilty as being reputatively willing of it 2. In case a man will the cause of a necessary effect or any way promote that effect when he should not he is reputatively willing of the effect 3. In case a man by consent be a member of a society whose constitution engageth all the members in a participation of their acts and the consequents so that what is done by a major vote is taken as the act of all as to the good or evil consequents here every member is reputatively an offender when the society offendeth so far as that constitution engaged them 4. In case of a natural power that another hath to choose or refuse for us and this is the case of Parents and their infants and ideot children that having no capacity themselves to choose or refuse their Parents wills are reputatively their wills in all cases wherein their Parents have power to dispose of them as it is in cases of inheritance among us So in Baptism the Parents have power to engage the child to Christ as all the Jews had power and were bound to engage their children in covenant to God where the child reputatively consenteth So Adam having power to retain or reject that righteousness of nature which then he was possessed of and might have derived to his posterity and to choose life or death for himself and in some sort for his posterity we reputatively refused life in his refusal or rejection III. I come now to the proof of the Thesis that infants have original sin Arg. 1. From Rom. 5. 12 13 14 15 16 17 18. If all have sinned then infants have sinned and that can be only by original sin But all have sinned go infants have sinned Whether 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be in whom or in that or forasmuch as I make no great matter of Though I see no reason but with the vulgar Latin and others we should turn it in quo If infants have sin it is as much as I am proving The minor is expresly affirmed in ver 12. all have sinned which is rendred in other words ver 19. many were made sinners The consequence of the major can have nothing said against it but that by All is meant only All the adult and infants are excluded But this is such wilful violence to the Text as that all Scripture may by such interpretation be eluded and words shall signify nothing 1. The express universal affirmation may not be expounded by restraining terms without some cogent reason but here is no cogent reason brought nor can be all the reason of the adversaries is but the point now in question which if they may beg they may thence deny all Texts that be against them because they are against them 2. It is all men that die that the Apostle speaketh of but infants die go he speaks of infants The major is plain v. 12. Death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned Here the sinners and dyers are made the same and more than so death is the effect of their having sinned it go passeth upon all men for that all have sinned go not without their sin And the next verses fullier prove it purposely Where death reigneth there sin is imputed but death reigneth on infants go sin is imputed to infants and also the All before mentioned includeth them for it is the same persons that the Apostle speaks of in these verses 12 13 14. The major is proved from the 13 and 14 verses else the Apostle's argument were vain for this is his medium to prove that sin was imputed before the Law viz. because death reigned before the Law even from Adam to Moses go the reign of death will prove the imputation of sin which is the same with having sinned mentioned ver 12. It is the
all that have sinned that are said to have sin imputed to them 3. The All that have sinned ver 12. are the same All that are made righteous and have the justification of life and that shall reign in life by Jesus Christ ver 16 17 18 19. This is plain in the Context in the opposition But infants are included in the latter All that shall reign in life by Jesus Christ c. go infants are included in the former All that have sinned He that denieth the minor must deny not only the Baptism but the justification and salvation of all infants 4. All old interpretations which the Churches have used that are now most known do shew that thus they understood the Text. The Syriack turns it by so death passed on all the sons of men for that all have sinned The Arabick seeing all have now sinned referring to that past sin The Ethiopick thus And as by the iniquity of one man sin entred into the World and by that sin death came upon all men because that sin is imputed to all men even to them that knew not what that sin is Here is a Paraphrase instead of a Version more fully to express this sense The in quo makes the sense of the Latin Interpreter past doubt This is the first argument from these verses Arg. 2. from the same verses especially 18 They that are under condemnation by Adam's sin have original sin at least the imputed part But infants are under condemnation for Adam's sin go infants have original sin If I prove no more but that they are under condemnation for the minor it is enough for the consequence is thence apparent The major is plain in that condemnation is only for sin and infants have no sin but original 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is as essentially related to culpa as poena is The minor is proved from ver 18. By the offence of one judgment came on all men to condemnation or as the Syriack rendereth it For the offence of one condemnation is on all or as the Ethiopick All men are condemned so ver 15. Through the offence of one many are dead That All men includeth infants here the former arguments prove This one 18 th ver of Rom. 5. were there no more in all the Scripture is so plain for an imputation of Adams sin on all to condemnation that it might end the controversy Both major and minor I yet further confirm 1. That it is a condemnation proving the condemned to be sinners by just imputation is manifest 1. in that ver 13 14. sin is hence said to be imputed to the sufferers 2. ver 12. they are said to have sinned 3. ver 19. they are said to be made sinners If any say that this signifieth but metonymically to be used as sinners I answer 1. He that would make what his list of God's plain words by pretended unproved metonymies is not to be believed 2. If it were true yet it must mean such a using men as sinners as implyeth them to be justly so reputed and their being sinners must be connoted as the cause as it is in all punishment It is surely a penal evil to the adult by the adversaries confession and here 's no distinction 3. To be made righteous which is the opposite member is more than to be used as righteous though we have no sin at all inherent or imputed go to be made sinners is more than to be used as sinners though we have no sin at all inherent or imputed 4. That evil interpretation doth but accuse God of injustice of which anon 2. And for the minor it is sufficient to prove that infants are included 1. Because infants die on this account 2. Because it is a being made sinners by one man's disobedience ver 19. and a being dead and under condemnation through one man's offence as ver 15. 18. that is mentioned and those that are now adult had their relation in infancy to Adam's offence as well as after It is not actual sin that brings them to be thus related to Adam It is both by one offence ver 18. and by the offence of one ver 17. and ver 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in or by the sin of one It is not go the effect of actual sins of the adult that the Apostle here principally speaks of much less only them but it is the participation and imputation of that one mans offence which he opposeth to the righteousness of one Arg. 3. from the punishment of infants If infants are punished they have original sin But infants are punished go they have original sin for they have no other The consequence is certain because it is essential to punishment to be propter malum morale the effect of sin as the meritorious cause All that requireth proof is the minor which I have proved at large in another disputation of the guilt of our immediate Parents sins To which I add 1. God doth not ordinarily at least afflict any rational creature with death but for their sin But God doth ordinarily afflict infants even with death go he doth it for their sin The minor is too well known The major I prove thus 1. In the lamentations of Jeremy the pains of the sucking children are mentioned often among the rest and of all it s said ch 3. 33. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men that is He doth it not till he be provoked by their sins But if he afflict even unto death all infants that so die in the World without their desert by sin then he doth it willingly even because he will do it without their demerit But wherefore doth a living man complain a man for the punishment of his sin ver 39. Though it be the adult that principally complain yet this intimateth that all suffer for their sin Ezek. 18. 23. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die saith the Lord God 32. For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth saith the Lord God Ezek. 33. 11. Say unto them As I live saith the Lord God I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked Much less hath he so much pleasure in the death of innocents as to kill them ordinarily without their desert Rom. 6. 23. The wages of sin is death Scripture speaks of no other death to man but what is the fruit of sin 1 Cor. 15. In Adam all die and Gen. 3. 19. Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return extends to all the posterity of Adam ordinarily which shews some participation in the sin or else why should we all participate so much of the suffering for it 1 Cor. 15. 26. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death By enemy is meant a penal evil which Christ was to remove as our Redeemer go even to infants death is a penal evil 1 Cor. 15. 56. The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is
a fault These two God taketh not away by pardon for it is impossible that which is done should be undone or that which was a fault should be no fault The third which is the obligation to punishment is it that is done away by pardon Now suppose this perfectly done away to Adam or any godly man yet this pardon is but for himself and he propagateth to his children the two former reatum facti culpae which were never done away and then the third obligation to punishment will follow immediately per nudam resultantiam as long as they have themselves no pardon 2. Christ is the Quickening Spirit though Adam was a Living Soul and Christ is now the Fountain of Grace and gives it out in the measure and on the terms that he seeth meet And as God past sentence on mankind before he granted his pardon to Adam and promised the Messiah so his pardon was no full remitting of that sentence but such a personal remission to Adam as should consist with much punishment in his imperfection in grace and his toyl and labour and death c. and with the guilt of his posterity till each man received from Christ the Mediator his own remission And so as he gave in the promise a pardon to Adam he hath on the same condition given it to all Adam had not power to cure himself when he had poisoned his nature but Christ being become the common Physitian hath prepared a remedy for him and us and if we take it as Adam did we shall be healed And the infants are included in the Covenant with their Parents So that notwithstanding all these objections the 12th Argument standeth good Arg. 13. If natural corruption be in infants viciously disposing them to evil and against good then original sin is in them But such corruption is in them go c. The minor is proved by the common experience of the World All infants shew their inclination to sin as soon as they can act it yea so strong and obstinate doth it prove that frequently it resisteth all the endeavours of the most prudent diligent godly Parents that would root it up and of Masters and Teachers that apply both Doctrine and Discipline against it And never is it conquered but by special grace and never is it so restrained in any that live to the use of reason as not to break out into many actual sins And if all men in all ages in all the World do sin and frequently sin it shews that there is some corrupt inclination in the nature of man to sin for the effect revealeth the cause yea it is so great corruption as to lead into some kind of moral necessity of sinning or moral impossibility of not sinning or else some one in the World would have escaped it which none did but Christ and the Papists except but the Virgin Mary Obj. Adam sinned that yet had no corruption Answ The fall of one or two may come from wilful carelesness or inconsiderateness where there is no corrupt inclination antecedent but so cannot the fall of all the World especially their so frequent falls and ordinary obstinacy in sin If now and then a man only should die we might impute it to some accident but when all mankind dieth we are convinced that mortality even a disposedness to death in some sort necessitating it is become natural to him so here Obj. Infants have the use of sense as soon as they are born and are long coming to the use of reason and reason is long weak when sense is strong and this by reason of infancy as such and go in all this time the prevalency of sense can be no sin and so long a prevalency must needs breed a habit and this is it which you take for original corruption Answ 1. If sin had not made the appetite inordinate infants might have lived till they had overgrown their infancy without transgressing an ordinate appetite would have carried them to no inordinate acts And they would not have been so liable to many of those evils that now provoke their passion and to cry when they are hurt would be no sin And so as they had grown up their temptations would have been but proportionable to their reason and go they might well have overcome them As children have not the reason of grown men so neither have they their temptations They have not worldly riches or honours or dignities to care for they are not tempted to the sins of lust And as now the love of their Parents keepeth them even in childhood from transgressing the commands of their Parents and maketh them desirous to please them so would the love of God have made them desirous to please him and keep his commands 2. We see sin now break out in children before custom can engage them to such a habit and against that custom which Parents engage them in against it and with greater obstinacy than that meer custom could so soon produce So much for the minor The consequence of the major is proved 1. From the purity of God's nature and of his Law and from the nature of this corruption This corruption is a disconformity to the holy nature will and law of God and that in his subjects go it is sin The inclinations contrary to his holy nature and image in a rational creature must needs be abhorred of God because they are such And the fleshly mind the body of death is contrary to the Law 2. These same corruptions which are born with us remain in the unsanctified and partly in others till they come to age and then they are sin even the same degree that was born with us for it is not only the degree that custom after superaddeth that is sin Certainly that absence of good and backwardness to it and proneness to evil is sin in the adult go it was sin before For it was the same thing and in a true subject capable of vice and virtue 3. The only Argument against it is vain viz. from the involuntariness as shall be shewed Arg. 14. Adam and Eve had moral good before any actual volition go infants are capable of moral good before any actual volition and consequently actual volition or willing is not of necessity to the morality of a habit or inclination and go they are capable of moral evil The antecedent is proved by the concession of all that Adam had whether naturally or supernaturally the image of God and virtue or holiness ut principium before he acted it and so had original righteousness by creation or gift which was bonum morale and made him capable of the divine complacency and acceptance The parity of reason proveth the consequences Or if there be any disparity it makes against the adversary infants being virtually pre-existent in their Parents Arg. 15. The doctrine that numbreth infants with bruits in point of morality and felicity is false but such is that doctrine which denieth original
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
TWO DISPUTATIONS OF Original Sin I. Of Original sin as from Adam II. Of Original Sin as from our Neerer Parents Written long ago for a more private use and now published with a Preface upon the invitation of Dr. T. TVLLIE By RICHARD BAXTER Exod. 20. 5 6. and 34. 7. Visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children and upon the childrens children unto the third and fourth Generation of them that hate me LONDON Printed for Robert Gibbs at the Golden-Ball in Chancery-Lane 1675. To the Impartial Friends of Sacred Truth who are above the dominion of carnal Interest Faction and false Prejudice and are cured of the Malady of PREFIDENCE and HASTY JVDGING before they have heard and weighed evidence which is the corrupter confounder and disquieter of the Church and World Sect. 1. IT hath seemed good to a Doctor of the Vniversity of Oxford Dr. I. Tully whose name is honoured for Learning and Moderation I believe deservedly though I know him not newly to exercise his zeal and pen to save men from the danger of some Doctrines which he taketh to be mine Of the rest I shall God willing give a distinct account elsewhere That which I am here to consider of is found pag. 128. Justif Paulin. in these words Vnum vero praetereundum non censeo licet ab argumento magis alienum videtur estque novum quoddam inter novissima Praefatorem scilicet nescio quo fortunante Mercurio aliud invenisse peccatum originale multo citerius quam quod ab Adamo traductum est O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis Serio interim monendi sunt juniores ne temere illius Theologiae talia paradoxa parturienti fidem habeant Deus novit me nullo in personam Viri Rever aut aestu aut praejudicio nedum odio cui ex animo sane fausta foelicia precor omnia hoc monitum injicere sed amore veritatis uno utque satis conscientiae fiat ita liberasse animam Whereupon he next advertiseth me out of some words of my own c. Sect. 2. I have great reason to love his love to truth and the souls of men whom he would save from the danger of such errors as he supposeth me to be guilty of And I have no reason to dislike his fidelity to his conscience but rather to wish that true conscientious tenderness and fidelity were more common among the Teachers of the people and the Teachers of those Teachers Sect. 3. And far be it from me to judge him so uncharitable as to doubt whether we his ignorant brethren love not truth also and the fouls of men and search not after it with some impartiality and industry yea and would buy it at as dear a rate as others though through our sin and weakness we may not have had so good success And it is a praise to our Creator rather than to us that we love that which by natural inclination we must needs love Being and Truth are necessarily good and all evil is from good and for good Our good intentions justify not our errors nor the reasonings and considence by which we set them off as truth And by our bold and hasty judging of those things which our reasonings shew we never well digested or understood and our censures of those that perhaps better understand them we should but call men to suspect those understandings as not very like to know much more than others which no better know themselves Instead therefore of calling out to the Academical youth to take heed of the Theology of those worthy eximious persons who are my Censurers I humbly entreat them with candid impartiality to search after truth and to receive all that deserveth that name from the Censurers and to reject all that I or any other offereth them which is against it and proving all things to hold fast that which is true and good yea and to help me to see my errors that I may repent and publish my retractation Which I shall not judge any more than Augustine did to be in vain though it should please others as well as this learned Dr. to cull out for his coufutation the first Book that ever I wrote about four and twenty years after I had publickly for the crudity and unfitness of many expressions in it retracted it and to pass by about sixty others since written and some yea many much more largely and distinctly than that which I retracted on the same subject Sect. 4. But though I am more obliged than such knowing men as he to suspect my own understanding that suspition will not warrant me to resist the light nor to reject that which seemeth to me to be evidence of truth nor to forbear the rendering a reason of my judgment that I may be better informed by a confutation if I erre or if I do not may not desert that which deserveth a just vindication And though I am one of those who never was worthy of his honourable employment to teach men to be Teachers of the Flocks of Christ and these fourteen years have been judged unworthy or unmeet to teach the most ignorant Congregation in these Lands yet I doubt not but I may have his leave and concurrence in bewailing the lamentable condition of the poor people by reason of such ignorant and unhappy Teachers as I and others of my rank have long been Alas how great is their temptation and what perplexities must they needs be cast into when we that have studied night and day with our most earnest desire to know the truth whatever it cost us and with our most searching serious thoughts and with our daily prayers for divine illumination do yet remain not only ignorant but so dangerously erroneous that if some did not silence us and others call out to the people to take heed of us it seems we were like to be their deceivers and to do them more hurt than good And if this were but I and a few more such or only the many hundreds that now are silenced the case were less lamentable But alas it is the case of almost all the Christian World for the people to be cast by their Teachers weaknesses into such distracting perplexities as these The Greeks call to their people to take heed of the Romans and the Romans to theirs to take heed of the Greeks As also to take heed of the Protestants and all as Hereticks or Schismaticks that are not the subjects of the King of Rome And the Protestants requite them The Lutherans say take heed of the Calvinists and the Calvinists say take heed of the Lutherans and Arminians The Conformist saith take heed of the Non-Conformist and some Non-Conformists say take heed of the Conformists till the poor people know not when they are safe but are tempted to live as we did in the great Plague in 1665 when each one fled from the face of others lest every man that approached them should infect them Whom
them And if I had that as theirs first I must by the same reason have more of theirs And who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean And David's Mother is said to conceive him in sin Psal 51. 8. Let it be noted for answer to the objections from Ezek. 18. c. 1. That there is by the Covenant of Grace a pardon with right to Christ and Life freely given to all the faithful and their infant-seed as by them having full power thereto in Covenant given up to Christ Now no one is damned for pardoned sins The infant is at once guilty of Adam's and his Parents sin and at once his nature receiveth pravity from both but immediately only by the immediate Parents and at once both are pardoned to him and this pardon solemnly sealed and delivered in Baptism Therefore well may God say to the pardoned to the penitent and to the innocent that he shall not die for his Parents sins no not for Adam's 2. For the Text speaketh to the adult and to men that thought themselves innocent and that they suffered for their Parents sins and not their own And God assureth them 1. that if they are innocent they shall not die 2. yea if they be repenting persons and pardoned and obedient evangelically hating all the sins of their wicked Parents they shall live 3. yea this is true of their children also for their sakes But this is not because the Law never judged them guilty and worthy of death but because the Grace of Christ forgiveth it else the Text would exempt all infants from the guilty of death for Adam's sin But there is not a word in the Text to prove 1. that children need no pardon for their guilty of Parents sins 2. or that those that are not pardoned being themselves unsanctified or if adult live wickedly as their Parents did shall not die for them 3. or that such sins of Parents are not the cause of such guilt and pravity in the child as that he is truly said to die for his own sin Sect. 43. XIII Yet further methinks to a conformable Doctor the judgment of the Church of England in her Liturgy should not be insignificant Remember not Lord our offences nor the offences of our fore-Fathers neither take thou vengeance on our sins In what sense do men subscribe this and daily use it 1. Do they think that the Church meaneth only Adam's sin by our fore-Fathers 2. Or that by not-remembring they mean not-pardoning and not-punishing 3. Or do they think that they pray for the dead in Purgatory Hell or Heaven Or rather do they not imitate David and the Jewish Church and Ezra Nehemiah Daniel c. who confessed that they were punished for their Fathers sins Sect. 44. I conclude this subject with a second request to the Christian Reader to pity and pray for the poor distressed Church of Christ which is distracted and distressed thus even by such as are most devoted to its service through the great weakness of our judgments and the unhappy passions and strivings that thence follow Either I or this worthy person are mistaken or else we differ not When I look to the Person only and not to the Evidence nor to the Consenters I have far greatest reason to suspect that I am liker to erre than he And if it prove so the evidence yet seemeth to me so full for what I hold that I am almost hopeless of being otherwise perswaded And my judgment is not at my command How then shall I avoid the injury of souls But yet I think that to hold our selves more guilty of our Parents sins than we are is no dangerous damning error it may molest us but not undo us and I never saw many much molested by it But if either we differ not when yet he giveth you so loud an Alarm or if it be he that erreth indeed alas what must the Church expect from the too great number of ignorant and ungodly Teachers when it must be thus used by the Learned and the Godly My thoughts are 1. that it deserveth tears from faithful Ministers to observe that so considerable a part of the common guilt and misery of all mankind should by godly men be no more confessed and lamented 2. And that by those that for any denial or extenuation of our original sin as from Adam are so heinously and justly offended with the erroneous yea ready to vilifie men as Arminians if not Socinians that they think come near it 3. That ever the stream of a Party Reputation Interest Example or whatever else of that kind should with so many good men have so great a power in making truth or error duty or sin good or evil orthodox or heretical in their conceits and so much faction he found in their Religion 4. That ever so many millions should be taught impenitency in so plain a case when repentance and confession have so considerable a place among the requisites to remission 5. That ever so many millions should by Preachers be taught that they have no need of a Saviour nor of Pardon nor to pray for Pardon for so much of their guilty and punishment 6. That ever so much of the plain stream of Scripture-evidence can be denied and made light of by good men that cry up the Scripture authority and sufficiency even when they can lay a great stress in some unprofitable hurtful controversie upon some one Text whose sense is not to be certainly understood 7. That ever good and learned Teachers should be so conceited of their own conceptions as in their confidence in such a cause to brand God's truth with the name of error and their brethren as dangerous men for not erring as they do 8. And finally that the poor people must be under such grievous perplexing temptations as I before mentioned and that the Papists should be thus hardened in their opinion that we shall never be at peace and concord unless we unite in their usurping tyrannical Peace-maker And that Poor Scholars and young Ministers must be thus frightned from Truth Duty Charity and Peace and men made believe that the Church is about to be set on fire if we are told of that which is contrary to our former opinions This must be lamented if it be not I but others that here erre Sect. 45. But yet before I end he calls me so loud to consider of another matter that I must not deny his invitation In my Direct for Cure of Church-Divisions Dir. 42. I said Your belief of the necessary Articles of Faith must be made your own and not taken meerly on the authority of any And in all points of belief and practice which are of necessity to salvation you must ever keep company with the universal Church for it were not the Church if it erred in these And in matters of peace and concord the greater part must be your guide that is caeteris paribus In matters of humane obedience
shall no flesh be justified in his sight Rom. 4. proveth that even to Abraham and his seed justification was by remission of sin through faith in Christ and not by the Law or their own innocency And if it was so with Abraham's seed it is so still with our seed Arg. 9. Rom. 3. 23. 9 10 c. All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God being justified freely by his Grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation c. go infants have sinned and come short of the Glory of God and must be justified by this propitiation for sin Ver. 9. We have before proved that Jews and Gentiles are all under sin Ver. 19. That every mouth may be stopped and all the World may become guilty before God If men will groundlesly say that all these universals are to be limited to the adult they do but say they will believe what they list and words shall signifie what they will Obj. The Text speaks of actors in sin Answ True because it speaks of all the World among whom the adult actors were the principal part Obj. The word All is to be taken limitedly in many other Texts Answ 1. What of that shall we go deny its properest signification without a proved necessity and shall words be taken improperly by us at our pleasure because they are so sometimes where we may prove it 2. Will you allow this plea to them that use it against the texts that speak for Christ's dying for all when yet they have as fair pretence 3. The scope of the Apostle and the oft repeated universals plainly shew that it is the guilt and condemnation on one side and the justification on the other side of all simply that are condemned or justified even of all the World that he speaks of And he lays the strength of his Argument upon the universality for if any might have pleaded not-guilty before God and justified by the Law or their Innocency it had spoil'd the Apostle's argument So many plain Scriptures are not to be forced Arg. 10. If infants without a Redeemer should have been all shut out of Heaven and denied everlasting happiness then are they guilty of original sin But the Antecedent is true go so is the Consequent The minor is granted by those that do oppose us If it were not it 's easily proved 1. From all those Scriptures that appropriate salvation to the Church and to the members of Christ and to such as have it by his purchase and procurement who hath the keys of the Kingdom 2. From those Scriptures that tell us that if any have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his Rom. 8. 9. and that without holiness none shall see God Heb. 12. 14. and that except a man be regenerate and new Born he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven with many the like 3. From the incapacity of an unholy soul to see and love God and so to be happy it being a contradiction And God hath given us no ground to believe that he will sanctify all infants after death and that without any satisfaction for their sin by the death of Christ The consequence of the major proposition is proved thus Infants having souls made capable of immortality either shall live immortally or not If not that privation of everlasting life is an evil so great that any rational man would choose a perpetual tolerable punishment to escape it and God would not thus use so many subjects of his Kingdom to whom he hath undertaken to be a King and judge them righteously and all without any measure of sin in them And I find not yet that the adversaries assert this If they do they make infants to be but meer bruits of which anon If they live an immortal life and rise with others then either in Heaven or out of Heaven in happiness or not If not in happiness which is before proved and by them granted then it must be in misery 1. Because the very privation of that happiness is half hell and more 2. Because there is no middle state to a living rational creature they will have feeling and knowledge and go they shall feel good or evil to them and they cannot but know that they are deprived of Heaven and Happiness which knowledge must cause a positive grief And thus God doth afflict them by the greatest privation and some positive pain which Reason or Scripture or his relation of a righteous King and Judge will not suffer us to think that he doth without any sin of theirs For shall not the Judge of all the World do righteously Will he destroy the righteous with the wicked far be it from him Gen. 18. 23 24 25. Had all the infants of the old World of Sodom of Amalek of Midian been wholly free from participating in sin they had not been destroyed by a righteous Judge Arg. 11. If infants are under God's displeasure or deprived of his acceptance and complacency then are they guilty of original sin but the antecedent is true go so is the consequent If they were in the favour of God they would be saved for all the subjects of his Kingdom have the blessings and rewards of loyal subjects that are in favour with him but without Christ and pardon through his blood they would not be saved go c. If they were not under his displeasure he would not deny them his sanctifying grace and heavenly inheritance which they are capable of and which is the portion of his faithful ones But these he doth deny to some and would deny to more or all if it were not for their pardon and reconciliation through Christ Nor would he torment them with pain as he doth many in this life and after kill them and then shut them out of Heaven if he were well pleased with them The consequence is proved in that nothing but sin can make God displeased with a rational creature Only moral evil can deprive them of his favour Were original corruption but malum physicum such a natural evil as blindness lameness sickness madness c. God would not withdraw his favour for it Man hateth a serpent or a toad that have no sin because their natures are contrary to ours but no meer physical evil is evil to God or contrary to his nature and go none such is hated by him A toad is no more contrary or odious to God than a lark go for such evil infants could not fall under his displeasure He loves the sick the lame the leprous as well as the most sound Arg. 12. Infants have a nature derived from their Parents who were corrupt and guilty go they cannot be uncorrupt and innocent The antecedent is undeniable The reason of the consequence is because the cause can produce no effect that 's better than it self What the effect receiveth is from its cause and the cause cannot give that
sin go c. The major is proved 1. In that they have immortal souls and virtually rational 2. They are under many promises and threats that are mentioned in the Scripture 3. They are disciples of Christ and members of his Church The minor is plain 1. In that they make infants uncapable of any moral evil eo nomine because they have no actual volition or choice 2. And thereby they conclude them uncapable of moral good 3. And thereby they conclude them uncapable of judgment 4. And of any rewards 5. And of any punishments 6. And they say they are under no law or obligation 7. And go they can be no subjects of Christ's Kingdom or members of his Church Only God may do with them what he will and so he may with bruits Arg. 16. The infants of the unbelieving Gentiles were sinners and children of wrath go infants are capable of sin and some at least are sinners c. The antecedent is proved from Gal. 2. 15. We Jews by nature or birth and not sinners of the Gentiles i. e. by nature 1 Cor. 7. 14. Else were your children unclean but now are they holy The Anabaptists make this to speak but of legitimation The Papists by being unclean think nothing is meant but being not baptizable and to be holy they think is but to be baptizable and and that a posteriore because it is presumed that such infants will be religiously educated but Christ hath instituted no Baptism but what is for remission of sin and he doth not actually remit sin to some more than to others upon a presumption of the Church that they will hereafter be educated as Christians There is some holiness mentioned by the Apostle which is the reason why those infants more than others are to be admitted to Baptism which supposeth and signifieth it and that cannot be only a thing future and uncertain Divines commonly call it among Protestants a federal holiness and that this supposeth infants capable of moral good and evil I have shewed on this Text in my Treatise of Infants Baptism Eph. 2. 3. And were by nature the children of wrath even as others Forasmuch as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth nature birth or natural disposition properly and signifieth custom only by a rare and improper acception go it is not here to be interpreted by custom without such cogent evidence as none hath yet given us Those that attempt a collecting of testimonies for this improper use sometimes do give us many that make against them There is no necessity that will warrant our reception of such a tropical and unusual sense Job 11. 12. For vain man would be wise though man be born as a wild asses colt that is of a rude sottish unruly disposition Ezek. 16. 2 3 4. Son of man cause Jerusalem to know her abominations and say Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem Thy Birth and thy Nativity is of the Land of Canaan thy Father was an Amorite and thy Mother an Hittite and as for thy Nativity in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut neither wast thou washed c. This allegory sheweth that part of Jerusalem ' s abhomination was natural from the birth and nothing but sin is abhomination before God Job 25. How then can man be justified with God or how can he be clean that is born of a woman 15. 14. What is man that he should be clean and he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous The illustration that is fetch'd from the natural weakness and impurity of the Heavens the Moon the Stars doth not contradict the exposition of the former words as of moral impurity for the impurity is according to the subject and natural impurity is not unrighteousness Arg. 17. From the necessity of regeneration Joh. 3. 3 5 6. Except a man be born again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit If there be a necessity of a new birth to make us spiritual the first birth bringing forth but flesh before we can enter into the Kingdom of God then by the first birth we are born in sin But the antecedent is certain go so is the consequent The minor is plain in the Text 1. That flesh begets not spirit but flesh 2. That regeneration is therefore of absolute necessity At present I will suppose that by flesh here is not meant sin that the adversary may not think I beg any thing of him The consequence of the major hath this double proof 1. Because flesh without spirit in a rational creature is sinful or morally corrupt for being deprived of the spirit it is deprived of moral good 2. Because nothing but sin can keep a rational creature and subject of God out of Heaven for to be kept out of Heaven is one half at least of the damned's misery and to live and know that loss as immortal souls must do will produce also positive punishment Arg. 18. That doctrine is untrue which maketh God the Author of sin but so doth the denial of Original sin go it is untrue The major will be granted The minor I prove The doctrine which feigneth that innocent nature is under such a moral impossibility of not sinning as that no one person in all the World that hath the use of reason shall escape it doth feign God to be the Author of sin But so doth their doctrine that deny original sin go it feigneth God to be the Author of sin Or The doctrine which feigneth that innocent nature doth sin for want of necessary grace to escape it doth make God the Author of sin But so doth the denial of original sin go c. For the proof of the major of both Arguments consider 1. That the adversaries suppose nature in infants to be innocent 2. That it is granted by them that de facto all men that have the use of reason are sinners except Jesus Christ the Papists except also the Virgin Mary If they denied this it 's easily proved 1. By the common experience of the World as to the generality 2. By plain Scripture 1 Joh. 1. 8. 10. If we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us If we say that we have not sinned we make him a liar and his word is not in us Jam. 3. 2. For in many things we offend all Eccl. 7. 20. For there is not a just man on earth that doth good and sinneth not And that there is a moral impossibility to escape sin appeareth 1. By the universality of the event that which no man in all the World in any age attaineth to notwithstanding all the helps vouchsafed is morally impossible 2. And the Scripture assertion proveth it in that it alloweth us to conclude it of all that we know not and of those that are yet unborn And that the World sinneth for
want of necessary grace to innocent nature as the adversaries think is plain for necessary grace hath some sufficiency to its ends and go it it is called sufficient grace by the adversaries commonly But that which never attaineth its end in any one person in the World in their own judgment is not sufficient It is their common and last argument against our doctrine of special effectual grace given to all the elect as distinct from that sufficient grace which say the Dominicans is given to others that the grace is not sufficient that never proveth effectual in any We may much more confidently say so here when we speak of the whole World that the grace is not sufficient that never is was or will be effectual in any If it suffice to make the event naturally possible yet not to remove the moral impossibility 3. And that God is the Author of the Law that forbiddeth sin and of innocent nature is granted and past doubt The certainty of this universal event cannot come from a contingent cause as such The will is naturally free that chooseth but it is not morally free or else the World would not choose evil So that it is certain that if there be no original sin the cause of this universal event that all men sin must be resolved to be somewhat in nature or something in providence of which God is the cause If God have so framed pure nature and so order the affairs of the World that no man on earth shall eventually escape the sin which he so much prohibiteth and abhorreth it must needs follow that he is the moral reputative cause at least And yet it is one of the pretences against the doctrine of original sin that it maketh God the Author of it in infants when it 's they that make him the Author of it in all Seeing therefore that sin hath so overspread the World that all men sin in all Countries in all Ages except Christ this must proceed either from mans natural principles and so be chargeable upon God his Maker or it is the fruit of original sin and to be charged on our first Parents and our selves Arg. 19. If infants have in their corrupted natures a virtual enmity to God and Holiness then have they original sin but such an enmity they have I mean in disposition seed or habit go they have original sin The antecedent or minor I prove 1. From the common experience of the World that manifest such an enmity as soon as they come to the use of reason and that maintain it so obstinately till renewing grace do overcome it How early do they shew an aversness to the work and ends for which they were created How little do the precepts of Parents or Teachers and all the means of grace themselves to conquer it in the most And where it is most conquered even in the godly it is most confessed because there is a troublesome remnant of it still so that there is no man in the World that hath not more or less of it in him the wicked being under the power of it and the godly under the trouble of these remainders 2. From Gen. 3. 15. Joh. 3. 5 6. Rom. 8. 3 5 6 7 8 9. Rom. 7. 21 23 24 25 compared In Joh. 3. 6. we find that flesh begets but flesh That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that go a new birth by the spirit is necessary to make us spiritual of which before In Rom. 8. we find that it was through the flesh that the Law was weak and that God sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh not as sinful but as flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh Where it is undeniable that by flesh is not meant sin it self for then it had not been called sinful nor the subject of sin nor Christ said to have taken the likeness of it and go the word flesh here is taken in no worse a sense than in Joh. 3. 6. We find here also that all flesh is universally called sinful which Christ took the likeness of And Christ took the likeness of infants and that first only growing up to the likeness of the adult infants go have sinful flesh And ver 5 6. This flesh as the principle that prevaileth in some is opposed to the spirit which prevaileth in others and their fruits opposed the one sort mind fleshly things the other spiritual things and death belongs to one and life and peace to the other And ver 7. The carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be And ver 8. They that are in the flesh cannot please God that is they that have not the spirit to subdue and mortify the flesh as it is explained ver 9. And if any man have not the spirit of Christ he is none of his So that flesh without spirit which is now mans natural estate is a principle of enmity and rebellion and proves men none of Christ's and in a state of death And many Expositors judge that in Gen. 3. 15. such being none of Christ's till they have the spirit are annumerated to the serpents seed that hath the enmity against the spiritual seed which so sheweth it self when they come to age that as Cain by Abel and Ishmael by Isaack so still He that is born after the flesh persecuteth him that is born after the spirit if not restrained Gal. 4. 29. And Rom. 7. 18. I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing that is in Paul so far as he was without the spirit And as this innate universal enmity is thus proved so it is proved to be sin 1. By the Law of nature which tells us that an habitual enmity of the rational creature against God and Holiness is sin if any thing be sin It is an inclination or disposition contrary to the primitive nature and moral image of God in man and contrary to what our relation to God importeth and as it is commonly said of actual hatred of God it may as truly if not much more evidently be said of this dispositive virtual enmity that it is an evil that cannot become good and so naturally sin that it can be no other 2. It 's proved to be sin by the express assertion of the Text. Rom. 8. 3. 10. it is sinful flesh and the subject of sin till the spirit come Ver. 9. it proves them none of Christ ' s. Rom. 7. 14. 17. 20. 24 25. it is called in-dwelling sin and a Law of sin and to be carnal is to be sold under sin 3. From the effects which nothing can produce but sin They cannot be subject to the Law of God They please not God To be carnally minded is death c. Rom. 8. So 1 Cor. 2. 14. The natural meerly animal man now in his corrupt estate receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness
to him nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned And it can be no better than sin that maketh spiritual things seem foolishness All the other Texts of Scripture commonly urged for Original sin I purposely pass over because in Commentaries and Controversies they are so frequently handled Arg. 20. My last Argument is from the universal consent of the Church of God if not of most of the Philosophers also In so great a point it is not safe to go against the consent of the universal Church that hath so much in Scripture to encourage and warrant it But the deniers of Original sin do go against the consent of the universal Church as is proved 1. From the known confessions of all the Churches that own Original sin 2. In that general Councils have asserted it 3. And have condemned those as Hereticks that denied it And so did divers received Provincial Councils I shall now recite only the words of the Concil 2. Melevitan Arausican and the Popish Council of Trent The first Can. 2. saith Item placuit ut quicunque parvulos recentes ab uteris matrum baptizandos negat aut dicit in remissionem quidem peccatorum eos baptizari sed nihil ex Adam trahere Originalis peccati quod regenerationis lavacro expietur unde sit consequens ut in eis forma baptismatis in remissionem peceatorum non vera sed falsa intelligatur Anathema sit Quoniam non aliter intelligendum est quod ait Apostolus Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum per peccatum mors ita in omnes homines pertransiit in quo omnes peccaverunt nisi quemadmodum Ecclesia Catholica ubique diffusa semper intellexit Propter hanc enim regulam fidei etiam parvuli qui nihil peccatorum in semetipsis adhuc committere potuerunt ideo in peccatorum remissionem veraciter baptizantur ut in eis regeneratione mundetur quod generatione traxerunt Augustine was one in this General Council So Arausican 2. Can. 1. and 2. Siquis soli Adae praevaricationem suam non ejus propagini asserit nocuisse aut certe mortem tantum corporis quae poena peccati est non autem peccatum quod mors est animae per unùm hominem in omne genus humanum transiisse testatur injustitiam Deo dabit contradicens Apostolo dicenti Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum per peccatum mors in omnes homines pertransiit in quo omnes peccaverunt Ita Concil Diospol alia I shall add the Council of Trent because the adversaries should be ashamed to be less Oxthodox than Papists and that they may see the continuance of the Tradition which the Concil Melevit plead against Pelagius They use the words of the former Councils Sess 5. Can. 2. and 4. Siquis soli Adae praevaricationem suam non aliis etiam ejus propagini asserit nocuisse acceptam a Deo sanctitatem justitiam quam perdidit non nobis sed sibi soli perdidisse inquinatoque illo per inobedientiae peccatum mortem poenas corporis tantum in omne genus humanum secundum communem legem transfudisse non autem Peccatum cui pro poena debebatur utraque mors corporis viz. animae Anathema sit cum contradicat Apostolo dicenti Per unum hominem c. Can. 4. Siquis parvulos recentes ab uteris matrum baptizandos negat etiamsi fuerint a baptizatis parentibus orti aut dicit in remissionem quidem peccatorum eos baptizari sed nihil ex Adam trahere Originalis peccati quod regenerationis lavacro necesse sit expiari ad vitam aeternam consequendam unde sit consequens ut in eis forma baptismatis in remissionem peccatorum non vera sed falsa intelligatur Anathema sit Quoniam non aliter intelligendum quod ait Apostolus Per unum hominem c. nisi quâ—madmodum Ecclesia Catholica ubique diffusa semper intelleâ—â—it and so on as above Conc. Mel. Hanc fidei sanctorum patrum normam imitandâ— haec sancta synodus fatetur declarat in baptismate per Jesu Christi gratiam quam confert continet non modo remitti reatum originalis peccati sed totum id auferri quod veram propriam rationem peccati habet These last words Binnius leaves out but they are in him and others repeated again in Can. 5. so that they are their own Crabb also leaves them out and both of them leave out some other words which Caranza puts in but the difference reacheth not to any thing material to our controversy So that it 's apparent that even the Church of Rome do Anathematize those that hold not infants to have Original sin truly so called before Baptism Their assertion of the abolition of all that is truly sin by baptism is more than they found in the Concil Melevit or any of the ancient ones If to be Anathematized by the Council of Trent be nothing yet with those men that take general Councils to be the supreme power in the Church on earth and separate from others for not obeying them in some Ceremonies or indifferent things methinks the Curses of the ancient Councils and that on the account of differences in points of Faith should seem considerable The consent of the Reformed Churches is so well known that I need not recite their words And though the English Articles mention only our pravity and say nothing of Adam's sin imputed or made ours whether by forgetfulness or by moderation not imposing that which some deny yet they deny it not and elsewhere the Church of England seemeth to own it Obj. 1. That which is not voluntary is not sin Original corruption or guilt is not voluntary go it is not sin Answ I deny the minor I before answered that there is a threefold voluntariness 1. Actual 2. Reputative or moral by participation 3. Habitual Original sin is voluntary in both the last senses It was the act of his will that was virtually and reputaâ—ively ours and the corruption is the habit of our wills and the privation of good habits and that which is habitual is more voluntary than that which is but some single Act. Obj. 2. That which never was in our power to prevent is not sin But c. go c. Answ It was in our power as we were in Adam It was in his power from whom by the established Law or order of providence we were to derive our nature That habits are good or evil as well as acts I hope few will deny And whereas it is objected that only such habits as are the effects or consequents of our acts are sinful I further answer 1. If it be so it is eo nomine because they are the consequents of our acts that they are sinful or else for some other formal reason Not because such or as such for it 's most certain that many effects of sin
you have thought this a cruelty or injustice Why might not God leave such a thing to his free will as well as his own salvation or damnation And if he might leave it to a serpent necessarily to beget a serpent why might he not leave it to the will of man to do it freely And if man had chosen such a generation could his off-spring if capable have charged God with cruelty And if not as nothing surer why might not God leave it to the will of man to remain righteous and beget a righteous seed or to fall and beget such as himself Obj. 7. But the pains of hell consist in the torments of conscience and the conscience of an infant will not torment him for that which he could not help Answ 1. It is past our reach here to understand fully the nature of hell torments 2. The loss of Heaven is the greatest part of the misery 3. The sense of that loss will be no small positive misery 4. And all this which the adversaries grant will be confessed due for original pravity and because they are the seed of sinners Obj. 8. No Law forbiddeth us to be the seed of Adam or to draw corruption from our Parents Answ The Law forbad Adam in whom we were to sin and it requireth perfection of acts and habits and condemneth sinful habits as well as sinful acts and go we are violaters of that Law Obj. 9. If Original sin were derived from Adam to us it would have been in the humane nature of Christ at least Adam's act would have been imputed to him as being really the son of man Answ The relation and corruption go together and both of them belong to them that derived their natures only from Adam according to the way of natural generation But Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost who by sanctifying the substance of the Virgin of which he had his humane nature and by the miraculous way of procreation prevented the derivation of guilt or sin Obj. 10. Christ saith except we become as little children we shall not enter into Heaven Answ He speaks not of their innocency but of their beginning the World and their lowliness except we be little in our eyes and begin the World a-new by conversion we cannot enter into his Kingdom But this denieth not but that infants may have corruption that unfits them for his Kingdom as you confess Obj. 11. 1 Cor. 7. 14. The children of believers are holy Answ 1. But not by nature but by grace and the faithful's interest in the covenant and dedication of them to Christ in Baptism 2. They had no need of this hallowing if they had not naturally some corruption And 3. The children of unbelievers are still unclean 4. And the children of the faithful are not perfectly holy for then they should be better than the Parents Obj. 12. By the same reason you may say that we are guilty of our immediate Parents sins for we were in them more immediately than in Adam Answ We have the same natural interest in our nearest Parents sin and some participation which we must lament and not excuse But of that I have spoken by it self The chief objections here omitted I answered before from Adam's or our nearer Parents being themselves forgiven and so having no guilt to derive to us and their being sanctified and from the creation of the soul c. and go shall not again repeat the answers to them It better beseems us to confess our sin and misery and value the remedy than to tell Christ that we will not so much as pray for the pardon of Original sin nor be beholden to him to forgive it nor to his spirit to cure it which yet is really the thoughts of them that think they have no such thing Among others read Philip Mornay Lord du Plessis in his Verity of Christian Religion in the Chapters of Original sin The vanity of Dr. Taylor 's opposition may be easily seen by what is said his begging the question about the supernaturality of holiness to Adam his frequent mistakes and self-contradiction Whether Posterity be guilty of Death by reason of the Actual sins of their immediate Parents AS little as is said by Divines on this Question it is no over-curious or needless unprofitable subject but very weighty and needful to be understood by all Christians that can reach to the understanding of it For as it is useful for the opening of the cause and nature of Original guilt so if it should prove true that we are guilty by the sins of our immediate Parents it would be necessary that we know it for our due humiliation and that we may in penitent confessions and deprecations prevail with God for the pardon thereof As it is thought a dangerous thing to deny original sin because they that so do will not be humbled under it and sensible of their misery by it nor of the necessity of God's mercy or Christ's blood for the pardon of it nor will apply themselves to God by Christ in Faith Confession and Prayer for pardon and consequently are in danger of missing of pardon so in the present case the same reasons will prove it as well dangerous to deny our guilt of our Parents sins if indeed we are so guilty Which that we may enquire into after a very brief explication of the terms of the Question I shall lay down a few necessary distinctions and then assert what I judge to be the truth in certain Propositions and prove such of them as most require proof 1. By immediate Parents we mean those that personally beget By Posterity we mean their children so begotten By Reason of Actual sin we mean by the Merit of those sins which our Parents themselves committed or by a resultancy from such sin compared with the rule By guilt we mean obligation to punishment or duness of punishment By death we mean the destruction or final misery of the creature either death temporal or eternal We must here distinguish 1. Between the seminal causal potential and virtual being which we have in our Parents and the personal existence that we have in our selves 2. Between the guilt which immediately resulteth from actual sin and the guilt which riseth but mediately from it viz. by the means of some intervening corruption of our own 3. Between the sins of Parents while we are seminally in them and their sins after our birth either 1. in our infancy or 2. in our riper age 4. Between guilt of fault and guilt of punishment 5. Between the aggravation of voluntariness actual and of voluntariness habitual or dispositive 6. Between plenary proper guilt and guilt so called by analogy of attribution and guilt so called equivocally 7. Between punishment univocally analogically or equivocally so called 8. Between obligation to the pain of loss and to the pain of sense 9. And between the meer sense of that loss and the sensible accusations of conscience for actual
sin 10. Between the curable obligation of the Law of Nature or Works and the peremptory and remediless obligation of the Law of Grace Though these distinctions reach further than to the terms of the Question yet are they all such as will be of necessary use in our determination Prop. 1. God doth not impute to us the sins either of our first or neerest Parents further than our true interest in such sins doth give sufficient ground for such imputation As Dr. Twiss among others hath oft and well proved Prop. 2. God doth not esteem us to have personally committed the sins which our first or neerest progenitors did actually commit For his judgment is true and therefore he judgeth of things as they are and therefore he judgeth us not to have done that personally which we did not do Prop. 3. God doth not by any Law oblige us to punishment as the personal committers of such sins which any progenitors of ours did commit and not we and therefore we are not guilty of punishment on that account He never made such a covenant with Adam or any since as some imagine wherein he declareth that he will judge the Posterity guilty of the Parents sin further than their true desert or interest in it meerly because God will so judge or because he will impute the sins of one to another without his desert that were to make him the causer of such mens sins or rather to mistake and call that their sin which indeed is not so Prop. 4. It seems to me that in the same kind as we are guilty of Adam's actual sin we are also guilty of the sins of our neerest Parents allowing for some accidental differences and also our guilt having a remedy at hand which his had not that he knew of we being under a pardoning covenant Because this proposition is not agreeable to the commonest opinion I shall speak to the proof of it and of some that are near to it anon towards the end Prop. 5. If it should prove true which some of the Reformed Divines maintain that original sin doth consist only in the real qualitative corruption of our nature and not directly in any imputation of Adam ' s actual sin to us and that there is no such direct imputation of his sin to us but that it is only the cause of our proper Original sin and not our sin formally then must it needs follow that the like must be said for the negative of the sins of our immediate Parents for they can be no more our sins than Adam's was If this opinion therefore stand good then our controversy is at an end and we are not guilty either of Adam's sin or of our next Parents nor of death for them I will not presume to make my self judge between the Learned Divines that disagree upon this point Camero and his followers go this way against the imputation of Adam's sin to us of which see the sum of their Arguments in Jos Placaeus his Disputat de statu hominis lapsi ante Gratiam in lib. 1. Thesium Salmuriens pag. 206 207. And Chamier is not only of the same mind but confuteth the contrary among the Popish errors as you may see in Tom. 3. lib. 1. cap. 7. against Pighius sect 20 21. but specially throughout chap. 8. contra Salmeronem So also Peter Martyr on Rom. 5. But yet the far greater number of our Writers go the other way and so do the Papists too Prop. 6. It seems not to be a guilt so plenary and perfect which we lie under for any Parents sin if such a thing be proved as that is which a man is under for his own personal sin The difference will appear if we consider that it is not a punishment in so full and perfect a sense which we are obliged to for the suffering is but the matter of the punishment its form lieth in the relation of that suffering to the fault if the malum naturale be not propter malum morale it is not punishment and the punishment is his in the fullest sense who suffereth for his own sin now the sin of Adam or any Parent is not so fully our own as that is which we personally commit seeing as we were but seminally causally and potentially in our Parents and not by existence personally so it is not so much to be esteemed the son of a sinner as to be esteemed the actual sinner himself So that it seems our guilt of and punishment for the actual sin of any Parent is so called by analogy of attribution as they speak as Accidens is called Ens being a more imperfect kind of guilt and punishment Prop. 7. It is past doubt that God may and doth punish Parents in their children In which case the sufferings of the children are materially though not as the next matter the punishment of the Parent but the next matter is the Parents own suffering real or reputative in the suffering of his children but this God doth not without respect to some concurrent guilt in the child unless as he will repair his hurt with a greater good Prop. 8. When the sufferings of a child are but the meer consequents of the Parents sin or punishment then are they no punishment themselves unless equivocally so called but when they are intended by the Rector for the demonstration of justice for the Parents fault then it hath the nature of punishment though the child were imagined innocent For example If a Traytor be sentenced to death and his estate forfeited to the Prince his Heirs will be deprived of all their hopes though the Judge never thought of them in his sentence because the Parent cannot convey to his posterity what he hath lost himself And here the suffering of the Heirs is not formally a punishment but the meer consequent of a punishment But if the Rector do ordain that the Heirs of a Traytor shall be desinherited and intend this as part of the penalty to deter others from Treason then it is not a meer consequent but a real punishment though the Heir be personally innocent Prop. 9. It seems to me that we are so far guilty both of Adam's sin and of our neerer Parents committed whilst we were seminally in them as that God may not only without injustice but also in positive execution of vindictive justice punish us with temporal death for such guilt though it be but a more imperfect kind of guilt and punishment Prop. 10. If this interest in our Parents sins deserve a temporal death then also an everlasting death For when the creature hath lost his life by the stroke of justice God is not bound to restore it Prop. 11. It hence followeth that God may in justice deprive us of everlasting glory for such guilt which is one part of Hell viz. the poena damni for the dead enjoy not glory Prop. 12. Hence also it followeth that God may justly for such guilt leave man under
which the first sin did not bring us under As to the pain of loss it is clear because when we have forfeited all we can forfeit no more but by the first sin we forfeited all But this is not because the sin in its own nature hath not the same demerit as the first but because man is capable of no greater privation than he hath incurred already nor of any greater torment if the first sin deserved as much torment as mans nature was capable of So that terminative here is no new super-added punishment according to the first Law But yet none may hence conclude that here is no new guilt because it is another fundamentaliter formaliter For divers relations may have the same Terminus We do by following sins incur a new and further obligation to the same penalty which would be to a greater penalty were we capable of it naturally When a Felon is guilty of death on one crime yet twenty bills may be brought in against him which may charge him with a manifold guilt though but of one death As a man may have a manifold right to one good thing which he possesseth and a right super-added to his first right as God hath the right of Redemption to us super-added to the right of Creation so may a sinner have super-added and manifold obligations to the same punishment Yet here we see some difference between our first guilt of Adam's sin and all super-added guilt that the first having deprived us of all our felicity none that follows can deprive us of any more except of the mercies new given us by the Gospel which the meer sins of Parents shall deprive no man of that disowneth them Prop. 22. Though it be but an imperfect analogical guilt which the act of Adam's or other Parents sin doth directly and immediately leave upon us yet the corruption or pravity of our own nature inherent in each person which by Adam's sin was introduced doth bring on us a further guilt And so mediately the said actual sin doth bring it Which occasioneth so many Protestant Divines to place original sin as ours in this pravity alone Prop. 23. Though this natural depravedness may seem to infer a lesser guilt because it is not voluntary as our actual sins are Yet 1. we being seminally in him that voluntarily caused it and 2. it being the habitual pravity of the will it self and so far voluntary and 3. therefore containing virtually all future actual voluntary sins 4. and being more contrary to God's holy nature and will than one single actual sin would be it hath therefore many aggravations instead of that one which it seemeth to have less of And so must needs bring a true and proper obligation to punishment till Christ dissolve it as well as actual sins Prop. 24. It seems to me that the sins of neerer Parents may do much to the corrupting of our natures as well as the sin of Adam and to increase the pravity that from his only sin would have been upon them Proved 1. There is the same reason why the sins of immediate Parents should deprave the nature of Posterity as there is that Adam's sin should do it Some Divines say that God took away his image from Adam some that he took away his spirit and so the loss of his image followed some that Adam's sin did it self destroy or blot out that image As to the first I say 1. It is not sound because it makes God the most proper immediate if not the only true efficient cause of sin and of the sinning sin which is the worst of sins Also because there is no word of God that saith any such thing 2. If it were true the sin of Cain deserved the same as well as the sin of Adam As to the second opinion I say 1. It is yet undetermined de nomine among Divines whether it be not the Redeemer only that giveth the spirit and whether it can properly be said that God gave his spirit to Adam in innocency though I am for the affirmative 2. But suppose that there be some conserving aid which God did withdraw by what name soever it be called yet thaat withdrawing was in order of nature consequential to mans sinning and not before it and that sin it self did deprave the soul 3. The sin of Cain deserveth the like desertion as well as the sin of Adam but man's nature is not now capable of it in the same sort as then it was because then we were innocent and had the perfect image of God upon us and were capable of losing it but now we have lost it already our Parents sins can but remove us further from God and hinder our recovery The third opinion seemeth most warrantable that Adam put away or blotted out God's image and so depraved his own soul for which see Capel of Tempt and Thes Salmuriens Vol. 1. disp de statu hominis lapsi ante gratiam sect 19 20 21. But there is the same reason why Cain's sin should deprive his posterity of God's image save only that they had not the same to lose for the destructive nature of the sin is the same and so is the merit And though they have not that perfect image of God now to lose yet they have some remnants of moral virtue assisted by the light and law of nature and the nature of man is capable of being made worse than yet it is And there is the same reason why Cain's sin may make it worse as there is why Adam's may make it bad Man's fall was a change of his end He first took God for his ultimate end and chief good He was seduced to take him for one that envied his felicity and for a liar and to seek his felicity in the creature against the command of God The ultimate end of man's actions being thus changed all moral good is so far perverted for all means and subordinate ends depend on it And so the stream of mans actions are turned into a wrong channel the sensitive appetite is hereupon become the master-principle in the soul as ruling the rest For as Placaeus saith ubi sup Cujus facultatis finis proximus est hominis ultimus ea caeteris omnibus facultatibus tanquam architectonica imperat that faculty whose neerest end is mans ultimate end doth rule all the other faculties as the master of the work And thus man being turned finally to sensibles from God his nature is depraved and God's image defaced Yet is not the soul removed to the utmost distance from God for then he should be as bad as the Devils and all men should be equally evil and the sensitive appetite would so uncontrouledly reign that man would be worse than bruitified his reason serving only to purvey for the flesh so that the light and law of nature would not restrain him nor any thoughts of a God and a life everlasting once stop him in his sin Now it is apparent
that there is the same natural and meritorious force in Cain's sin to turn his nature further from God as was in Adam's to turn it so far away Or if man were at the worst yet his following sins have the same power to fix him in that misery as his first had to bring him into it For they also are a wilful turning from God to the creature as well as the first Arg. 2. It is past all doubt that the sinners own personal nature is made worse by his own actual sin experience proves it too fully Scripture saith that they that have been accustomed to do evil can no more learn to do well than a Blackmoor can change his skin or a Leopard his spots And there is no reason that I know of that can be given why a more corrupt Parent should not beget a child more corrupt and deliver him the sinful improvement of his pravity as well as that all sinful depraved Parents should beget depraved children And though this controversy be mixed with the great difficulties about the propagation of the soul and the matter of its corruption yet which way soever those be determined it makes not against the thing that I assert If the soul be ex traduce and so corrupted then the case is most easy If man beget the sensitive soul corrupted and God do then promove that to the excellency of being a rational soul as some think the material species of the phantasy is raised by the active intellect to be the intelligible immaterial species still there is the same reason why the more corrupt Parent should propagate a soul more corrupt as that all should propagate a corrupt one If the soul be depraved either by a taint from the body or by a willing accommodation of it self to the body through the force of the natural desire of union de quo vide Placaeum ubi supra as water to the shape of the vessel that it is put into still the reason holds the same for the degree of corruption as for the thing it self That God by way of penalty should create the soul sinful immediately seems plainly to make him the Author of sin But if it were so yet there is the same reason of demerit to provoke him to create the soul of Cain's son yet more sinful as there is in Adam's to provoke him to create it sinful at all Arg. 3. Besides experience assureth us that all children bring not an equal degree of pravity into the World if we may judge by their first exercise of reason or use of passions But if there were no difference made since it should seem that all should be corrupted alike further than God cureth any and so maketh a difference We see also that many of the children of the most vicious people are more vicious than the ordinary sort of men are We see also that some mens bodies being distempered by their vices they propagate those bodily distempers to their posterity which we evidently perceive do make a great alteration on the soul from whence we see some persons very sottish and silly yea some ideots and some extreme talkative some extreme passionate some lustful some malicious some gluttonous some drunkards and this above the corrupt inclination which appeareth in the ordinary sort of men and plainly sed by the temper of the body Obj. 1. If our corruption were increased by the sins of immediate Parents then the World would grow worse and worse and we should have been Devils long before this age Answ 1. Most Divines say that the first sin would have done all this if God in mercy had not prevented or remedied it 2. God still resolveth to keep the World in order under his Government and therefore restraineth corruption and will not suffer it to grow as according to its nature it would 3. This is one of the common benefits that the World receiveth by the grace of the Redeemer that they grow not as bad as else they would 4. For the sake of the Church God will restrain them Obj. 2. We see many of the worst men have good children Answ No mans corruptions do put his children into a remediless condition and therefore God may sanctifie whom and when he pleaseth So may he do also by the Parents themselves for all their sins and yet those sins do make them worse Obj. 3. Then you may say that Grace is propagated by generation from our immediate Parents as well as sin and yet experience telleth us the contrary Answ 1. This makes as much against the propagation of original corruption from Adam as from our neerer Parents If it were of any force it would be against both 2. There is so great a difference between grace and sin that quite alters the case For 1. Grace is something extrinsecally adventitious and now as to the cause of it and manner of working it supernatural but so is not sin 2. Grace is an adventitious perfecting quality Sin is a defect as it is in the rational faculties But defects are more easily propagated than adventitious qualities for one requireth nothing thereto but a defective nature for nothing can convey to another that which it hath not it self but the other requireth more than nature to its propagation No acquired knowledge or skill in Languages Sciences Arts or Manufactures are propagated to posterity by nature but the ignorance of these is natural 3. But above all it 's considerable that original sin so far as it containeth a positive inclination seems to be radically in the inordination of the sensitive appetite raging against the rule of reason though the rational faculty be corrupted too and gives up it self to the slavery of the sensitive yet the sensitive seems to be the root Now it is evident that nature doth much in propagation of the sensitive or else man should do less in generation than a beast But Grace is radically subjected in the rational faculties though by participation also it reach the sensitive and here nature doth less in propagation We see by experience that a natural gentleness and calmness of the passions and such other lower common virtues as are subjected in the sensitive part are born with some men and from the temperament of the body one man is more mild patient temperate than another but it is not so with the intellectual Perfections nor Christian Graces Faith Hope or Charity I shall now proceed to prove so much of the affirmative as I have here owned more than is now held viz. That there ariseth to children from the sins of their neerest Parents such an imperfect guilt so called by analogie of attribution as that God may in vindictive justice inflict on them for the same the penalty so called by the same analogy both of temporal death and of eternal at least as to the penalty of loss supposing that it be not pardoned through Christ And this I prove by these following Arguments Arg. 1. If we are guilty of
should have been guilty of Arg. 7. None can be naturally the propagators of a nature better than their own or a person better than themselves But if Parents who are manifoldly guilty of death did propagate a nature not guilty then should they propagate a nature or person better than their own go Here I must explain my meaning by distinguishing of evil positive if such be and privative Between evils adhering to our nature or essence and those that adhere but to some integral part Between a total privation and a partial Between a privation real or physical and relative And so I conclude that 1. I speak not here of positive evil as such if such there be but of privative 2. I speak not of every evil that adhereth only to some part and not to nature it self For I know a lame man may beget a Son not lame and a sick man may beget a sound child 3. Nor do I speak of such a partial privation which may consist with the prevalency of the contrary and which nature may supply or overcome 4. Nor yet of a privation of some physical good though that be another part of our unhappiness but of a relation or right 5. Nor of a privation accidentally accrewing to the person and limited to himself alone by the will 〈◊〉 another but of one that is without any such limitation naturally or by necessary resultancy fallen upon him Furthermore it must be observed 1. that the guilt that we now speak of is no natural being but a relative and that not proper and compleat but as we may call it a privative relation participating of the nature of a proper relation but little more than a natural privation doth of natural being A right to life is a true relation which by sin we are deprived of yet because there is not only the non debitum habendi but the debitum non habendi I will not deny but even in this privation there is a kind of relatio rationis 2. Observe that we are not now speaking of the duness of positive torments for I say nothing of that in this point of guilt of progenitors sins 3. Note that many learned Philosophers and Divines affirm that all evil is a privation of good formally see Barlow's Exercit. de Natura Mali. And if that hold then it seems that our Parents sins do bring upon us a guilt of all evil of punishment for when they have forfeited all good they can convey no right of any to us 4. Note also that right to blessedness more or less doth not adhere to the nature of man as man for then those in Hell should have it but it is a separable thing depending on the will of God And therefore our Parents may convey our nature without any right to such blessings 5. When I say that it is naturally and by necessary resultancy that a sinner is thus guilty I do not exclude God's free will as the antecedent cause in making Nature it self and the Law but the indifferency or non-necessity of the effect when the causes are once in nature thus laid Gnd might have chosen to have made man such as he is that is man and having so made him whether he might have chosen to make him that Law which we call the Law of nature I will not now dispute though I think not because that Law of nature is nothing but the very nature of man himself considered as related to God and withal the nature of the whole creation which all per modum signi do shew man the will of God concerning what shall be due from man and to man But this is clear that God having freely made man in that relation and under that Law as he did his breach of that Law doth then by a natural necessity bring him under guilt for if the subjectum fundamentum terminus be put in being the relation cannot be avoided for that were a contradiction Having given this explication I suppose little more need to be said for the proof of the premises For the major it seems now clear that a person who hath lost his right totally to life or any blessing cannot convey to another person of whom he is the root a nature that hath right to that life or blessing For nemo dat quod non habet 2. And this seems plainly to be no meer negation of right in the derived nature but a privation Because if our progenitors had none of them sinned we should have been born with that right which now we want and so we had seminally and virtually a right our selves which being lost it is a privation to us and not a meer negation and so a punishment and not a meer affliction Yet as the right of our Parents themselves as Adam who were personally existent was a more full and proper right than ours who were but seminally in them so our privation is not in so plenary and proper a sense called a privation nor a punishment as theirs is or as our own is for our actual sins And so our guilt is not so full and proper a guilt but analogically so called as Accidens is called Ens. And this seems to me to be the true difference between our guilt of our Parents sins and of our own and our punishment for theirs original from Adam or others and of our own actual sin And perhaps Zuinglius meant thus when he denied Original sin to be properly called sin So far as such a seminal right or possibility which the seed hath through the Parent doth differ from the Parents own right so far there is a difference in the formal nature of penalty and guilt upon the loss of that right It is doubtless some more loss that the Son of a Traytor hath by his Fathers forfeiture of his Lands than a stranger may be said to have by that forfeiture who never was in a possibility of enjoying them It is therefore no meer negation but a privation and consequently participateth of the nature of penalty and the obligation thereto of the nature of guilt And thus in the major proposition of this Argument I place the very reason of original guilt from Adam or any Parents The minor is plain If Adam should convey to Abel a nature that hath right to life or that is not deprived of the right it was in possibility of or seminally had then he should propagate a better nature than his own and give that which he had not to give And so if our neerest Parents who are by a manifold obligation deprived of that right should convey to us a nature that is deprived of it but by a single obligation they also should propagate a better nature than their own But that cannot be God by his Grace may make us better than our Parents but they by natural procreation cannot Arg. 8. Where punishment may justly follow there guilt did go before But punishment of children for their Parents sin committed
that only and many other Texts of Scripture tell us that it is to be extended further Obj. This was the voice of the Law of Works which God doth not now govern the World by Answ 1. This is a Law which was in force since Adam and the Promise and therefore not then abrogated 2. It is as much as I plead for that according to the law of nature punishment is our due for our neerer Parents sins or else it had not been put in this curse by Moses But that Christ hath provided a remedy in the Gospel for that and original sin as from Adam and our actual sin it self I thankfully acknowledge I say not therefore that eventually any shall perish for the imputed act of his Parents sin to whom it is pardoned by the Grace of Christ Arg. 10. Exod. 20. 5. It is expressed in the moral Law it self For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children to the third and fourth Generation of them that hate me so Deut. 5. 9. and so God proclaims his name to Moses Exod. 34. 7. Here then is a threatning determining punishment to be due to the children for their neerer Parents sin for God will visit that is in justice punish it on them The objections before answered I pass by Obj. This is only against those children that do themselves tread in their Fathers steps Answ True as to the adult But it is the Parents sins that are visited on them Those children are especially threatned because it is they that lie under such guilt ununremedied But it 's thence plain that it was the case of all till they receive the remedy for the childs actual sin doth not then begin to make him guilty of his Parents sin but only shews him to lie under that guilt Obj. Yes it is by consenting to our Parents sin when we come to age that we become guilty of them Answ That 's not the first guilt and that consenting brings not on us the same formal numerical sin or guilt that was on our Parents for one accident cannot pass from one subject to another nor remain in two subjects but it brings only a guilt of the like sort so that ours is but the guilt of consenting to their sin But the Text here saith expresly that it is the sins of the Fathers that are visited on the children Obj. It is meant of children in an ethical sense that is not natural but the heirs of their vices Answ It is plain in the Text that it is to natural children and therefore the third and fourth Generation are mentioned though it 's true that it is not all those children that lie under that guilt but only those that inherit their vices Otherwise the threatning should be equally to any other mans natural children that imitate your sin But that 's against the plain Text Though it be true that any other mans children that imitate your sin are liable to punishment for such imitation yet not for your sin Arg. 11. Eph. 2. 3. 11 12. Were by nature the children of wrath even as others Remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh that at that time ye were without Christ being aliens from the Common-wealth of Israel and strangers from the Covenants of Promise having no hope and without God in the World The first words are commonly understood of a state of wrath derived from Parents by natural Generation If that be not the meaning then I confess it makes nothing to prove either the imputation of Adam's sin or other Parents nor native corruption neither But if that be the sense as is commonly judged then is there no intimation for a restriction of it to Adam's sin as the only cause of our desert of that wrath nay the later verses and the whole scope of the place gives it as a special reason that they were Gentiles in the flesh So that it seems to me some state of wrath which Israel was not under that is here meant or at least some what more to them as the seed of the Gentiles than was common to Israel It appears also from the following verses that when Christ took away the enmity so that the Gentiles were no more strangers and foreigners but fellow-Citizens of the Saints and of the houshold of God and no more without God Covenant Hope c. that Christ did deliver the Gentiles from a special punishment and consequently guilt which lay on them and their seed more than on the Jews So Gal. 2. 15. We who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles which intimates plainly that the Gentiles were by nature in a worse state than the Jews and therefore had by nature some more guilt than they Obj. That is not because the Gentiles were by nature guilty of any more than Adam's sin but because the Jews were by nature freed from that guilt which made the difference Answ I confess that may be much taking the word nature but as the cause of the persons to whom the benefit is given and not as the cause of the gift or thing given But yet that seems not all which is meant when we are called sinners of the Gentiles and strangers and foreigners c. For these shew some further transgression of our Parents that bound the sin of Adam falier on us and increased our guilt beyond that of the Jews I mean increased it fundamentaliter quoad â—iusam meritoriam though not terminative quoad poenam demeritam And indeed it was not all the Jews that were freed from the guilt of Adam's sin but only those of them that were within the special Covenant of Grace Arg. 12. Matth. 23. 31 35 36. Wherefore ye be witnesses to your selves that ye are the children of them which killed the Prophets Fill ye up then the measure of your Fathers Ye serpents ye generation of vipers how shall ye escape the damnation of hell That upon you may come all the rightous blood shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zaccharias son of Barachias whom ye slew between the Temple and the Altar Verily I say unto you all these things shall come upon this Generation Here 1. that which they are brought in to witness against themselves is something that may justly subject them to punishment But that which they must so witness is that they are the children of them that killed the Prophets and not of Adam only go c. 2. From hence Christ concludeth 1. Fill up the measure of your Fathers c. q. d. 1. Having the same corrupt natures with your Parents no wonder if ye do the same deeds 2. It is just with God to forsake you for their sakes and permit you to follow the nature that you have from them 2. He calls them a generation of vipers and serpents not only because of their first Father but because of the murderers of the
Prophets 3. He saith that the righteous blood shed by their Fathers shall come on them so that it appeareth that it is not only their own imitation of their Parents blood shed that comes on them but even that very blood that was shed by their Parents before they were born 4. He gives the reason from their natural participation whom ye slew and ye are the children of them that killed c. q. d. In as much as your Parents did it and you have your nature from them it 's just that all this be imputed to you and that you suffer as the doers of it your selves which yet you might have remedied by leaving their sinful ways but being your selves imitaters of them you shall bear both the sins which they and which your selves have committed Arg. 13. Psal 109. 9 10 12 13 14 15 16. Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg and let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places Neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children let his posterity be cut off and in the generation following let their name be blotted out Let the iniquity of bis Fathers be remembred with the Lord and let not the sin of his Mother be blotted out Let them be before the Lord continually that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth Here seems to be as plain evidence that we may be justly punished for the sins of our neerer Parents as any is in Scripture to prove the imputation of Adam's sin 1. David desireth a curse upon this sinners posterity even before they are born or before he knows what they will prove 2. And this is not because of Adam's sin though that also lay upon them but as he expresseth it ver 16. because he remembred not to shew mercy but persecuted the poâ— and needy man c. 3. Yea he desireth that God would remember the iniquity of his Father and not blot out the sin of his Mother which cannot be meant of any punishment that David would have God inflict on that Father or Mother He is not of a spirit so cruel and contrary to the Gospel as to desire that God would not forgive them that are dead long ago and either in joy or misery when he knew not whether they died penitently or impenitently If any say that he did know by the spirit of prophesie or special vision that they did die impenitently and are in hell 1. I desire them that affirm it to prove it 2. If so what need he desire that God would not forgive them or blot out their sin which he knew was now beyond possibility 3. But the next words in the Text shew that he speaks only of the sin of the dead Ancestors as it lieth on the posterity and not on themselves For as it was not the dead but the living that David prayeth against so he next saith Let them be before the Lord continually that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth So that it is a penalty on him that then was living and upon his posterity that David prays for even that his Parents sin may be remembred against him and his sin remembred against his children and not that any of them may be remembred against the dead who for ought he knew might some of them be pardoned in Heaven Obj. This might be an unlawful Prayer Answ Then would it not be recorded among the sacred forms which were dictated by the Holy Ghost without one word of check or reprehension Obj. It is but temporal judgments that David desires for the Parents sin Answ 1. It 's known that the judgments and blessings of God are mostly expressed in the old Testament as consisting in things temporal because it was not yet the fulness of time for Grace and the great fruits and concomitants of it to be revealed to the full Life and immortality are brought to light in a greater measure in the Gospel 2. I have proved in the beginning that If God may inflict temporal death on children for Parents sin then also may he inflict eternal as to the penalty of loss and so much of the pain of sense as the apprehension of that loss must needs infer He that depriveth man of life depriveth him of all the comforts of it and he that may do so may leave him his life without those comforts if he please Arg. 14. Psal 137. 9. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones Here Babylon's children are to be dashed against the stones not only for Adam's but their neerer Parents sins As is plain in that those are given as the reason in the Psalm Arg. 15. Job 21. 19. God layeth up his iniquity for his children that is a punishment for his very iniquity So Job 27. 14. If his children be multiplied it is for the sword and his off-spring shall not be satisfied with bread Those that remain of him shall be buried in death So Job 17. 5. Even the eyes of his children shall fail So Job 5. 4. Arg. 16. The infants were to be part of the fasting mourning repenting sanctified Assembly Joel 2. 15 16. which was not to lament Adam's sin only but their later sins go the infants had some sort of participation in the guilt and danger of punishment Arg. 17. Nahum 3. 10. Her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets This mentioned as God's punishment for Parents sins The like is oft in the Lament So Hos 13. 16. Samaria shall become desolate for she hath rebelled against her God they shall fall by the sword their infants shall be dashed in pieces and their women with child shall be rip'd up Arg. 18. Jer. 29. 32. Thus saith the Lord I will punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his seed because he hath taught rebellion against the Lord. Mark here it is called punishing his seed So of Jehoiakim Jer. 36. 31. I will punish him and his seed c. So Jer. 22. 28 30. Arg. 19. Isa 14. 20. The seed of evil doers shall never be renowned Isa 1. 4. A people laden with iniquity a seed of evil doers Psal 21. 10. Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth and their seed from among the children of men Psal 37. 28. The seed of the wicked shall be cut off So Psal 106. 27. And it 's oft made a reproach and a note of men liable to contempt as Isa 57. 3. Ye sons of the Sorceress the seed of the Adulterer and the Whore so oft Mal. 2. 15. may have somewhat to this sense And wherefore one that he might seek a godly seed whereof one reason may be when they contract no guilt of Parents Adultery I might here also draw an argument not contemptible from the interest of the seed of the faithful in the benefits of free Grace But because I have been so long I will add but one more and in that sum up
many more Scriptures Arg. 20. From all the examples of God's actual execution of Justice on children for the sins of neerer Parents 1. For that of Cain's I mentioned it before out of Matth. 23. And the Text shews that his seed suffered for his sake and not only for Adam's when there was such a difference made between Seth's and his that his seed are called the children of men and so far excommunicated that the sons of God were not to joyn with them in Marriage 2. The infants of the whole World were drowned in the floud not only because of Adam's sin but because their Fathers were grown so wicked And it seems by Peter 1 Pet. 3. 19 20. that they are part of the spirits in Prison When in the mean time Noah's whole Family even wicked Cham are saved for his sake 3. When Sodom is burnt all the infants perish And it seems by Jude 7. that they suffer the vengeance of eternal fire and the reason is because they gave themselves over to fornication and strange flesh Ibid. 4. God destroyed all the first born of Egypt for the Princes and Parents sin 5. Moses commandeth to kill every male of the Midianites among the little ones even after they had given them quarter and brought them home Numb 31. 17. 6. So did they and more to the subjects of Sihon Deut. 2. 34. They utterly destroyed the men and the women and the little ones of every City and left none to remain 7. So did they by Og the King of Bashan and his subjects Deut. 3. 6. besides the rest of the inhabitants whom they drove out 8. The like God denounceth against themselves for their rebellion Deut 32. 25. 9. The like is executed on Achan's Family Judg. 7. 24 25. which indeed goes beyond the case in hand 10. God commandeth Saul to slay both man woman infants and suckling of 〈◊〉 Amalekites 1 Sam. 15. 3. 11. God killeth the child begotten by David in Adultery for his sin 12. He threatens out of his own loins to raise up evil against David for that sin and other evils 13. He bringeth a curse on Eli's house after him for his and his sons sins 14. He saith for Solomon's sin he will afflict the seed of David 1 Kin. 11. 39. and so rendeth from him the ten tribes 15. He cutteth off and bringeth evil on Ahab's posterity for his sake 1 Kin. 21. 21. 15. He rejected all the seed of Israel and afflicted them and delivered them into the hand of the enemy for their Parents sin 2 Kings 17. 20. 16. Manasseh's sin God would not pardon to his posterity when he was dead and pardoned himself 2 Kin. 24. 3 4. 17. Ezek. 9. 6. He gives the like command Slay utterly old and young both maids and little children 18. The children of Babylon Shemaiah and others are mentioned before 19. I will mention but two more which shall be very remarkable The first is 2 Sam. 21. where the plague of famine is inflicted for Saul's sin and healed by the sacrificing of seven of his posterity 20. The last is the sad example of the Jews for killing Christ who being acquainted it seems with this doctrine that I maintain did say to Pilate His blood be on us and on our children and so it hath been and is to this day to the terror of all the Churches who therein may behold the severity of the Lord. So much cursorily for the proof of the Assertion In the next place we must answer some more of the chief objections besides what are already answered on the by And first I will answer those that make equally against the imputation of Adam's or our neerer Parents sin And because learned and judicious Placaeus hath said more to the matter in Thes Salmuriens Vol. 1. de statu hom lapsi ante Grat. pag. 206 207. Thes 12 13 14 c. than any that I know of I shall consider of his reasons as they are brought against the imputation of Adam's actual sin to his posterity and consequently make against our participation in the guilt of our neerer Parents actual sins 1. He saith it is not agreeable to that of Ezek. The Son shall not bear the iniquity of the Father for we should bear the iniquity of Adam Answ 1. This speaks of a Son that disowneth his Fathers iniquity and hateth it and goeth not in the same way as is plain Ezek. 18. 5 6. 14 to 17. and of no other such shall not die for Parents sins 2. But this is no proof that he never deserved death for them but only that through gracious indulgence it shall not be inflicted So that this is a passage of Grace and not of pure Justice according to the meer law of works Obj. God speaks it to prove his Righteousness and not his Grace ver 29. Answ It is his ordinate Righteousness according to the promise of Grace which he must fulfil and not according to the meer law of works or nature which he vindicateth It is his just and equal dealings with men compared one to another supposing that they stand all upon terms of Grace 3. And this is yet more plain in that the very same promise on the same ground is made to them that repent and turn from their evil ways ver 21 22. Certainly the promise of pardon of sin is a promise of Grace and not an effect of the pure law of nature or works So that the reason here why that Son who himself doth that which is lawful and right shall not die for the Fathers sin is the same as why a repenting sinner shall not die for his sin ver 21 22. which can be no other than pardoning Grace which is so far from proving that there was no precedent guilt that it undoubtedly proves that there was for where there is no guilt there can be no pardon This answer shall serve also to those that confess the imputation of Adam's sin and yet from hence argue against the imputation of other Parents sins To which I shall add as to them that this Text is no more against one than the other go if it be not against the former it is not against the later Let them shew any intimated difference 2. Saith Placaeus It agreeth not with right reason For 1. If Adam's sin be imputed then his obedience ought to be imputed if he had continued innocent Answ The word imputation as ambiguous I purposely avoid unless where I may explain it but not the sense before explained I grant that to be true which he supposeth absurd But I say withal that yet Adam's imputed righteousness alone would have saved none that had had the least personal unrighteousness of his own Because bonum est ex causis integris we should have been innocent as we came into the World but yet the next sin of our own would have spoiled that innocency 2. Further I shewed before that there is not the same reason for conveying
more for thereby sin is propagated with and in nature If the Law of this Land do ordain that a Traytor and his posterity be all disinherited and banished you may here put your dilematical question and as you answer it so would we If the Law of God deprive rebellious man of all his felicity and leave him his natural being he will beget a posterity therefore deprived of it because they are his posterity Call this one guilt or two as you please I call it one fundamentally and one subjectively while there was but one subject and many consequently by propagation when that one subject is as it were multiplied into many So that this is but about words and not things 11. It 's further argued Lastly if we are therefore guilty of Adam's disobedience because we are his Sons so that neither the miraculous generation in respect of both Parents such as was Isaack's and John Baptist's nor yet a divine creation of the soul without the operation of man can exempt any man from it what then shall we say of our Lord For his miraculous Conception by the Holy Ghost did not hinder him from being truly the Son of Adam arising from the fruit of David's loins Answ I confess this objection hath oft seemed more difficult to me than all the rest but I see no reason that it should overthrow all our grounds For it stands on the supposition of many uncertainties especially about the way of humane generation and the natural interest of male and female comparatively therein c. But passing by all these because the very naming of difficulties I find offendeth many I stand on the common answer though the part or interest of Mary in Christ's Conception was so much as might prove him man of man and give him the name of the Son of Man of David of Adam yet that was but secundum quid or in the smaller part for the interest of the Holy Ghost in that Conception was the predominant interest and therefore he is said in our Creed simply to be conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary and he is principally and more fully to be called the Son of God than of Man even according to his humanity how much soever of his material substance might be of the Virgin This being so he could not stand guilty of Adam's or any Parents sin because in the predominant sense he was not one of their off-spring but the Son of God conceived by the Holy Ghost 2. And if the Holy Ghost's Conception do free Christ from the actual corruption of his nature as your self confess why not as well from the foresaid guilt or imputation supposing that such there is For why else should not natural pravity adhere to the substance which he received from the Virgin To imagine that Mary was born without original sin is but to make the difficulty greater how she was free that was not conceived as Christ by the Holy Ghost or to run it I know not how far It were more plausible to say that she was perfectly sanctified by the Holy Ghost before Christ's Conception and therefore could convey no guilt to him but what proof this would have let them tell that know 12. After these reasons the judicious Author concluds thus These things I thought good briefly to dispute following the authority of most grave Divines who have disallowed this imputation either tacitly by their silence as Calvin Instit Tilen Thes c. or else openly and in express words as Pet. Martyr in Rom. 5. Chamier Panstrat First that we may not take that for God's word which is not his word 2. That we ascribe not that to God which becometh him not And that we may free the Christian Religion from such unnecessary difficulties And lastly that we may the stronglier prove original sin as it is described Art 10. and 11. of the confession of our Churches Answ 1. We stick not on mens names though we have more Divines against you 2. Whether it be God's word let our foregoing proof manifest 3. Which if we have proved then should not humane reason say it becomes him not especially when the same reason confesseth the like to become all Princes and Common-wealths 4. I think I have done more to free the Christian Religion from difficulties by asserting such an imputation of all Parents sins as aforesaid than you have done by denying all 5. And I think that we may far more rationally maintain original corruption and the justness of punishment for original sin if we maintain the said guilt than if we deny it as you do So much to this excellent Writer Having answered their Objections let me add this in the conclusion Arg. If we cannot be guilty of inherent original sin without the derived guilt of Adam's actual sin then we do derive a guilt of Adam's actual sin But the Antecedent is true therefore so is the Consequent That we are guilty of inherent original sin is by them confessed But this cannot be without a cause or foundation And the foundation or cause must be ours or else the guilt cannot be ours Now this foundation is either meerly the inherent pravity it self or somewhat Antecedent Not meerly the inherent pravity it self For 1. It would prove against no Law for no Law forbad us to be born as we 〈◊〉 Laws are not made to prohibit that which 〈◊〉 not to be what it cannot choose but be The Law against Adultery prohibiteth the Parents to commit it but not the childâ—â—â— be born in it There might 〈…〉 be a Law to prohibit a child in the womb to come forth as to prohibit the â—eed to become a man and such a man Laws 〈◊〉 made to the intelligent 〈…〉 Yet I deny not but original 〈…〉 is contrary to the Law of God 〈…〉 but that is only consequentially 〈…〉 which it could not be if we had not the guilt of the voluntary act which is primarily against the Law 2. The esse of our inherent 〈◊〉 on pâ—â—â—â—ations is in order of nature before the 〈◊〉 or culpability But we could not have had so much as the esse without an antecedent guilt Which I prove thus Either the being of our original dispositions is only a sin or also a punishment If it be only a sin without any antecedent sin or guilt of ours then either God or Man is the Author of it Not God for he is not the author of sin and if he were it would excuse of the guilt If man either our selves or our Parents Not our selves for we made not our selves If our Parents then either their acts are imputable to us or else that would make it never the more ours So that our corruption would be miserie at non peccatum no more sin than the venom of a toad is sin But it 's certain that the very being of our natural qualities and privations is a punishment For God would not inflict so great an evil on us
as that is which shall subject us to eternal death for nothing And this is commonly confessed Well then the esse corruptionis is in order before the culpability of it That esse is truly poena a punishment though not as caused by God for God causeth it not yet as permitted by God and as the consequent of his just desertion And omnis poena est peccati poena punishment is essentially related to a fault deserving it This fault was meerly our Parents or by participation and derivation ours If meerly theirs then our corruption is meerly their punishment For God will not punish one for anothers fault when there is no ground of imputation of it to themselves But it 's certainly our punishment or else it could not make us inherently sinful and so damnable therefore as the penalty is ours some antecedent fault must be ours which can be nothing but a derived guilt of Parents sins Chamiers Reasons also I shall briefly dissolve I mean those passages against Salmeron and Pigbius Paustrat Vol. 3. l. 1. c. 7 8. in which his strength lieth C. 8. sect 9. Dico nullum peccatum unum numero posse esse commune omnibus hominibus Actiones sunt suppositorum Itaque nego peccatum illud Adami esse peccatum originale Resp 1. In the instant of committing it we were not persons distinct from Adam and so had not a distinct sin but we were seminally in him having our essence after from his essence and so far as we were in him we were guilty of that act in him And when we become persons from him we becom guilty persons of that act that is not reputed to have done it as distinct persons but justly reputed odious and punishable as being then seminally in him and as having our essence from him and therefore such as his essence was as to the guilt so that now we have numerically as many original sins as we are persons that is individual guilty natures and persons from that one sin besides qualitative pravity The same he hath oft sect 11 12 c. Sect. 17. He saith Resp Constitui nos peccatores formaliter vel causaliter And he saith that formally it is that which in nobis ipsis inest tanquam qualitas peccatrix ut albus paries per albedinem But by Adam's act only causaliter Answ 1. Why is causaliter distinguished from formaliter as if forma non esset causa 2. If by causaliter he mean efficienter only he should tell us what sort of efficient it is 3. If there be such a thing as actual sin how doth that act make us sinners Is it formaliter Then we are sinners but in the instant of act for our own acts are presently gone and nothing as well as Adam's If it be causaliter then Adam's act is confessed to make us sinners as our own acts do when they are past 4. The plain truth is whether learned Chamier saw it or not both acts and habits make us sinners in the same kind of cause and so may Adam's viz. as the fundamentum relationis and the reatus culpae is that relation or the formalis ratio peccati though the reatus poenae be but a consequent And therefore Pet. Martyr on Rom. 5. doth ill to deny that reatus is sin it self cont Pighium Now men call the fundamentum relationis in these morals by the name both of causa meritoria efficiens materialis Meritorious acts or qualities are called causa efficiens quoad ipsam relationem inde resultantem causa materialis constitutiva as the whole essence of sin is made up of them as meritorious matter and of the relation together If we will be Logical we must be accurate or we cheat men by words Reader in conclusion lament with me the common partiality of the best Disputers How little did this opinion dishonour great Chamier Pet. Martyr c. And why Because it was against Pighius and Salmeron that they wrote it opposition to whom I think verily drew them also to it But when Placaeus said the like or less with what a heap of authority doth Rivet well overwhelm him For then it was not the Papists that were concerned in the dispute I shall next speak to those objections which are made only against the participation of guilt of the sins of neerer Parents by those that confess our guilt of Adam's sin Supposing that of Ezek. 18. and consequently Deut. 24. 16. answered before And they are these following Obj. 1. If we are thus guilty of our neerest Parents sins then have we two sorts of original sin when as we have hitherto acknowledged but one Answ It is but one subjective in each person and but one terminative that is it is but one and the same punishment that one and the same person is obliged to but it is manifold fundamentaliter as arising from the desert of many sins But 2. if you take the word Original not as signifying all that adhereth to us ab origine but as signifying only that sin which was the original or first in-let of all our misery then as there can be but one first so is there but one original sin even Adam's 3. As our natures are further polluted by some neerer Parents sin so may they be further guilty by them I think I proved before that the children of some ungodly Parents have an additional pravity in their natures at least as to the inclination to she creature the terminus ad quem of their apostacy more than the generality of mankind have as meerly from Adam's first sin Obj. 2. If we are guilty of the sins of our neerer Parents then this Generation should be many hundred fold more guilty than the first was and so the last man or age should be the most sinful Answ So they are fundamentaliter but not terminative They have forfeited but the same felicity which one sin may forfeit for there is no more to lose But it is on a manifold desert or ground that they have forfeited that one felicity and so incurred that one penalty 2. But this I say but on supposition that the Parents are none of them pardoned For if the Parents be pardoned themselves it is the judgment of very learned and judicious Divines that by the same Covenant all their infants are pardoned with them as soon as they have their being And also that pardoned Parents cannot convey that guilt to their children which they have not on themselves And consequently that by the remedy an interruption is made in the process of guilt 3. But then it is still confessed that the reatus simplex as some call it that is the meer natural merit antecedent to the persons obligation which some call reatus redundens in personam is not taken off by pardon from the Parent and therefore not from posterity But a great difficulty here ariseth in the way How then can the guilt of Adam's sin be conveyed to any of us
seeing it was pardoned to Noah from whom all the World proceedeth and how could Noah convey the guilt which he had not Answ This objection was before answered in part Remember still that the meer merit of punishment simply considered is not taken away by pardon nor the meer reatus facti vel culpe It remaineth true to all eternity that such a man did commit such a sin and that that sin deserved death but not that he is obliged to death for it Remember also that this is communicated to posterity with their nature And that it is a voluntary act of God that remitteth the deserved punishment and pardoneth the sin and therefore it can extend no further than he please As also that this meer merit doth produce a proper guilt on every soul that hath it which makes it capable of pardon though to infants that are pardoned the guilt and the pardon are in the same moment of time yet in order of nature the guilt goes first These things premised I further answer that there are two opinions of Divines about pardon of infants Some think-that only the elect are pardoned and some as Davenant Ward Amyraldus c. think that all the infants of Believers or that are baptized rightly are pardoned According to the principles of the former it must be said that when God pardoned Noah or any godly Parent and his elect seed that pardon remaineth firm for ever but a pardon it is to the seed as well as to the Parent and therefore supposeth guilt which is by a necessary resultancy from the natural desert till Grace destroy it But as for that seed as Cham. e. g. which was not elect God pardoned Noah's original sin but limitedly intending that it should not extend to the non-elect seed but that they should have a guilt on their souls from that natural merit as if God had never pardoned the progenitors For the desert and imputability adhereth to nature but the remission will go no further than free Grace extendeth it According to the principles of the later it must be said that God pardoned to Noah and every godly Parent the sin of Adam and all other and to his infants while infants but with this limitation that if they themselves at years of discretion believed not they should not continue pardoned but perish either by the return of the sin before so pardoned as some think or only for the super-added sin as others think In a word every Parent begetteth a Son of Adam and of himself a sinner and thereby begets a nature that hath in it self compared with God's Law the fundamentum reatus and this he doth never the less for being pardoned himself Unless his posterity be pardoned with himself they will remain guilty for the relaxation of the commination being but to his own person makes only a change on himself The disease is natural and the cure is accidental and therefore though he be cured yet will he convey the disease to posterity To explain this by the like Suppose that by a standing Law of the Land all the posterity of any Traytor are to be disinherited dishonoured and banished It pleaseth the Soveraign not to destroy this Law but to dispense with it as he shall see special reasons Whereupon he pardoneth some one of a traytorous line with this limitation either that this pardon shall be but to his own person only or at most but to his seed immediate till they forfeit the benefit by ungrateful rejection In this case all his posterity would be nevertheless born guilty of the foresaid punishment only that guilt would be taken off according to the terms in the Law and no further For the Law is still in force and universal and the children are naturally the posterity of a Traytor whether in one degree or many and the pardon is but a singular and supra-legal act and limited as is expressed and is purposed for the removal of a guilt from the particular persons and not for the preventing it in any one of them or if the pardon be universal-conditional all is one What I have said about Adam's sin will more easily answer the like objection as to neerer Parents sins Obj. 3. If we are so guilty of our Parents sins then Christ's satisfaction and God's pardon of sin is imperfect for he pardoneth them upon Christ's satisfaction to every believing Parent and if after this they must be punished again on their posterity then were they not perfectly pardoned at the first Answ The perfection of pardon and Christ's satisfaction must be discerned by considering them in their own kind and in their perfect sufficiency to those ends whereto God intendeth them and not according to mistaking conceits of men Pardon is not simply and absolutely perfect in this life Manosseh's sins must be punished when he is dead on his posterity But it hath no Imimperfection dishonourable to God or to Christ's satisfaction 2. It is not the same numerical guilt that is pardoned to the Father and not pardoned to the Son or remaineth on him From one sin there ariseth one single guilt to the first sinner and that multiplyeth upon the multiplication of persons from his loins and every person hath a several guilt though from the same root 3. Note also that this objection makes as much against our guilt of Adam's sin as of our neerer Parents and more for they may say that sin hath been pardoned to many of our progenitors between Adam and us But it holds not against either Obj. 4. God would not drown Noah with the World nor destroy Lot with Sodom and Abraham saith Let it be far from the Judge of all the earth to destroy the righteous with the wicked Answ 1. God was not then dealing with the World or with Sodom for such sins as Noah or Lot were guilty of So that though he might have found sin in them deserving his wrath yet when he comes to execute an extraordinary judgment for an extraordinary sin he will not deal with those as with such extraordinary or great or impenitent sinners who were not such 2. It is justice Evangelical therefore or on terms of Grace and not pure legal Justice which Abraham appeals to for the rescue of Lot It 's true it is a personal righteousness of Lot which he pleadeth with God for his deliverance from judgment even with the Judge of all the earth as a necessary work of his justice which those may note that will have no righteousness inherent in our selves pleaded with God much less with Justice for freedom from his wrath But it is but a righteousness consisting in a freedom from that impenitency and wickedness which God came to revenge and not in perfect obedience This therefore shews not what God might do in strict justice but what he will do in that justice which is tempered with and prevailed over as it were by mercy 3. The infants of the old World and Sodom perish'd with them
Obj. 5. Parents sins are not voluntary as to us go not ours Answ This is answered before They are the sin of our wills and so voluntary and we come out of them that voluntarily committed them We must not look on Parents and children as on two distinct persons that have no derivation from or dependance on each other but consider that our very being is from them And that God doth actually punish and destroy children for their Parents sins is proved already by a multitude of Texts And who dare say that he doth it unjustly because we are not consenters To prove that God doth it is enough to prove it just because he can do nothing unjustly As for the great question whether any be damned for Original or Parents sin I answer Whatever the degree of penalty is none can be freed from it but by pardoning Grace through Christ and therefore none but those that are the children of the pardoning promise I shall conclude all with these following Corollaries containing some Use of what hath been said and proved by us in this dispute Cor. 1. This Doctrine of our liableness to punishment for our neerer Parents sins doth much clear up the reason of our original sin as from Adam and consequently much confirm us in the belief of it and enable us to answer most of the cavils against it And I must confess for my part that I am not able to maintain our guilt of Adam's sin without this Cor. 2. It hence appeareth that it is a duty of all Christians to bewail and beg pardon of their Parents and Ancestors sins as to the punishment which themselves are liable to for them They are not only to confess that they are the children of Adam but also the seed of Idolaters superstitious ignorant prophant unbelieving Ancestors that their Father was an Amorite and their Mother an Hittite Ezek. 16. 3 4. and that he whose eyes are on all the sons of men to give every one according to his waies and doings doth recompence the iniquity of the Fathers into the bosome of their children after them Jer. 32. 18 19. 2 Kin. 22. 13. Great is the wrath of the Lord which is kindâ—â—d against us because our Fathers have not hearkned to the words of this Book to do according to all that is written So. 2 Chron. 29. 6. 9. 2 Chron. 34. 21. See a full example Nehem. 9. from 16 to the end especially ver 32 33 34 35 36 37. Psal 106. 6 7. We have sinned with our Fathers our Fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt they remembred not the multitude of thy mercies but provoked c. see to the end Jer. 14. 20 21. We acknowledge O Lord our wickednest and the iniquity of our Fathers for we have sinned against thee Do not abhor us for thy name sake c. Jer. 3. 25. We lie down in our shame and our confusion covereth us for we have sinned against the Lord our God we and our Father from our youth even to this day Lament 5. 7. Our Fathers have sinned and are not and we have born their iniquities Dan. 9. 16. I beseech thee let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy City Jerusalem thy holy Mountain because for our sins and for the iniquities of our Fathers Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us See the whole prayer Nehem. 9. 2. They stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their Fathers Isa 14. 20 21. The seed of evil doers shall never be renowned Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their Fathers Isa 65. 6 7. Behold it is written before me I will not keep silence but will recompence even recompence into their bosoms your iniquities and the iniquities of your Fathers together saith the Lord c. Jer. 16. 10 11. They shall say to thee Wherefore hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us or what is our iniquity or what is our sin Then shalt thou say unto them Because your Fathers have forsaken me saith the Lord and have walked after other Gods and have served them and have worshipped them c. So Jer. 44. 10 11 21 22. The Lord could no longer bear but the Land was made a curse because he remembred the sins of their Fathers I fear lest many of us yea most have been guilty of not bewailing and praying for the pardon of our forefathers sins and desire godly men to consider more of it for the time to come Cor. 3. From hence it appears that it is a sad thing to be born of evil Parents and a blessing to be born of those that fear God and accordingly to be acknowledged Cor. 4. Also it follows that if God shew mercy to the children of wicked Parents it is a double blessing and the freeness of such Grace is accordingly to be magnified Cor. 5. Though blessings be not merited as curses be yet seeing the natural interest of children in their Parents and Parents in children is so great you may hence discern that even to reason it is very probable that God should deal better with the children of true Believers than with others and that they should have special benefit by their Parents Faith considering that God is as prone to mercy as to severity Cor. 6. May we not hence see some ground to justify God's severity against those infidel parts of the World whose Ancestors have refused the Gospel and the Lord Jesus And are not those infidels guilty of their fore-fathers sin in the sense before-mentioned If Christ died for them and offered them himself his grace and benefits and they reject him it is a just punishment to posterity if for this sin of thier Fathers he leave their Country in darkness and seek out a people that shall give him better welcome And if he do not so by us who have so abused him it is not because in justness be may not but because in mercy he will not and the greater and freer is that mercy If he promulgate his Laws to the Fathers and they reject them he may take that as a sufficient promulgation for the obligation of posterity and may judge them for rejecting that Law or Gospel and if they say We never heard it it sufficeth to tell them It was sent among you and your Fathers would have none of it but expelled it out of their Countrey and refused to have him that redeemed them reign over them Aquinas handling this Question 1. 2. Q. 81. art 2. Vtrum etiam alis pecata primi parentis vel proximorum parentum traducantur in posteros denieth it but then he seems not to speak at all of the matter of meer guilt or imputation but only of the traduction of inherent pravity And therefore it is nothing to the matter that we have specially here to deal with and 2. even in that his reasons seem not of weight The summ is that only Adam's first
sin did corrupt nature in specie and others are but personal The ground of this his assertion is that opinion wherein the Papists differ from our Divines viz. that Grace was supernatural to Adam and original sin being nothing but the privation of that Grace or Rectitude and the first sin making a total privation of that to humane nature there is nothing left for after sins to do of that kind This seems his full sense though he speak it not out in so many words But to this I say 1. This as is said doth not at all deny that we deserve punishment for our Fathers sins but only that we are not capable of this punishment in specie and so the main thing is granted which we seek 2. His sentence about the supernaturality of Grace to Adam which yet he affirmeth to be concreated with him is not proved The Scotists do resist him in it as well as the Protestants Read an excellent Dispute of it in Rada's first Controversy shewing how far it is or is not supernatural 3. His ground viz. that naturals could not be lost is unproved There be certain natural perfections of the mind which are so far under the power of exercised reason and free-will that they may be depraved or much destroyed by the abuse of these 4. The word of God and the experience of the World doth fully prove that wicked men grow worse and worse and are prone to apostatize and depart yet further from God and that the very light of nature may be extinguished in part and some men by custome in sinning make themselves much worse than they were by nature go it is certain that men are not so bad by Adam's first sin but their nature is capable of being made worse And they are not at the very worst till they come to Hell And in this life we see great variety in degrees of wickedness among wicked men Particularly as to his answers to the three Arguments To the first drawn from Scripture examples of punishing children for the Fathers sin he saith it is only corporally because the child is as it were a part of the Father quoad corpus Answ 1. Corporal punishment proves that we deserve punishment else God would not inflict it for he will be no more unjust in the lesser than in the greater 2. He that deserves corporal punishment for sin deserves more 3. The whole man soul and body is as much from our neerer Parents as from Adam To the second reason which is drawn from Parents traducing Adam's sin to us and therefore much more their own he confesseth it would hold were their own sin traducible which he saith it is not but the reason is before disproved The third reason is that if we therefore contract sin from Adam because we were in him then may we do it from our other Parents because we are in them seeing the Scripture shews we are capable of growing worse To this he only saith that the first sin corrupteth nature the second only the person But this is a bare denial and no answer to the force of the reason And unless he distinguish of common nature and the persons nature what sense hath it For to corrupt the person qualitatively is so to corrupt his nature What Bellarmine saith Lib. 4. Cap. 18. de Amiss Grat. statu pecc being of less weight than this of Aquinas needeth no other reply That we should have been corrupted by Original sin if Cain and Seth had sinned and not Adam see Aquin. de Malo q. 5. a. 4. ad ult of which saith Bellarmine groundlesly fortasse locus corrumpitur FINIS * Original sin is their own * Disputat of Right to Sacram
and our participation of his guilt is our original sin in a double sense 1. As he was the original of all mens sin 2. and as we are guilty of it from the original of our being But of Parents sin not all the world is guilty but their own posterity and that not as the first but as a secondary or neerer cause Sect. 17. IX That God hath made many promises to the seed of the faithful above all others is notorious in Scripture in the case of the blessed seed and sons of God before the flood and in the case of Sem Japhet Abraham Isaac Jacob and so on to the end But were there no more than the second Commandment and Exod. 34. 6 7 8. it would be justly past controversy And I have largely proved it to Mr. Tombs in two Books my Plain Scripture-proof and my More proof of infants Church-membership Sect. 18. X. The Apostle expresly saying else were your children unclean but now are they holy and this very supposition being the reason of our baptizing the children of some persons but not of all the World doth yet more exclude all reasonable do ubt with those that are for Infants Baptism Sect. 19. XI As to be baptized and taken into the Church is not the right of any infant meerly as a child of Adam redeemed for then we could make no difference nor meerly as they are elect for that we know not but as they are children of Believers dedicating them to God which is the condition of their right so not to have right to Baptism and its benefits is not the meer fruit of Adam's sin but of the Parents privative not-believing and not-dedicating them to God the controversies about pro-Parents is not pertinent to our business and need not stop us Here therefore is notorious a grand penalty of Parents sin on children for a penal privation it is Sect. 20. XII The true natural interest of Parents in their children now is as certain as Adam's in his off-spring We have our being as truly from them as from him and were as truly naturally in them as in him Sect. 21. XIII The promises to the children of Believers are more numerous and plain in Scripture than the promises to Adam's seed if he had stood Sect. 22. XIV The penal comminations against the seed of the wicked are so numerous and notorious in Scripture that it is a thousand pities that any Minister should not acknowledge them and the effects Even from Cain to Cham and the children of all the old World and of Sodom and so to the end And if there were no Texts to prove it but the two before-mentioned the second Commandment and Exod. 34. with Matth. 23. It 's sad that any Christian should deny it Sect. 23. XV. It is notorious in Scripture also as to the execution that God hath punished the children not only for Adam's but for the neerer Parents sins Which is true of all those drowned in the deluge as the assigned cause sheweth and of the seed of Cham and the Sodomites and the infants of the Amalekites and all the Nations destroyed by the command of God of Ishmael Esau the Egyptians Achan Gebezi and abundance more named after in this Dispute and recorded throughout the Scripture and the Jews were not ignorant of it when they said His blood be on us and our children nor the Disciples when they said Did this man sin or his Parents that he was born blind Job 9. The matter of fact is past all doubt and therefore the right Sect. 24. XVI It is daily notorious among us that the children of some wicked persons Adulterers Drunkards Gluttons idle persons c. have their bodily temper vitiated by propagation from their Parents by reason that the Parents had first by sin corrupted their own nature some have the pox some ideots some decrepit some otherwise diseased c. And to say that this is no punishment to the children or that it is only for Adam's sin is that which I will not do whatever any other may Sect. 24. XVII And it is certain that the minds of some such persons children are extraordinarily depraved some have natures extraordinarily lustful some furious some sensless and inconsiderate some slothful some false versatile and untrusty some mutable and unconstant some have appetites hardly to be restrained c. Yea and all the foresaid diseases of the body much tend to the evil of the soul And is all this no punishment or of none but Adam's sin Sect. 26. XVIII It is notorious that outward calamities in their estates and other accidents befall children for the Parents sins The sacrilegious perjured murderers and despisers of Parents seldom have a progeny that is not notably plagued for their sin And Divines should not teach Atheists to deny such judgments of God Sect. 27. XIX He that saith that children have no guilt of the sins of any Parents since Adam doth by consequence say that God neither ever did or will do or justly can punish any child in the least degree positively or privatively for any such Parents sin But he that dare so say is bolder and blinder than I would have any wise and holy Teachers of Christ's Flocks to be Sect. 28. XX. Holy men in Scripture were used in their sufferings to confess and lament the sins of their fore-fathers as the cause as I have after cited out of the Psalms Ezra Nehem. Daniel c. Sect. 29. By this and what followeth I have rendred to the Reader a true account and reason of my supposed dangerous opinion But nothing maketh me more wonder at my learned and worthy accuser than his O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis I had almost said It is more modest for me to say that my unacquaintedness with Grammar maketh me here not understand him than to suspect that so Learned an Academical Doctor among so many Learned men and Libraries can possibly mean as his words seem to import But modesty must not blind us And yet I am loth here to be tempted to waste so much of my little time to the wearying of my self and the Reader as the recital of the words of so many Divines as concurr with me in this opinion would require but a taste may serve to cure his admiration and vindicate Divines from his reproach Sect. 30. 1. Tertullian saith advers Marcion li. 2. c. 15. p. 467. c. 1. 1. Justitiam ergo primo judicis despice cujus si ratio constiterit tunc severitas per quae severitas decurrit rationi justitiae reputabuntur Ac ne pluribus immoremur asserite causas caeteras quoque ut sententias condemnetis excusate delicta ut judicia reprobetis Nolite reprehendere judicem sed revincite malum judicem nam etsi patrum delicta ex filiis exigebat duritia populi talia remedia compulerat ut vel posteritatibus suis prospicientes legi divinae obedirent Quis enim
Reader with more of the Ancients words if I thought it worth the cost Sect. 35. VI. Among the later Writers that were Papists I will now give you only the words of Guil. Parisiensis de Vit Peccat c. 5. see more also c. 6 7 8. who though he say that Peccatum originale non est culpa nec meritum poenae yet calling it malum morale vitium I hope meant but that it was not culpa in sensu famosiore But however what he thought of its original judge Quia peccatum originale contrahitur a carne a parentibus ingeneratur his solis exceptis qui privilegio gratiae a Deo protecti sunt contrahitur inquam originaliter si enim a divitiis quae tam longae sunt ab animabus nostris pervenit ad eas corruptio avaritiae superbiae ut supra tetigimus quanto fortius ab ipsis corporibus passiones quales inferre possunt corpora eisdem adhaerebunt Amplius Si a vino penetrat ad ipsos ebrietas ut eas in majorem quam sit brutalis insaniam transvertat quanto fortius corpus ipsum quod eis adeo e vicino immediate adhaeret eas obtenebrare poterit a lumine suo pervertere a rectitudine sua Et quia toti animales efficiuntur in opere hujusmodi sive toti caro ut dicit Aug. non est mirum si semen viri vim imprimendi animalitatem recipit ex hujusmodi dispositione habet autem ex parte materiae propriae alias dispositiones per quas non permittitur ut ex eo generetur aliud quam homo Non enim totum habent ex imaginatione vel sensu parentum generantium Hoc autem quod praediximus de transfusione corruptionis similitudinis Aug. satis expresse dicere videtur ubi dicit quod originale peccatum in omnes illos transit qui vitiosa lege nascendi nascuntur alibi dicit in omnes concupiscentialiter genitos In quo videtur attribuere vitiosae legi nascendi sive concupiscentiali generationi contractionem seu traductionem originalis peccati verum nos dicimus quia si omne vitium nascendi tota concupiscentia etiam tolleretur a parentibus corrupta tamen caro non nisi corruptam sibi similem generaret Sect. 36. VII Pet. Martyr Loc. Com. p. 142 143. Quod Deus ait Se velle persequi peccata patrum in filios in tertiam quartam generationem quum alio loco dicat Filium non portaturum iniquitatem patris si filius inquit non portat iniquitatem patris sed suam tamen Deus persequitur in eo peccatum patris oportet ut filius ipse peccatum illud in se habeat alioqui haec loca inter se non convenirent Peccatum itaque sua natura ita factum est ut non tantum animum hominis vastet verum etiam corpus carnem membra depravet Itaque Paulus ad Corinthios ait corporae nostra templa esse Spiritus sancti graviter comminatur si quis templum Dei destruat Si ergo Deus puniat peccata parentum in siliis filius alienam iniquitatem non portat sed tantum suam sequitur parvulos impiorum hominum cum affliguntur ut patres in illis puniantur aliquid in se habere paternae pravitatis Neque hic cuiquam conquerendum est de justitia Dei nam si Deus incorruptissima sua justitia potest eos qui peccant in reprobum sensum tradere peccata peccatis punire cur non etiam juste velit peccati corruptionem non tantum animum perdere sed etiam ejus impuritatem in corpus quoque redundare Vnde qui generantur ex peccatoribus talem naturam ex illis contrahunt qualem in illis reperiunt Atque hac sententia homines admonentur ut sancte vivant neve animos suos corpora polluant eademque opera filios quoque suos inficiant Si hoc ut jam diximus constituatur quaeret quispiam quid discriminis sit inter peccatum originis illud quod a proximis parentibus contrabitur Respondemus propagationem originalis peccati esse perpetuam quemadmodum sacrae literae docent aliorum vero peccatorum continuationem non esse necessariam Aliquando enim a proximis parentibus nihil vitii transmittitur ad liberos excepto peccato originis Videtur enim Deus modum praefixisse ne malum grassetur in immensum hanc mali propagationem suspendere Quare quod ad hanc rem attinet libenter assentior Augustino probabile esse Scripturis consentaneum istamque sententiam Martinus Bucerus vir doctissimus juxtaque sanctissimus probavit vitia privata in filios propagari a parentibus sed notandum hoc esse contingens non necessarium Nam Deus quandoque parentum peccata suspendit pro sua bonitate non patitur naturam hominum prorsus perdi Quando autem traducem istam peccatorum aut reprimere velit aut sinere locum habere ipse solus novit Nobis tamen satis est haec duo considerare primum peccatum a parentibus diffundi in liberos alterum id Dei beneficio interdum prohiberi quod tamen de peccato originis dici nullo modo potest Omnes enim eo infecti nascimur Atque bactenus ex Epistol ad Roman cap. 5. in haec verbi Quemadmodum per inobedientiam c. Vide similem locum in Gen. 8. ver 21. Sect. 37. VIII I forbear citing Bucer's words seeing here you have Pet. Martyr's testimony of his judgment who was his intimate acquaintance Sect. 38. IX Anton. Wallaeus Respons ad censuram Corvini de peccati primi poen p. 257. Deinde quomodocunque tandem peccata parentum posteris imputentur imputationem peccati parentum in posteros esse proprie ex severitate foederis operum non ex 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 foederis evangelici Nam maledictio foederis primi manifesta est Deut. 28. 15. Maledictus erit fructus ventris tui c. Quod discrimen utriusque foederis perspicue proponitur Jer. 31. 29 c. See further And pag. 262 263 264. he reprehends Corvinus for making our guilt of original sin to be meerly from God's will and the imputation of Adam's sin to be different from that of our other Parents and shews that it is the same thing that God threatned in the second Commandment Exod. 20. and proclaimed with his name Exod. 24. and largely cites the sayings of Tertullian and Augustin to the same purpose all which is too large for me here to recite Sect. 39. X. Ursin Catech. edit Parei de Peccat Orig. pag. 45. Obj. 6. In quos peccata omnium majorum transeunt miseriores erunt illis in quos tantum aliquorum peccata propagantur At si peccatum in posteros transit in postremos homines omnia majorum in priores eorum tantum qui precesserunt peccata derivantur ergo posteriores erunt miseriores
Hoc vero absurdum videtur eum justitia Dei pugnans Respon Non foret absurdum etiamsi Deus posteriores magis desereret ac puniret nam quanto plura peccata a genere humano cumulantur tanto magis ira Dei accenditur exasperatur poena juxta illud Nondum completae sunt iniquitates Amorrhaeorum c. Vt veniat super vos omnis sanguis justus c. Sed minor negatur etsi enim Deus propter justitiam suam peccatum originis hoc est vitium naturae reatum in omnes posteros transire sinit tamen simul ex misericordia metas figit peccato ut non semper majorum peccata actualia imitentur luant posteri nec semper malorum parentum mali aut deteriores ac miseriores liberi existant Sect. 40. XI Mr. Gataker ' s words Mr. Poole thus translateth in his Synops Crit. in Exod. 20. p. 403. Punit Deus sapenumero liberos propter peccata Parentum ut constat exemplis sanctionibus S. Scripturae Vid. Exod. 4. 22 23. 12. 29. 34. 7. Num. 14. 18. 2 Sam. 12. 14. 1 Reg. 13. 33. 14. 1. 17. Rationes 1. Quod liberi sint res atque possessiones parentum 2. Liberi praeterea sunt partes sive membra parentum sunt quasi una persona cum Parentibus ut recte Althus Dicaeolog l. 1. Vid. Gen. 20. 7. 18. Mat. 15. 22. Quod ad loca in contraria prolata Deut. 24. Jer. 31. Ezek. 18. 1. Debent 〈◊〉 mortem Deo c. 2. Non sunt haec apud homines semper injusta c. where he instaneth in similitudes See his Sermon it self on 1 Kin. 14. 17. Sect. 41. XII If I thought it would be worth my own and the Readers trouble I would undertake to produce abundance more of Protestant Writers and let but Expositors on the second Commandment be examined by him that doubteth of it and he will be satisfied if he have store at hand I only now say of many in general that the ordinary saying of such Expositors is that temporal punishments and some spiritual are oft inflicted by God on children for their Fathers sins I will give you the sense of many in Deodate's words on Exod. 20. 5. Visiting that is I enquire after it and punish it Of the Fathers As concerning eternal judgment upon the soul every one dieth for his own iniquity Jer. 31. 30. but for the Fathers sins the children are often punished in body in goods and other things which they hold and derive from their Parents Num. 14. 33. 2 Sam. 12. 11. and 21. 5. 15. And besides God oftentimes curseth the generation of the wicked withdrawing his grace spirit from it whereby imitating their Parents wickedness they are punished in the same manner 1 Sam. 15. 2. Matth. 23. 32. 25. Sect. 42. Here note 1. that there can be no punishment temporal or eternal where there is no imputed guilt Therefore all those Divines who say that not only Parents in their children but children for their Parents sins have the least punishment do thereby assert a guilt 2. That there is no guilt of sin which deserveth not great yea perpetual punishment if not remitted 3. That privation of Grace and the spirit here mentioned is a most heavy punishment tending to that which is perpetual 4. That children are to derive from their Parents or from God by them greater mercies than goods health c. even Church-membership right to Baptism and so to pardon and the other saving benefits of the Covenant as being holy Therefore by the same reason as health goods c. may be denied them because they are derived from Parents as Deodate speaks Baptism and its benefits may be denied them 5. And hath not the universal Church given us their judgment of the case who have in all ages judged that Baptism is to be denied to the children of Heathens and Infidels unless other mens owning them make them no longer theirs At least I may say if as many be of my judgment concerning our guilt of Parents sins as hold that Baptism and its fruits are to be denied to such children of Infidels the number will be so great and honourable that I would wish this worthy Dr. no more to make them seem as none And as I have before shewed not to be baptized is to them a penalty and that not only in the judgment of Papists who shut such out of Heaven but of the ancient Doctors who took Baptism to be our solemn investiture in a state of life and the seal of pardon and right to salvation as Gataker against Davenant de Bapt. hath proved by citing a multitude of their testimonies as an useful Index to save Readers much labour on that point And I have elsewhere proved at large that the Scripture mentioneth no Baptisme of Christ's Institution which was not for the remission of sin If any say that this is no new penalty but a leaving them under the old and that it is not for the Parents unbelief but the Parents only do omit their duty needful to the childs liberation I again answer that had there been no Saviour Covenant Means or Hope it had indeed been no penalty because no privation but a negation And had not the child 's right and deliverance been laid on the Parents Faith and Consent as a Condition they had but negatively left them under the penalty of Adam's sin and their corruption with the guilt next to be mentioned But remember that poena damni the loss of Heaven is vere poena and so is the loss of Pardon and Grace not to an uncapable but to a capable subject And that sins of omission are truly sins And that as a Father murders his child if he feed him not so he doth by omission do much to damn him if he do not believingly dedicate him to Christ for I speak not of unavoidable want of Baptism which Austin himself thought not to be damning however mistaken herein by many A mans own not-believing is nothing but it is such a nothing as is punished with a non-salvation which is another nothing yea that and other omissions with positive damnation and the pain of sense 6. But further note that this great instance sheweth that it is not only the sins of Parents before Generation and in it but also after the child's birth while the child is void of the use of reason and will for himself that the child may be punished by and for with this penal non-liberation Much more evident then is it that this with his additional pravity and bodily distempers all together are a penalty for the Parents former unbelief and other sins with this omission 7. And again I say that if the very guilt and corruption derived from Adam had not been my next Parents first it had never been mine no more than my nature For I had it not immediately from Adam but from
Writers I pray you say not that I send you to School to them I do but answer your earnest request Sect. 47. But 4. I also intreat you to tell me whether you differ from me in the rule of counsel which I there gave the ignorant people or not If you did not you would never have given me such a summons If you do deal openly with your Scholars and the World and tell them whether your meaning be that the major vote of those that never read Logick Physicks Metaphysicks Law Medicine c. is to be believed before one Aristotle Downame Gassendus Zabarell Grotius Cook Littleton Cujacius Fernelius c. Tell your Scholars that you are but one and they are many and must believe themselves before you in defining Justification Faith c. Tell all the University that thus they must use their Tutors Should Mr. Ainsworth's Church of Separatists have judged of all his critical expositions by the major vote Tell the World that all the Criticks and Dr. Walton's Labours and all such mens must stand or fall at the judgment of the majority of people or Ministers that never studied those tongues If you think I take my self for one of these Judges you are quite mistaken And I may ask you Are you not herein a man singular even to admiration And yet will you plead thus as if it were against singularity Are not all Protestants Papists Christians learned Heathens agreed of the Rule that I gave All your University save your self I hope in charity do think that your Professors and Readers and Tutors are to be believed in their several Professions and Readings before all their unlearned Pupils or any others that are ignorant What sort of men in the World are more faulty in tying up mens Faith too much to men than the Papists are And yet I presume you know that they commonly acknowledge that in Dogmatical difficulties especially such as depend on Arts and Sciences such as Defining for the most part is the majority even in a Council that are therein unlearned learned are not so much to be heard as one eminently learned in those things One Gabriel Ockam Greg. Arim One Scotus Rada Lychetus One Pennous Vasquâ—â— Ruiz Or if you had rather one Bradwaâ—dine Bannes Alvarez Twisse is more to be heard in telling us what Concurse Predetermination Natural Free-will are than many that never studied the point though yet perhaps the best of them may deserve little regard about unsearchable things If you please but to read Mr. Femble his Vind. Grat. you will find somewhere almost the very words of the rule or saying of mine which you exceptingly recite Sect. 48. 5. But what mean you to bring in the intimation that thus the great truths of God will depend on humane suffrages even whether God shall be God I beseech you consider 1. Whether you do well to number Artificial Logical Definitions controverted by the greatest Divines with the great truths of God How various are the Definitions of Justification considered also variously as Constitutive Sentential Executive in this life at the last Judgment in fore Dei iâ— foro Conscientiae in foro Humano Civili Ecclesiastico c which are given by great Divines And how various the definitions of Faith between that of Camero and such others as place it in the intellect Amesius and such others as place it in the will Davenant and such others as place it in both Pemble and such others as make them one faculty The differences about the act the formal object the material object as whether with Chamier we must hold that the spirits inward testimony that you are justified be verbum Dei Fidei objectum with abundance such are too too many when yet perhaps most mean the same thing and differ but in Logical notions And do you well to frighten men into suspicions and contentions out of their charity and peace by telling them that these are the great truths of God and likening them to the Question whether God shall be God As if you knew not that by such melancholies and phantasms the Church hath been brought into the unhappy military distracted state that it is in It is work fit for a Divine and Healer to make the World believe that the great truths of God and the Godhead it self are at the stake in such Logical quarrels and that men differ further than they do 6. But did you not see that I before expresly excepted all matters necessary to Salvation from humane trust Some will say I doubt too far that see not other explications 7. And I beseech you is it all one for truth to depend on humane suffrages yea God himself and for an ignorant man or Scholar to depend on his Teacher so far as fide humana to believe him before ten unlearned men Is this fit doctrine for a Doctor and Master of a Literate Society Say then in your Lectures Hearers and Scholars this and that is the true definition of Faith and Justification even of the various sorts of Faith and Justification but while I tell you so regard and believe what I and many such others say to you no more than you would do many unlearned men or any dissenters that tell you that I erre or speak heretically herein lest God and his Truth depend on humane suffrages And because I fain would but cannot find any other meaning in your words without taking you to be guilty of what I would not suspect and consequently that you expect no more regard or belief of this your Treatise as such I cease from any further animadversions on it as the less necessary Only adding that your conclusion that soundeth loud with the name of Popery needeth no other answer than what I have formerly given Mr. Crandon Mr. Eyres Mr. Bagshaw Mr. Danvers and such others who oft cry out Antichristian a frightful word when they needed but awakening to convince them that they were but frightned in a dream ERRATA PAg. 1. lin antep r. T. Tully p. 191. l. 12. r. God p. 215. l. 16. r. integris We Quest Whether Infants have Original Sin Aff. And of Original Righteousness THat I may as briefly and yet as clearly as I can considering that necessary brevity dispatch this Controversy I must 1. tell you what original sin is and 2. assert open the Affirmative proposition and 3. give you some Arguments for it I. In order to the first we must 1. enquire What sin is 2. What the word Original here signifieth 3. What Original Righteousnes was 1. Sin is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an irregularity or a dissonancy or disconformity to the Law of God in a subject It is any defect inclination or action contrary to the rule of Righteousness The form of it is Relative Disconformity is a true relation as well as Conformity as crooked is as well as straight and dissimile as well as simile 2. We now call it Original sin because it
is in us ab origine or by propagation not only because it is the original of all other sin 3. Concerning Original Righteousness which must first be understood we must enquire 1. Whether it was natural or supernatural 2. Wherein it did consist For the first 1. It must be understood that the Righteousness which we enquire after is 1. Qualitative the holy inclinations of the soul called the Image of God 2. and Relative the Innocency or Justifiableness of man but not 3. the Active Righteousness for that was 1. after Creation 2. freely performed by man himself and yet it may extend to that as it is denominated from the inclining principle And for the question 1. As Natural signifieth that which was created in us or which we had in the beginning with our being from God as our gracious Creator so Original Righteousness was Natural that is 1. It was not given him at any time following his Creation 2. Nor was it given at the same time as a thing distinct from the soundness and rectitude and integrity of his nature but was that rectitude it self and as much concreated with man as health and beauty with the body 2. As natural signifieth that which belongeth to the essence of man and is inseparable from him so original righteousness was not natural no more than health and beauty are to the body 3. As Natural signifieth that which is now propagated and born with us and comes by generation to man in his lapst estate so Original Righteousness is supernatural 4. Though as it signifieth that which would have been propagated to posterity if the Parents had not sin'd and lost it so Original Righteousness is natural 5. As Natural signifieth that which may be recovered or maintained by meer natural means so Original Righteousness is not Natural for though to Adam it was as natural to the soul as health and beauty to the body yet 1. He was commanded by supernatural revelation certain positive duties for the exercise and maintaining of it and for the attainment of salvation which was its end 2. And now we are deprived of it we cannot expect the restoration but by means supernatural even by Christ and the Spirit and supernatural revelations And that Original Righteousness is Natural so far as I have said that is concreated and should have been propagated to posterity if not lost by Parents I shall here prove by several Arguments because I find Dr. Taylor and others that deny Original sin do build on this supposition that Infants are deprived of this Righteousness as some superadded thing and yet be in puris naturalibus without sin But there is no such state nor ever was as a state of pure nature in a rational creature without holiness or sin as I prove Arg. 1. Man was naturally able and disposed to know God to be God and his God go He was naturally able and disposed to love him as God and his God which is the sum of his Original Righteousness By disposed I mean morally inclined and not void of that holy inclination to love God which is the life of morality and rectitude of the will The Antecedent is undoubted if the rational nature had not been disposed to know God it had been blind deformed and not fit for the ends of its creation The Consequence is proved thus If the understanding had been disposed to know God and not the will to love him as God then the will would have been created lame and deformed and unfit for the ends of its creation and there would have been a disproportion if not a conflict between the faculties of the soul but the Consequent is not to be admitted go nor the Antecedent Arg. 2. God made not man without all moral good go He made him with the inclination to God which we call Charity in habit or disposition which was his Original Righteousness We speak not of Active good for that was to follow his creation but of inward Virtue in habit or disposition The Antecedent is proved 1. In that else he had been imperfect as to his end 2. And not born the Image of God's goodness and by the other reasons hereafter following And if God made man without all moral virtue and goodness then could he lose and fall from none The consequence is proved because there can be no proper moral good where the true principle and end are wanting but where the love of God is wanting the true principle and end is wanting go c. God is the end Love is the adhesion to God Heathens and unregenerate men have no moral good any further than they have some kind of love to God and respect him as the end Which as it is in them but analogically called love to God so have they but an analogical morality Arg. 3. Man was created in the Image of God go he was created in Original Righteousness which consisted in the inclination of the soul to God as God The Antecedent is exprest in Gen. 1. 26 27. The consequence is proved from Eph. 4. 24. with Col. 3. 10. which shew that the Image of God besides that which was in our Essentials in power understanding and will consisted in wisdom righteousness and true holiness It 's impossible that the moral Image of God should be without Original Righteousness and the love of God Arg. 4. God look'd on man when he had created him and saw that he was very good Gen. 1. 31. go he saw that he had an inclination to his Maker or habitual love to God for the rational creature cannot be very good without it Arg. 5. If man was made for God as his ultimate end then was he made with Original Righteousness or an holy inclination to love God but man was made for God as his ultimate end go c. The minor is certain Though it be doubtful whether naturally man could know that he might enjoy God by immediate vision of his Glory and also whether it should be in Heaven or on Earth or where and also whether he could obtain the beatifical vision without supernatural revelation and assistance yet it was plain that he was made for God as his end that is to please him and to love him and be beloved by him and enjoy him according to his capacity 1. Else it had been no duty of man by nature to intend God as his end and to love him above all 2. And it had been no part of his sin or misery to take up short of God which are false as shall be shewed The major is proved thus All the works of God are disposed for the attainment of their ends go so was man and go with Original Righteousness for without Charity in the habit or inclination and so without Original Righteousness man had not been disposed to his end but had been left in an unfitness and indifferency inclined no more to God than to any creature Moreover man was created with an inclination to
which it hath not go Adam could not convey to Cain or Abel by generation a nature that was innocent and holy when he had none but a guilty sinful nature himself As when Adam had sinned each part of his body did bear its part in the guilt and if a leg or an arm had been cut off from him that cutting off would not make it become innocent but at the resurrection it shall bear its share of penalty so the embrio and the seed blood and spirits that caused it were as real parts of the Parents once as a leg or arm and when they were parts they could not be innocent otherwise you may as well say that the hand or foot was innocent and go they could not meerly by birth become innocent It is not the separation of the infant from the mother that can put away the guilt that once it had If any say that a leg or arm themselves have no sin or guilt but all is in the will they must then make the body to be no part of the man and must deny its pain and its resurrection to everlasting pain or joy It 's granted that the will is the first and chief seat of moral good or evil but from thence the whole man doth participate thereof and go it is the man that is condemned or justified punished or rewarded and not the will only Obj. But the soul was no part of the Parent though the body were no nor the body neither for it is in a continual flux and we have not the same body at seven years old which we received from our Parents Answ 1. This argument as to the body is it by which our novel Infidels do think to reason us out of the belief and hopes of a resurrection of these same numerical bodies and by the same reason you may as effectually prove that the body that committeth murder or adultery this year and dies seven years after shall not be condemned or punished for it because it is not the same body that committed the sin but this ingenious folly will save none from punishment nor prove them guiltless of original sin So much is permanent as doth essentially constitute and identify the body And for the soul 1. It is certain that it is essential to the man and certain that man begets a man and go certain that man begets the soul And though it be not by partition of the Parents soul yet is it a true generation and go the man begotten can be no better than he that begat Obj. If you say that the soul is ex traduce you will make it material and so mortal and a compound of two communicated souls conjoyned viz. the Fathers and the Mothers c. Answ If by materia be meant substantia quae potentia corpus est or substantia incompleta in potentia ad omnes formas which is Aristotle's materia prima or if any element or any body be hereby meant so we deny that the soul is material or that it is hence inferred to be such But if material be extended as far as substantial or so far as to comprehend spirits improperly then it is granted on both sides that the soul is material But supposing it taken in the usual sense I answer that God can cause spiritual substances to propagate their kind and go such propagation proveth neither their materiality or mortality no more than the creation of the first animals proved their immortality nor is it any inconvenience to grant that two souls do joyn in the communicative generation of a third as long as it is not by partition or deperdition of any of their substance no more than that two candles conjoyned should light a third But the large handling of this would require more time and words than we shall now spare I refer the Reader therefore to those that have handled this subject on purpose and particularly to Micraelius in his Ethnophronius It is not a Traduction e potentia materiae that we maintain The materiale seminis is but as the oyle to the flame to which the soul is conjunct The semen containeth quid immateriale the soul is in it not only in potentia but in actu as it is in the leg or arm of a man If you object that then the soul is divided and part of it dieth quum semen ejicitur moritur I answer Not so no more than it is divided when a man is beheaded or dieth when a leg or arm dieth that is cut off In brief we must not argue ab ignotiore nor deny a plain and certain truth that man begets man because we are uncertain of the manner of the propagation As men do in the controversy about Grace and Free-will so do they in this they divide what are to be conjoyned for fear of giving too much to the other side As one denieth special ascertaining Grace and another denieth Free-will when that Grace worketh by this Free-will so some deny God's part in the causing of the soul and some deny man's part because they are unskilful in discerning the concourse God doth as much in it as if man did nothing and is as fully the cause as if it were by a meer creation and man were no cause and yet he causeth it by man even in the way of natural procreation which by a stablished Law he appointed in the beginning and then gave man a living soul that might propagate living souls And more than so it is the soul that is the principal in procreating and being procreated and that spark of immortal life that is in semine doth by due cherishing of the further causes fabricate its own body and the soul as Scaliger saith ex Themistio sui domicilii non inquilina tantum est sed architecta under God And we are most certain that our knowledge of the way or manner of God's influx into and concourse with second causes is so much above our reach that we are unfit from presumptions about such a mystery to argue against a revealed truth Nay when we have conjectured at the manner it is our wisest course to confess we know it not But as the wind bloweth where it listeth and we hear the sound of it but know not whence it cometh or whither it goeth so is it in the out-goings of the spirit of God for the new birth and in like manner of his causation of the natural birth But of these things we are certain 1. That the Parents beget the child man begets man by virtue of the nature first given them with the law or blessing annexed Increase and multiply and God's continued influence 2. That man's soul is not debilitated in its vegetative and sensitive operations by being rational 3. That go man begetteth not less than bruits He that saith the soul as vegetative and sensitive is not begotten makes man to beget less than bruits 4. Yea he makes him to beget nothing for the body or meer matter
some penalty of sense too as well as of loss 1. Because he may if he please continue natural life to man when he depriveth him of glory for he that may justly take away both may take away one only and then man being rational must needs have a sense of the greatness of his loss 2. And there is no man of reason but would rather choose a tolerable degree of pain for ever as a less evil than to be annihilated And he that may inflict the greater may inflict the lesser Prop. 13. Those positive torments of conscience which follow the review of wilful actual sin and which men must suffer for such in Hell cannot be the punishment of our guilt either of Adam's or our neerest Parents actual sin Because conscience hath no such matter to work upon it cannot charge us with choosing that evil by our own wills for so far this guilt was involuntary Prop. 14. God is the Rector of the Universe of Common-wealths Churches and Families as well as of individual persons and therefore he may punish the World as such and punish a Common-wealth as such for their sins or a sinful Church or a sinful Family And so some individual persons not as such but as parts of the society may justly suffer the loss of those benefits which as members of that society they did possess though they committed not the sins for which the punishment is inflicted In which case the nature of punishment is divided between the society and that individual sufferer It is the Societies fundamentaliter because they are the sinners it is the sufferers Terminative because he beareth it and true punishment it is for it is suffering for sin though not for his personal sin And thus a Child a Subject a Church-member may suffer for the sins of the Heads or Body of the Society Nor can it well be said that this is but on occasion of their sin and not for it and so that it is but equivocally punishment and not truly so for it is an evil of suffering for the evil of sin and inflicted for demonstration of justice on the whole and so on each part Yea and it seems that positive punishments as well as losses may be inflicted on this account Prop. 15. Yet as God is Rector of each particular person as well as of societies so he dealeth justly with every person and therefore in punishing societies he still observeth his established Laws concerning individuals and therefore he punisheth no person beyond his due For 1. it is supposed that a man who by consent is a member of any Society doth consent to bear or venture on the common inconveniencies and infelicity of that Society so that he may be partaker of the felicity and benefits of it and where nature makes a man a member of a society it supplies the place of our personal consent For in it self it is a necessary good to us to be in society with others seeing no man can live happily by himself and it is supposed in nature that no man will dissent from his own necessary good It is therefore by their own consent fundamentally that such persons though innocent in themselves are made liable to punishment and therefore in all wars when the innocent do suffer with the guilty in the besieging of a City the punishing of a Country it is no injustice Obj. But that is because men are not able to discern between the righteous and the guilty or to difference in the execution as God can do Answ It 's true that God can do this and man cannot but withal God doth not all that he can do He ruleth the World by means in an established order and it is he that hath given men authority to rule under him and therefore whatsoever punishment they righteously execute it is God that righteously doth it by them So that as men do us no wrong in such cases so neither doth God 3. But yet God hath determined in his Laws that none shall bear the punishment of eternal damnation for the sins of a society but for his own sin yea he hath resolved that all shall tend to the everlasting felicity of the innocent 4. It cannot be accounted any wrong to such when God will repair their hurt or loss with far greater advantages which he might have denied them 5. But yet for all this it is certain that de facto God doth not punish any man who is not guilty by personal sins for there is none such on earth to punish but though God doth so sweetly and in perfect order carry on the work of Government that none shall have cause to complain of injustice and doth keep an harmonious consent between his more general and his particular punishing justice so punishing societies that he will make good all his promises to each individual yet 1. It seems to me that in one and the same penalty materially considered God may punish us both as individual persons for our own sin and as members of a Society for the sins of the Society which are no otherwise ours than by being such members of a sinful body and so being liable to the justice which that Body is liable to 2. And it seems to me that if we were supposed to be personally innocent yet God might in justice punish us with such a society so far as may stand with his Covenant to individuals and that that Covenant doth not restrain him from inflicting the least penalty on us for any besides our own sins which we have personally committed Though still even the guilt of that common sin is participative personally ours as we communicate in it by being members of the society as the hand is guilty of the sin of the tongue because it is a member of the body that is guilty Obj. There is no sin and so no punishment where there is no willingness Answ Here is a willingness fundamentally in that in hope of the good of the society and benefit from it we consent to share with them and speed as they though we consent not to the sin so that the sin is reputatively ours so far as that we should be obliged to punishment by it though not in it self nor so as that we should be accounted the actual offenders Even as our sins became Christ's by his voluntary sponsion so far as to bear the penalty but not so far as to be accounted the committer of them so that his sufferings were truly punishments because for sin though not for his own yet not punishments in so full and strict a sense as ours that suffer for our own sins but by analogy of attribution or ob inaequalem generis attributionem and such as it seems to me are those punishments which innocent persons suffer meerly for the sins of the Societies that they are members of Prop. 16. It is not a meer reputative interest as the last described but a natural interest which we have in the guilt of
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
of Adam's actual sin so far as we are guilty and we being as truly the children of our neere Parents as of him and seminally in them as well as in him it follows that we have the same natural interest in their sins as in his and therefore the same guilt and reason why God should impute them to us Unless the change of Laws do make a difference which if it do it can be no more than by adding the Law of Grace to that of Nature to remedy its obligation For the nature of things being still the same the same Law of nature still remains and therefore children must now be naturally guilty of all Parents sins as well as then before that guilt be dissolved by remission Though now God will not punish the adult meerly for Parents sins imputed to us yet he might do it if he would supposing he had not by the Law of Grace determined the contrary if it be proved that he might do it then Moreover as then God might suppose a civil interest in Adam's sin as we were parts-future of the same World of mankind on presupposition of our natural interest as his off-spring so now though our Parents be not the root of mankind as Adam was and that 's the main difference yet seeing our neerest Parents may be the root of Families or other Societies whereof God is also the Rector he may suppose another sort of civil interest or guilt of their sins upon us As he imputed Adam's sin to us as he was Rector of all mankind so may he our neerer Parents as he is Ruler of a Family or of some more remote as Ruler of a Common-wealth Obj. But that Law which made us guilty of Adam's sin is abrogated and instead of it is made the Law of Grace God doth not now say to any In the day thou sinnest thou shalt die Answ I know that commination stands not alone and unremedied and I yield that the promissory part is ceased but still every sin doth leave upon us a guilt of death till Christ take it off or else what need could we have of the pardon of it Obj. But that Law was particular and positive in the day thou eatest thou shalt die go it is ceased Answ The particular prohibition of that act of eating is ceased cessante objecto But that particular was grounded on and presupposed a general and that which you call positive how fitly I now enquire not was first natural as to the duness of penalty for each particular sin The Law of nature first saith death is the due wages of sin or every sin deserveth death and this Law doth still remain So that though as to the event we have not that reason to expect eternal death now for Parents sins nor for every sinful act of our own as before the promise of Christ we might have had yet that is not because the Law is abrogated which is the very standing Law of nature nor because now each sin deserveth not such death but because we have now a remedy at hand to put away the guilt I am sure this is the commonest judgment of those Divines that are most against Arminianism for they maintain that all the unbelievers are still under the Law of works it self as to the cursing and punishing power Arg. 2. If we receive the guilt of one sin from our immediate Parents then may we as well receive the guilt of more But we do receive the guilt of one from them go The antecedent is plain For we receive from them the guilt of Adam's sin It is theirs before it can be ours Adam delivered it not immediately to us As we received our nature and persons from our neerest Parents so did we therewith our guilt of that sin The consequence is proved in that there is the same reason of both Why did not our Parents propagate us free from the guilt of Adam's sin Because they were not free from it themselves naturally and therefore cannot give us a better nature than they have themselves And so on the same reason it must follow that being themselves guilty of other sins they cannot convey to us a nature not guilty of them If one be therefore ours because it was first theirs and our nature from them the other must be so too Obj. The Law makes the difference for God hath not made us liable to Justice for our neerer Parents sins as he did for the first Answ This is already answered The Law indeed makes a difference as to the event and execution and actual remaining obligation but not as to the desert The Law declares and shews men to be as they are and doth not judge unequally of men that are equal or of equal actions The same Law though remedied is still so far in force Obj. Our Parents if faithful are pardoned and justified and therefore cannot convey to us the guilt of any sin because they have it not themselves Answ It must be carefully understood that pardon takes not away 1. either the reatum culpae so as that person should hereafter be judged not to have done what he did or not to have sinned in so doing 2. nor yet the natural merit of punishment as if that sin and the person for it did cease to deserve death but only it remitteth the punishment deserved and takes away the legal effectual obligation to punishment or that duness of punishment which must bring it upon us So that Parents may nevertheless convey to their children that natural desert which was not removed from themselves 2. And then remission being a free act of God extendeth no further than he pleaseth and therefore unless the covenant to the faithful and their seed do pardon all their guilt to their seed as well as themselves the very effectual obligation to punishment will follow the natural desert of it to those children that have not such a remission And if this would prove any thing it would prove us not guilty of Adam's sin Arg. 3. If we are guilty of more of Adam's sins than the first or than the eating of the forbidden fruit then on the same grounds we may be guilty of the sins of our neerer Parents But the antecedent is true go so is the consequent The antecedent is proved thus If there were the same causes to make us guilty of Adam's following sins as of the first then thâ—â—e is the same guilt But there were the same causes go 1. We were seminally in Adam as well when he committed his second sin as his first 2. The same Law as to the precept and threatning was in force as de futuro when he committed his second sin as when he committed the first 1. It cannot be doubted but Adam sinned oft between the time of his eating the fruit and God's making the promise of a Redeemer For his soul being depraved and turned into a wrong course of action must needs act sinfully 2. Yea we could not be guilty
of his eating the forbidden fruit if we are guilty only of his first sin For that was not the first His unbelief of God and believing the Serpent and others more did go before it 3. Yea the sins that Adam committed after the Promise do in their nature deserve our sufferings as much as the first though that desert had a remedy provided If any still reduce all to God's meer will and say that it was his will in his first actions to deal with Adam as the root of mankind but not in his later sins I must expect till they bring some proof of such a will of God or such a Law and still say that the will and law of God doth not make sinners of innocent men nor make sinners no sinners any otherwise than by pardoning and sanctifying them So that 〈◊〉 were as much in Adam after the promise as before and his sin was of the same demerit naturally and therefore we are as well guilty of that as of the first And then for the consequent it is acknowledged by most of those whom we now oppose that we are equally related to Adam's later sins and to those of our neerer Parents I mean to all that Adam committed before the propagation of his Progeny And there are the same causes as is before manifested Though our neerer Parents were not the root of all mankind as Adam was yet are they as much a cause of us and our nature and of so much of mankind as spring from their loins as Adam was And all the progeny of Cain did spring as truly from him as from Adam And all the World since the Flood were as truly in the loins of Noah as of Adam and so naturally equally interessed in their sins Arg. 4. If our natures may be corrupted more by the sins of our neerer Parents then may they be guilty by them as well as by Adam's But the antecedent I have before proved go The consequence depends on the fameness of the reasons that guilt and depravation should concur from our neerer Parents as well as from our first And it seems that participation in guilt is pre-requisite to the depravation of nature else it might seem some kind of injury to us that another should have power to make us so miserable Sin is commonly called the punishment of sin Arg. 5. If God may without any injustice bring death both temporal and eternal on the son of a sinner without intending it as a punishment to the Son for the Father's sin then may he also without injustice nay in justice inflict the same death as a penalty for the Father's sin But the antecedent is true as I prove thus 1. That which all Rulers may do without injustice that God may do without injustice But all Rulers may without injustice deprive the children of a Traytor or other offender of those enjoyments which the Father hath forfeited himself and which were to have been conveyed from the Father to the child if the Father had not forfeited them If a Traytor forfeit his Lands and Honours his Son is justly deprived of them though the Prince intend it not as a punishment to the Son Because the Father cannot convey to his Son that which he hath not himself as having lost it on his forfeiture and the Son hath no right to it when the Fathers right is gone So if a wicked man do forfeit his right to all blessings in this life or that to come he cannot convey a right to his Son which he had not himself And what other way should that Son have such a right unless God should give it him which he is or was free to do or not It 's true that God by a new covenant hath given this everlasting life to believers but that 's not to all nor doth that deny them to be guilty of their Parents sin before nor yet that it deserveth death still as to its nature and might bring it were it not pardoned 2. God hath no obligation on him according to the Law of works to give health peace or any blessing in this life much less eternal glory to the son of a sinner 2. And for the consequence 1. It is evident from what is said that God cannot be charged with hard or cruel dealing in regard of any wrong that we should suffer if he punish us thus by deprivation for our Parents sins for if it be no cruelty to do the same thing upon the meer occasion of their sins which is unquestionable then it is no cruelty to do it in respect to their sin as the deserving cause 2. And for the point of justice as it is already proved to be non injustum so it may be proved to be justum thus Where there is a real participation in the sin there it is just that there should be a participation in the punishment because of that sin But we did really participate in the sin as of Adam so of our neerer Parents go For the minor they that were seminally in them though not by personal existence did really participate with them in their sin But we were seminally in them go This will be further confirmed in that which followeth Arg. 6. If we should have been guilty of the sin of our neerest Parents though Adam had never sinned then are we guilty of them now But the antecedent is true go Here I suppose that Adam had not sinned and our neerest Parents had If any say this is not to be supposed I answer Though it may not be affirmed to have so been yet we may in dispute suppose it had been Nor have I yet seen it proved that God made any such promise to Adam as to confirm all his posterity on condition that he did not commit that or any sin If Adam had begot a posterity no better than himself was in his first created perfection and under the same Law then they would have been peceable and mutable as he was and liable to the same penalty upon their sin as he was But Adam would have begot a posterity no better than himself for ought we can find by Scripture which no where promiseth him a better that is an immutable or indesectible posterity and they would have been under the same Law for it was suited to their perfect nature go From what is said the antecedent is evident For if we should have been as much in our neerest Parents as we were in Adam and they have been under the same Law then their sin would have brought on us the same guilt and punishment For example if Cain had been the first sinner and Seth had been innocent the posterity of Cain would have been all guilty and corrupted as Adam's posterity now is For the same causes would have produced the same effects The consequence is clear in that Adam's sinning first can be no cause why we should not be guilty of the following sins of our neerer Parents which otherwise we
while they were in their loins may justly follow go there guilt did go before The major is proved in that all punishment is for some fault whereof the person punished was some way guilty Obj. It sufficeth that another were guilty of it Answ One mans sin deserveth not another mans punishment further than that other doth some way participate in the guilt Only we must distinguish between guilt by personal commission or omission and guilt by moral and reputative or by natural participation Only Adam or other Parents were guilty by personal commission or omission as to those particular sins but we are guilty by natural participation in that we derive all our nature and personal being from persons so guilty And we are guilty by reputative participation of the sins of mankind in Adam and of the Societies that we are members of quoad nudum meritum still in that we are justly reputed to consent to partake of the benefits or penalties of such Societies when we voluntarily become and continue members of them Obj. Christ himself was justly punished and yet was not guilty of our sin Answ He was not guilty by commission or by natural participation but he had an analogical guilt by reputative participation that is by his own voluntary sponsion putting himself quoad poenam in the room of finners but mark the limitation it was but quoad poenam that he undertook this task viz. that though he were not properly guilty yet he consented to suffer as if he were guilty for the sakes of them that were So that his own consent was a just cause of the derivation of the penalty to his own person which did not commit the sin and so that analogical guilt was instead of proper guilt It may well he said that Christ was guilty ad poenam as obliged to punishment in that his own consent was sufficient to induce an obligation to punishment Obj. May not God's pleasure bring on us a reputative guilt of Adam's sin and not of our neerer Parents seeing he hath absolute power over us and therefore his will may serve instead of our consent as the will of a Parent may be instead of the infants will Answ God bringeth not guilt on any by efficiency or making them such as deserve punishment but by imputation and adjudication Otherwise God should be the cause of sin as sin for so to make guilty is to make a man really a sinner Our Parents may will sin and so may do it for us because we are seminally in them but God cannot will sin Our Parents by willing it do first become sinners themselves and then convey the guilt to us but so cannot God It being therefore but by reputation and adjudication that he judgeth men so guilty of sin it is apparent that his judgment must have some ground in the nature of the thing and the man must be guilty before God judge him so for his judgment is according to truth And therefore it must needs be that there must be some reason in our selves why Adam's sin should be judged ours or why we should be judged liable to punishment for it and that must be because we derive our natures from him And then there is the same reason for our guilt of neerer Parents sin save only that God hath since more freed us from the danger of that suffering which by such sins we might have undergone as he pardoneth to us Adam's imputed sin also The minor of the Argument will be anon cleared in the following Arguments Obj. It is indeed a punishment that is due to children for their Parents sins but it is only to the Parents that it is formally punishment and to themselves it is but materially so and so but affliction because the sin and so the guilt was only the Parents though the child be the subject of the suffering Answ 1. If this were granted it would still hold good that God may justly lay that suffering which is materially punishment upon children for the sins of immediate Parents 2. If this were so then it will equally follow that we may not be formally but materially punished for Adam's sin seeing the reason is manifested to be the same 3. I have shewed that there must be some reason on the part of the sufferer why he should suffer for another mans sin Now with us in the present case it is evident that the reason is because we are their seed and have our natures from them go this is a less-perfect or analogical guilt Obj. God doth inflict sufferings on the beasts for mans sin without any cause on their part go he may do so by infants Answ 1. God is not the Rector of Beasts in a moral proper sense but only in a natural improper sense as a Pilot ruleth a Ship or an Herdsman Cattel And therefore he hath made no Law for them nor hath engaged his fidelity to them concerning the conditions of their happiness or misery as he hath done to man And therefore bruits are not capable of sin or punishment though they be of suffering So that childrens case and theirs do differ 2. Yet when the bruits suffer for mans sin it is because of their relation to man And therefore children must suffer because of their relation which is natural and so neer that it makes them truly capable of guilt So that according to the subject the same suffering receives a various form and denomination and so doth the obligation In the personal committers of the sin there is guilt and punishment due to them in the primary fullest and most proper sense on the children that were then in their loins it is guilt and punishment more imperfectly as by analogy of attribution in the bruits when sacrificed or destroyed for their Masters sin it is but equivocally guilt and punishment I shall proceed to some Texts of Scripture Arg. 9. Deut. 28. 18. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body Children are cursed for the sins of immediate Parents go punished Obj. It is only to the Parents that it is a punishment Answ True in the primary sense but as the children participate of their nature so also of the nature of guilt and punishment It is a threatning of natural evil to a rational creature because of a moral evil which he hath some participation of go it is by participation a true punishment Obj. You may as well say that the bruits and inanimates are punished for they are here cursed too Answ This was answered even now The same evil threatned against a bruit is no punishment which threatned against a reasonable creature is a punishment because of their different capacities Obj. The meaning of the Text is but this Thou shalt be denied the desired fruit of tby body i. e. your women shall be barren Answ That may be part of the meaning but as that is not the full proper sense of the words so is there no reason from the Text for limiting it to
accidental benefits to nature as for conveying a nature deprived of them In case of privation the Parents cannot convey what they have not But though they had it yet it followeth not that they should convey it if it were a supervenient accident separable from nature as for example any right to a reward that Adam might be supposed to attain by his obedience this might be proper to himself 3. He addeth at least all the sins which Adam committed while we were in his loins must be imputed to us Answ I grant it and say that so they are yet with the fore-mentioned difference that the first sin depriving us of all title to all God's benefits the second could deprive us of no more and so could add no more guilt terminative but only fundamentaliter 4. He adds so should all the sins of our intermediate Parents seeing when they committed them we were as much in them as in Adam Answ I grant all with the last mentioned difference Let those that go on other grounds answer the Objector as well as they can 5. He adds yea the death of Adam should be so imputed to us for if he sinned as the Head of mankind why should he not also be punished in the same respect If we were not bound to obey that prohibition but in his person surely neither to be punished for the commination belongs no otherwise to us than the prohibition Answ But withal consider that though God might have satisfied his justice with destroying Adam and so putting an end to humane race yet 1. He was no way bound to do this He that a little before bid man encrease and multiply might let him enjoy his forfeited life that was no injustice 2. Yea when God had so lately made so glorious a structure for the demonstration and communication of his goodness c. it may seem in wisdom much fitter for him to let the sinning creature live while he provideth propoundeth and applyeth a remedy than presently to destroy the works that he had made though man deserved it 3. I pray you mark then the grounds that I go on I say not that we personally were then guilty in Adam but that we draw a guilt with our natures from Adam God having in just and merciful wisdom resolved that we shall survive and so humane nature be propagated it can be no other but a guilty nature that is so propagated which God is not bound to hinder but rather in wisdom not to hinder it if that might be called an obligation 6. It is further objected Moreover how did we sin in Adam actually who were never actually in him Answ 1. I say not that we then sinned in Adam properly no more than that we did exist in Adam For as I know that existere est esse extra causas so I know that the act of sin and the relation of guilt are accidents that must have an existent subject if they exist and therefore we cannot be sinners and guilty before we are But I say that when we first are we have a nature received from a guilty progenitor and therefore a guilty nature because he cannot convey to us the right to felicity which he lost 2. We were seminally in Adam and so sinned in him though I know as to personal actual existence this is but terminus diminuens yet is it more than meerly potential 7. It 's objected How could that act be voluntary as to us which was long past before that we had any will Answ As we did not personally exist in Adam so did we not will that act in Adam But yet when we received a will from Adam it was quaedam natura and guilty of what his will was guilty though not by the guilt of actual commission yet of derivation and participation And thus it is reputatively voluntary 8. It 's next replied to some of the common reasons on our part There was indeed humane nature in Adam but singular and divided from this of ours And if the first act of sin were an act of nature why not also the first act of generation yet no man will say that in Adam we did beget Cain or Seth. Answ 1. This makes nothing against me who say not that we then sinned in Adam properly but that we received a guilty nature from Adam which then began to be a sinful or guilty nature or person when it began to be a nature or person and before that was but a guilty seed 2. Faults and punishments being quid moral vel civile a political thing may be moraliter reputative transferred and therefore as a man may suffer as a membe◠〈◊〉 a sinful Society though personally innocent so might we as branches of mankind But generation being quid naturale there is no such ground for such an imputation or reputative translation of it So that the case is not alike 9. It follows And if Adam did deserve to himself a punishment equal to that his sin that is as great as God had threatned shall we think that Justice will require other punishments from innumerable other men for that same sin Answ Adam did deserve a punishment as great as his personal nature was capable of and also the same to all that should come from his loins If God had destroyed him before he had any posterity it would indeed have prevented the propagation of guilt by preventing the being of a capable subject but yet there would have been in Adam's sin a desert of such a propagated guilt or a reason for it on supposition that there were a nature from him propagated I deny therefore the Antecedent on supposition that God would let the course of humane generation go on according to the newly established Law of nature It was not only to his own person that Adam deserved this punishment Or thus I may deny the Consequence Though Adam deserved punishment only to his person yet it being to his whole person and our persons being then seminally in his and so after existing from his it follows that what he deserved to his person is propagated to those to whom that person propagates a being seeing it is of himself and out of himself that we proceed and not by a meer efficient causality as in creation or fabrication but he affordeth us our matter 10. It 's further objected Either that sin had but one adequate guilt which was to be divided among all Adam's posterity or as many guilts as men If the first then it is but a little of that sin that is imputed or of the punishment that is due to each of us singularly If the later then one sin should not have one guilt nor one adequate punishment but innumerable Answ The fundamentum is sin and that is one so the guilt is one fundamentaliter subjective primario but more than one fundamentaliter subjective per derivationem on supposition that according to the course of nature the one first guilty subject procreate