ART. This they think is eafily enough reconciled with the notions of juftice and goodnefs in God, fince this is only a temporary punishment relating to men's perfons and we fee in the common methods of Providence, that children are in this fort often punished for the fins of their fathers; moft men that come under a very ill habit of body, tranfmit the feeds of difeafes and pains to their children. They do alfo think that the communication of this liablenefs to death is eafily accounted for; and they imagine, that as the Tree of Life might be a plant that furnished men with an univerfal medicine, fo the forbidden fruit might derive a flow poifon into Adam's body, that might have exalted and inflamed his blood very much, and might, though by a flower operation, certainly have brought on death at the laft. Our being thus adjudged to death, and to all the miferies that accompany mortality, they think may be well called the wrath of God, and damnation: fo temporary judgments are often expreffed in Scripture. And to this they add, that Chrift has entirely redeemed us from this, by the promife he has given us of raifing us up at the laft day: and that therefore when St. Paul is fo copiously difcourfing of the Refurrection, he brings this in, that as we have borne the image of the first Adam, who was earthly, fo we fhall alfo bear the image of the heavenly; and fince by man came death, by man came alfo the refurrection from the dead; and that as in Adam all die, In Ep. ad fo in Chrift shall all be made alive; and that this is the univerfal redemption and reparation that all mankind fhall have in Chrift Jefus. All this thefe divines apprehend is conceivable, and no more; therefore they put original fin in this only, for which they pretend they have all the Fathers with them before St. Auftin, and particularly St. Chryfoftom and Theodoret, from whom all the later Greeks have done little more than copied out their words. This they do alfo pretend comes up to the words of the Article for as this general adjudging of all men to die may be called, according to the ftyle of the Scriptures, God's wrath and damnation; fo the fear of death, which arifes out of it, corrupts men's natures, and inclines them to evil. 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. Rom. paf fin. Others do fo far approve of all this, as to think that it is a part of original fin, yet they believe it goes much farther; and that there is a corruption fpread through the whole race of mankind, which is born with every man. This the experience of all ages teaches us but too evidently; every man feels it in himself, and fees it in others. The Philofophers, who were fenfible of it, thought to IX. avoid the difficulty that arifes from it, when it might be ART. urged, that a good God could not make men to be originally depraved and wicked; they therefore fancied that all our fouls preexifted in a former and a purer ftate, from which they fell, by defcending too much into corporeal pleasure, and fo both by a lapfe and for a punishment they funk into groffer bodies, and fell differently according to the different degrees of the fins they had committed in that ftate: and they thought that a virtuous life did raise them up to their former pitch, as a vicious one would fink them lower into more depraved and more miferable bodies. All this may feem plaufible: but the beft that can be faid for it is, that it is an hypothefis that faves fome difficulties; but there is no fort of proofs to make it appear to be true. We neither perceive in ourfelves any remembrances of fuch a ftate, nor have we any warning given us either of our fall, or of the means of re covering out of it: fo fince there is no reason to affirm this to be true, we must seek for fome other fource of the corruption of human nature. The Manichees imputed it to the evil God, and thought it was his work, which fome fay might have set on St. Auftin the more earnestly to look for another hypothefis to reconcile all. viii. 21. viii. 46. 2 Cor. v. 29. But before we go to that, it is certain, that in Scripture this general corruption of our nature is often mentioned. The imaginations of man's thoughts are only evil continually: Gen. vi. 5. What man is he that liveth and finneth not? The juft man 1 Kings falletb feven times a day :4The heart of man is deceitful above. all things, and defperately wicked; who can know it? 5 All Prov. xxiv. that are in Chrift must become new creatures: old things must 16. be done away, and every thing must become new. 6 God made. xvii. 9. man upright, but he fought out to himself many inventions. 17. The flesh is weak ;The flesh lufteth against the spirit ;The Eccl. vii. carnal mind is enmity to the law of God, and is not fubject to al. v. 17. the law of God, neither indeed can be: and they that are in Rom. viii. the flesh cannot pleafe God: where by fleb is to be meant 7, 8. the natural ftate of mankind, according to thofe words, That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is John iii. 6, born of the Spirit is fpirit. Thefe, with many other places of Scripture to the fame purpofe, when they are joined to the univerfal experience of all mankind concerning the corruption of our whole race, lead us to fettle this point, that in fact it has overrun our whole kind, the contagion is spread over all. Now this being fettled, we are next to enquire, how this could happen we cannot think that God made men fo for it is exprefsly faid, that God made Gen. i. 27. man after bis own image. L 3 The ART. IX. Eph. iv. 22, 24. 28. The furest way to find out what this image was at first, is to confider, what the New Teftament fays of it, when we come to be restored to it. We must put on the new man, after the image of him that created him; or as elfewhere, the new man in righteousness and true boliness. This then was the image of God, in which man was at first made. Nor ought the image of God to be confidered only as an expreffion that imports only our representing him here on earth, and having dominion over the Gen. i. 27, creatures: for in Genefis the creation of man in the image of God is expreffed as a thing different from his dominion over the creatures, which feems to be given to him as a confequent of it. The image of God feems to be this, that the foul of man was a being of another fort and order than all thofe material beings till then made, which were neither capable of thought nor liberty, in which refpect the foul was made after the image of God. But Adam's foul being put in his body, his brain was a tabula rafa, as white paper, had no impreffions in it, but fuch as either God put in it, or fuch as came to him by his fenfes. A man born deaf and blind, newly come to hear and fee, is not a more ignorant and amazed-like creature than Adam muft have been, if God had not conveyed fome great impreflions into him; fuch as firft the acknowledging and obeying him as his Maker, and then the managing his body fo as to make it an inftrument, by which he could make ufe of and observe the creation. There is no reason to think that his body was at first inclined to appetite, and that his mind was apt to serve his body, but that both were reftrained by fupernatural affiftances. It is much more natural and more agreeable to the words of the wife man, to think that God made man upright, that his body craved modeftly, and that his mind was both judge and mafter of thofe cravings; and if a natural hypothefis may be offered but only as an hypothefis, it may be fuppofed, that a man's blood was naturally low and cool, but that it was capable of a vast inflammation and elevation, by which a man's powers might be exalted to much higher degrees of knowledge and capacity: the animal fpirits receiving their quality from that of the blood, a new and a ftrong fermentation in the blood might raise them, and by confequence exalt a man to a much greater fublimity of thought: but with that it might difpofe him to be easily inflamed by appetites and paffions; it might put him under the power of his body, and make his body much more apt to be fired at outward objects, which might fink all spiritual and pure IX. ideas in him, and raise grofs ones with much fury and ART. rapidity. Hereby his whole frame might be much corrupted, and that might go fo deep in him, that all those who defcended from him might be defiled by it, as we see madness and fome chronical difeafes pafs from parents to their children. All this might have been natural, and as much the phyfical effect of eating the forbidden fruit, as it seems immortality would have been that of eating the fruit of the Tree of Life: this might have been in its nature a flow poison, which muft end in death at laft. It may be very easy to make all this appear probable from phyfical caufes. A very small accident may fo alter the whole mafs of the blood, that in a very few minutes it may be totally changed: fo the eating the forbidden fruit might have, by a natural chain of things, produced all this. But this is only an hypothefis, and fo is left as fuch. All the affiftance that revealed religion can receive from philofophy, is to fhew, that a reasonable hypothefis can be offered upon phyfical principles, to fhew the poffibility, or rather probability, of any particulars that are contained in the Scriptures. This is enough to ftop the mouths of deifts, which is all the ufe that can be made of such fchemes. Joh. xx. To return to the main point of the fall of Adam: He himself was made liable to death: but not barely to cease to live; for death and life are terms oppofite to one another in Scripture. In treating upon thefe heads, it is faid, that the wages of fin is death, but the gift of God is Rom. vi. eternal life. And though the addition of the word eternal, 23. makes the fignification of the one more exprefs, yet where it is mentioned without that addition, no doubt is to be made, but that it is to be fo meant: as where it is faid, that to be carnally minded is death, but to be fpiritually Rom. viii. minded is life and peace: and believing, we have life, through 6. bis name: Ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life. So, by the rule of oppofites, death ought to be understood joh. v. 40. as a word of a general fignification, which we, who have the comment of the New Teftament to guide us in understanding the Old, are not to reftrain to a natural death; and therefore when we are faid to be the servants of fin unto death, we understand much more by it than a natural death: fo God's threatening of Adam with death, ought not to be restrained to a natural death. Adam being thus defiled, all emanations from him muft partake of that vitiated ftate to which he had brought himself. But then the queftion remains, how came the fouls of his pofterity L 4 Х ART. pofterity to be defiled; for if they were created pure, it feems to be an unjuft cruelty to them, to condemn them to fuch an union to a defiled body, as fhould certainly corrupt them? All that can be faid in answer to this is, IX. That God has fettled it as a law in the creation, that a foul fhould inform a body according to the texture of it, and either conquer it, or be mastered by it, as it fhould be differently made: and that as fuch a degree of purity in the texture of it might make it both pure and happy; fo a contrary degree of texture might have very contrary effects. And if, with this, God made another general law, that when all things were duly prepared for the propagation of the fpecies of mankind, a foul fhould be always ready to go into and animate thofe first threads and beginnings of life; thofe laws being laid down, Adam, by corrupting his own frame, corrupted the frame of his whole pofterity, by the general courfe of things, and the great law of the creation. So that the fuffering this to run through all the race, is no more (only different in degrees and extent) than the fuffering the folly or madnefs of a man to infect his pofterity. In thefe things God acts as the Creator of the world by general rules, and thefe muft not be altered because of the fins and diforders of men: but they are rather to have their course, that fo fin may be its own punishment. The defilement of the race being thus ftated, a queftion remains, whether this can be properly called a fin, and fuch as deferves God's wrath and damnation? On the one hand an oppofition of nature to the Divine nature must certainly be hateful to God, as it is the root of much malignity and fin. Such a nature cannot be the object of his love, and of itself it cannot be accepted of God: now fince there is no mean in God, between love and wrath, acceptation and damnation, if fuch perfons are not in the firft order, they must be in the fecond. Yet it feems very hard, on the other hand, to apprehend, how perfons, who have never actually finned, but are only unhappily defcended, thould be, in confequence to that, under fo great a mifery. To this feveral answers are made fome have thought that thofe who die before they commit any actual fin, have indeed no fhare in the favour of God, but yet that they pafs unto a state in the other world, in which they fuffer little or nothing. The ftating this more clearly, will belong to another opinion, which fhall be afterwards explained. There is a further queftion made, whether this vicious. inclination is a fin, or not? Those of the Church of Rome, as |