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.
[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 [Page 2] 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, est (que) 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, quicun (que) 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, ut (que) 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 [Page 3] 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 [Page 4] 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 [Page 5] 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 [Page 6] 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 to fear they know, but whom to trust they know not: unless they must be of the side and Religion which is uppermost, and think their Rulers always in the right; and so that there are as many right Religions in the World, as there are Rulers of different Religions. And what now shall the poor people do? Can they hope to be wiser than all these Teachers, to discern which of them is in the right? What is their remedy?
Sect. 5. In this streight I am ready (yea resolved) so far to abate my reverence to learned Contenders, as to hope that we are more agreed than they seem willing that the people should believe, (and therefore than they understand themselves.) All true Christians [Page 7] are agreed in that which made a Christian when the name of Christians was first known: and in that which was then thought necessary to their mutual love and communion. They are united in those many necessary things, which I long ago mentioned in a popular discourse called Catholick Vnity: And Protestants are agreed in much more than absolutely necessary things. And as it is not the part of a good man to set the Churches together by the ears, and to make people believe that they differ where they do not, or further than they do; and thereby to tempt them to suspect, censure, reproach, or hate each other: so it is not the part of a wise Teacher to think himself, that agreeing men are not agreed; and that different terms, or orders of expression, make different or contrary Doctrines or Religions: and to be skilful in making one difference to seem many, and verbal ones to seem real, and small ones to seem great, instead of being skilful, by discussing ambiguity of words, in helping men better to understand one another. And for my part, I have so much experience of the commonness of the mistake, both of the matter, and of each others minds, by reason of the lamentable ambiguity of words, and the common weakness of mankind in the ordering, digesting, and expressing their conceptions, [Page 8] and also in the reception of other mens expressions, that I am resolved to be still suspitious of ambiguities, and not to be easily and negligently deceived by a word unexplained, though men of never so great name or self-esteem should deride me for it, as a troublesome distinguisher: And I am resolved to endeavour, to the utmost of my little skill and opportunity, to undeceive them that think a different name, or method, is a different or contrary Doctrine; and that all are Hereticks that speak not in their language, and sing not in their tune, or pray not in their form of words, though for so doing the over-orthodox zeal do accuse me of tepidity, noxious Syncretism, Arminianism, yea, or of as much complyance with Popery, or Socinians, as this excellent Doctor doth.
Sect. 6. Though I know that Heresy may (as Arianism once did) creep in, and hide it self in the addition of one letter; yet I know also, that the confusion of tongues hath made it hard to express our selves so as easily to be understood, unless by such with whom we have had long leisure to open our meaning, and hard to understand the mind of others: And that they who agree in all that Christ, his Apostles, and the ancient Symbols of Faith and Concord made necessary to the agreement of Believers, [Page 9] should not too hastily be condemned as heretical; and that Church-tyranny and Schism, while they cry out against each other, are neerer kin in principles and effects than their owners are well aware of: And that over-doing as for orthodox Concord, by introducing things arbitrary, difficult and numerous as the necessary terms, hath been Satan's great engine to tear the Churches: And had I been at Jerome's elbow when he complained so much of them that accused him of Heresy, for rejecting the term [Hypostasis,] and when he spake himself so much against it, I might perhaps have ventured to say to that learned angry Father, that it is possible that neither his adversaries nor he were Hereticks, nor erroneous in the matter or sense at all; but that they meant by [Hypostasis,] the same that he did by [Persona;] and that he mistakingly accused an innocent word, and they mistakingly accused his innocent sense; and that the time might come, when those that then contended were in the dust, that the Churches should indifferently, without mutual condemnation, use either of the terms.
Sect. 7. Melancholy is a suspicious humour: Many a one have I known that could not be perswaded, but that their best and neerest friends did plot their death, or to [Page 10] poison them, or cut their throats; and every thing and person that is neer them, seemeth against them, and a cause of fear: As a good woman (yet living,) caetera sana, dare let none come neer her till the spiders be brusht▪ off them, which she thinks she seeth on them, having once been affrighted by a spider. And, some otherwise worthy men, do so causelesly and frequently cry out, This is Popery, and That is Arminianism, as if they were perswading the World that the contumelious saying is true, Spiritus Calvinianus est spiritus melancholicus, and that orthodox mens hearts must meditate terror, and fear where no fear is, and their charity must suspect all things, and hardly believe or hope of any good in others. And we have not been (yea, yet are not) without some Sectaries, carried so swiftly in the the stream of prejudice, that before they can stay to weigh and understand it, they cry out, O Antichristian, Popish, Arminian, of many an unquestionable truth of God; as if they were perswading men that the prophane reproach is true, that A Puritan is a Protestant frightened out of his wits.
Sect. 8. But to come to my present business; This worthy Dr. and Mr. Danvers, the fervent defender of the Anabaptists, having both newly published their suspicions and accusations of me, for my doctrine of [Page 11] Original sin, and both called aloud to the World to take heed of me, I take my self obliged to give them both some account of the reasons of what I hold, and humbly to leave them to their leisurely judicious censure. And because God calleth me, by the messengers of death, to other kind of thoughts and works, than needless, tedious, ungrateful contending for my own vindication against the suspicions and words of others, I must take it as a sufficient discharge of this duty, to publish an old Country disputation on that subject, used above twenty years ago in one of our (by some derided) meetings of those humble, peaceable, laborious, godly Ministers neer Kederminster in Worcestershire, (who have most of them been silenced these fourteen years.) And though I am much to be blamed, if my maturer thoughts since then, have not helped me to clearer conceptions than I had so long ago: yet finding by a hasty perusal, that I am still of the same mind as then I was, I must crave the Readers acceptance of it as it is, from one that hath not 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 [Page 12] 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 [Page 13] 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 [Page 14] 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 [Page 15] 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 [Page 16] 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 [Page 17] sinned: And so he was the original cause, 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 [Page 18] 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 [Page 19] 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 [Page 20] 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 [Page 21] 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, quicun (que) 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, [Page 22] 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 quo (que) 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 non magis filiorum salutem, quam suam curet? Sed & si benedictio patrum semini quo (que) eorum destinabatur, sine ullo adhuc merito ejus, cur non & reatus patrum in filios quo (que) redundaret? Sicut gratia ita & offensa; ut per totum genus & gratia decurreret, salvo eo quod postea decerni habebat, non dicturos acidam uvam patres manducasse, & filiorum dentes obstupuisse, id est, non sampturum patrem delictum filii, nec filium delictum patris, sed unumquem (que) delicti sui reum futurum; ut post duritiam populi, duritia legis edomita, justitia jam non genus, sed persnas judicaret. Quanquam si evangelium veritatis accipias, ad quos pertineat sententia reddentis in filios patrum delicta, [Page 23] cognosces: ad illos scilicet, qui hano ultro sibi sententiam fuerant irrogaturi, Sanguis illius super capita nostra & filiorum nostrorum. Hoc ita (que) omnis providentia Dei censuit, quod jam audierat. Bona igitur & severitas quia justa, si bonus judex, id est, justus. Item caetera bona, per quae opus bonum currit bonae severitatis, sive ira, sive aemulatio, sive saevita. Debita enim omnia haec sunt severitati, sicut severitas debitum est justitiae. Vindicanda erit procacitas aetatis verecundiam debentis: at (que) ita non poterunt judici exprobrari quae judici accidunt, carentia & ipsa culpa, sicut & judex.
Sect. 31. II. Cyprian de Lapsis, p. 279. Ac nequid deesset ad criminis cumulum, infantes quo (que) parentum manibus vel impositi vel attracti, amiserunt parvuli quod in primo statim nativitatis exordio fuerant consecuti. Nonne illi cum judicii dies venerit, dicent; Nos nihil fecimus, nec derelicto cibo & poculo Domini ad profana contagia sponte properavimus; perdidit nos aliena perfidia; parentes sensimus patricidas: Illi nobis ecclesiam matrem, illi patrem Deum negaverunt, ut dum parvi & improvidi, & tanti facinoris ignari, per alios ad consortium criminum jungimur, aliena fraude caperemur.
Sect. 32. III. Leonis magni Epist. Decret. 86. p. 156. Parentum quo (que) peccatis parvulos obligari, non solum primorum hominum, [Page 24] sed etiam suorum de quibus ipsi nati sunt, non improbabiliter dicitur. Illa quippe sententia Reddam peccata patrum in filios, tenet eos uti (que) antequam per regenerationem ad testamentum novum incipiant pertinere: quod testamentum prophetabatur, cum diceretur per Ezechielem, non accepturos filios peccata patrum suorum, nec ulterius futuram in Israel parabolam illam, Patres manducaverunt uvam acerbam, & dentes filiorum obstupescunt. Ideo enim quis (que) renascitur, ut solvatur in eo, quicquid peccati est, cum quo nascitur. Nam peccata quae male agendo postea committuntur, possunt & ponitendo sanari, sicut etiam post baptismum fieri videmus. Ac per hoc non est instituta regeneratio, nisi quia vitiosa est generatio, us (que) adeo ut etiam de legitimo matrimonio procreatus dicat, In iniquitatibus conceptus sum, & in peccatis mater mea in utero me aluit. Ne (que) hic dixit, in iniquitate, vel in peccato, cum hoc recte dici posset; sed iniquitates & peccata dicere maluit: quia & in illo uno, quod in omnes homines pertransivit, quod (que) tam magnum est, ut eo mutaretur & converteretur in necessitatem mortis humana natura (sicut supra disserui,) reperiuntur plura peccata, & alia parentum, quae licet non possunt mutare naturam, reatu tamen obligant filios, nisi gratuita gratia & misericordia divina subveniat. A parvulo enim recens nato, [Page 25] us (que) ad decrepitum senem quamlibet corporis aetatem gerant, sicut nullus prohibendus est a baptismo, ita nullus est, qui non peccato moriatur in baptismo: sed parvuli tantum originali, majores autem etiam his omnibus moriuntur peccatis, quaecun (que) male vivendo addiderunt ad illud quod nascendo traxerunt.
Sect. 33. IV. Gregor. magni Expos. mor. li. 15. p. 90. Peccatum quippe originale a parentibus trahimus, & nisi per gratiam baptismatis solvamur, etiam parentum peccata portamus, quia unum adhuc videlicet cum illis sumus. Reddit ergo peccata parentum in filios, dum pro culpa parentis, ex originali peccato anima polluitur prolis. Et rursum non reddit parentum peccata in filios, quia cum ab originali culpa per baptismum liberamur, jam non parentum culpas, sed quas ipsi committimus, habemus.
Sect. 34. V. August. Enchirid. ad Laurent. cap. 46, 47. pag. (edit. Paris) 74. Ne (que) dixit in iniquitate, vel peccato, cum & hoc recte dici posset; sed iniquitates & peccata dicere maluit: Quia & in illo uno quod in omnes homines pertransiit reperiuntur plura peccata, & alia parentum, quae etsi non ita possunt mutare naturam, reatu tamen obligant filios nisi gratuita gratia, & misericordia divina subveniet. Sed de peccatis aliorum parentum quibus ab ipso Adam us (que) ad Patrem suum, progeneratoribus [Page 26] suis quis (que) succedit, non immerito disceptari potest, Vtrum omnium malis actibus & multiplicatis delictis originalibus, qui nascitur implicetur, ut tanto pejus quanto posterius quis (que) nascatur? an propterea Deus in tertiam & quartam generationem de peccatis parentum eorum posteris comminetur, quia iram suam quantum ad progeneratorum suorum culpas non extendit ulterius moderatione miserationis suae, ne illi quibus regenerationis gratia non confertur, nimia sarcina in ipsa aeterna damnatione premerentur, si cogerentur ab initio generis humani omnium precedentium parentum suorum originaliter peccata contrabere, & poenas pro eis debitas pendere? An aliud aliquid de re tanta in Scripturis sanctis diligentius perscrutatis at (que) tractatis valeat vel non valeat reperiri, temere non audeo affirmare.
Bellarmine speaking against this opinion, li. 4. de Amiss. Grat. c. 18. saith thus of some Fathers, as speaking against him; [Et quidem S. Augustinus in Enchiridio, ca. 46. sic ait Parentum quo (que) peccatis parvulos obligari non solum primorum hominum, sed etiam suorum, &c. non improbabiliter dicitur. Idem repetit in li. 6. adversus Julianum, cap. 2. ejus (que) sententiani iisdem verbis tradit. S. Leo in Epist. 86. ad Nicetam: Sanctus etiam Gregorius, li. 15. moral. cap. 22. ad eandem sententiam [Page 27] ut videtur accessit.] And Bellarmine's shift is a meer violence, [quod sancti illi patres fortasse non de contagione culpae, sed de communicatione poenae loquuti sunt;] nor indeed can it be poena fine culpa.
I would trouble my self and the 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 [Page 28] 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, [Page 29] & tamen Deus persequitur in eo peccatum patris, oportet ut filius ipse peccatum illud in se habeat: alioqui haec loca inter se non convenirent. Peccatum ita (que) sua natura ita factum est, ut non tantum animum hominis vastet, verum etiam corpus, carnem & membra depravet. Ita (que) 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. Ne (que) 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 quo (que) redundare? Vnde qui generantur ex peccatoribus, talem naturam ex illis contrahunt, qualem in illis reperiunt. At (que) hac sententia homines admonentur ut sancte vivant, neve & animos suos & corpora polluant, eadem (que) opera filios quo (que) suos inficiant.
Si hoc ut jam diximus, constituatur, quaeret quispiam, quid discriminis sit inter peccatum originis, & illud quod a proximis parentibus [Page 30] 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, (istam (que) sententiam Martinus Bucerus vir doctissimus juxta (que) sanctissimus probavit,) vitia privata in filios propagari a parentibus: sed notandum, hoc esse contingens, non necessarium. Nam Deus quando (que) 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. At (que) 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 [Page 31] 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 quomodocun (que) 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 utrius (que) 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, [Page 32] 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 at (que) 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, [Page 33] 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,Original sin is their own. 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 [Page 34] 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 Churchmembership, 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 [Page 35] 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 largeDisputat. of Right to Sacram. 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, [Page 36] 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 [Page 37] 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 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 [Page 38] 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.
[Page 39] 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 notpunishing]? 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 [Page 40] 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 [Page 41] 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, [Page 42] 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, your Governors must be your guides. And in matters of high and difficult speculation, the judgment of one man of extraordinary understanding and clearness, is to be preferred before both the Rulers and the major Vote.] And I instanced on the [Page 43] by, [Q. What is the object of Predestination, or the nature of the Wills liberty, of the concurse of God, and determining way of Grace, of the definition of Justification, Faith, &c.]’ supposing the saving knowledge of the thing to differ from a logical skill of defining.
Upon this, the Learned Dr. here thus accosteth me, ‘[Vnum duntaxat a me peramice (Deus novit) rogandus est, ut serio apud Deum & conscientiam suam se excuteret, quo ista scripserit consilio quae occurrunt Reg. 42. Supponit (inter alia) quaestionem nasci de Definitione Justificationis, Fidei, &c. (nec dubito quin Imputatam quo (que) Christi Justitiam incluserit;) Quos hic adsciscendos vult duces? Adverte Lector: Hic inquit, Theologorum pauci qui bene docti & pollent judicio, authoritati & plurimum [fors. plurimorum] suffragiis anteponendi, quemadmodum vel unus aliquis, cui viget oculorum aciet; melius, longins (que) videt, quam mille quibus hebescit magis; Rogo, inquam, probe se excutiat, ut secum sciamus quem quibus in doctrina justificationis anteponat; quis unus ille oculatus, & [...]; qui mille myopes; & quem tandem status five minorennis sive precarii finem habiturae sint magnae veritates Dei, ut ab hominum suffragiis aliquando pendere desinant, Deus (que) (ut [Page 44] cum Tertulliano loquar) Deus sit? Eum spero a Papismi contagione tutum & immunem; utinam vero diligentius apud se perponderet, quam belle sua operum justitia cum Papali conveniat: Certe, ut mihi saltem videtur, (dijudicent alii,) Si facies non sit utris (que), eadem,’
Nec diversa tamen quadem decet esse sororum.
Answ. Worthy Sir, I accept your admonition: When God is so solemnly appealed to, and I that am passing quickly to his judgment, am summoned so friendly to make my serious preparatory examination before him and my conscience, neglect would be my aggravated sin. But your call for [Diligence] tells me that you know me not, who have little spared for labour these 37 years: And I am now unfit for increased diligence.
1. As to the matter of Justification, (I will not summon you before God or Conscience, but) What will the World think of your dealing, to bait (and that by gross misreport) a small book above twenty years retracted, (after voluminous Animadversions in MS. from many learned men) and purposely explained in a larger Book called The Confession of my Faith about Justification, &c. and much fullier in my Disputations about Justification, [Page 45] with Mr. Burges, Mr. Blake, Mr. Tombes, Mr. Warner, &c. and the Doctrine there vindicated, and in many other Books, (my Apology, Life of Faith, &c.) and to take no notice of any of these Books, and yet call me before God and Conscience to a diligent search? If my diligence produced never so much more, are you bound to take any more notice of them than you did of all these?
2. How come you to know the mind of a man, whom I suppose you never, saw, so well as to add your [Nec dubito quin Imputatam Christi Justitiam incluserit?] Am I not fittest to tell you what I include?
3. Why turn you a Logical case of Defining, into a Theological de re? Justitia Christi Imputata is one thing, and the Definition of Justice, or Imputation, is another.
4. Are you in good sadness desirous to know whom I mean? I must think so: But why did you not as earnestly ask of the rest, What Rulers I mean, and what people I mean, &c. Is it not enough to describe them, unless I name them? But I will tell you as much of my meaning as I know my self.
My meaning is, that if the question be, What is the signification of this or that Hebrew, Arabick, Syriack, Persian, Greek word, in the Text and Versions of the Scripture, [Page 46] or what such a proverbial speech doth signifie? and so of Topography, Genealogy, Chronology, &c. one excellent Hebrician, &c. well seen in those studies, should be believed before the majority of all the Boys, Students, Preachers, that never understood those things: Must I name them? is there no remedy? Why I mean such a one as Pagnine, Montanus, Buxtorf, &c. for the Hebrew: such a one as Erpenius, Dr. Pocock, &c. for the Arabick: such a one as Scaliger, Blondell, Vsher, Broughton, &c. for Chronology, &c. If it be a controversy in Geometry, I would believe Dr. Wallis, &c. if in Anatomy, Dr. Willis, Dr. Lower, Dr. Needham, before a thousand that are therein unstudied: yea, if it were a Magistrate, or Bishop, that were of another mind. In Metaphysicks, I will believe or regard one Suarez, Hurtado, Meurisse, Schiebler, Dr. Barlow, before a thousand that are therein ignorant: in Physicks, I more regard one Aristotle, Scotus, Honoratus Faber, Campanella, Mr. Boyle, &c. before all them that never studied them: And in Logick, I regard one Aristotle, Ramus, Dietericus, Burgersdicius, Hurtado, &c. before all that never studied Logick, of what Coat or Calling soever. Accordingly in Method and Defining, I prefer one such Divine as Sohnius, Cluto, Wendeline, Amesius, [Page 47] Dud Fenner, Dr. Stoughton, Mr. G. Lawson, &c. before all those that are ignorant of Method and Definition: while I prefer the happiness of many a poor woman that hath a strong Faith, and cannot define it, before some Doctors that can define that which they have not. Thus your loud Call hath drawn out an exposition, which I once thought would have been vain.
Sect. 46. But it may be you would know what their names are whom I take to be better [Definers of Justification, Faith and Imputation,] than all the unskilful Students, or others, that want their Logical and Theological sufficiency? You that are an Academical Doctor, should be better acquainted with the best Logicians and School-Divines than I. I once thought you had been one of them: If there be no remedy, I will tell you who I think have delivered us far more judicious and digested thoughts of these things, (both definitions, distinctions, and the matter it self,) than I find in this your Treatise: namely, Vinc. le Blanc, Mr. Will. Bradshaw, and Mr. Anth. Wotton, (two old Non-Conformists,) Placeus, Amyraldus, Dallaeus, Testardus, Conrad, & Johannes Bergii, Lud. Crocius, Mastrickt, Matth. Martinius, Camero, Grotius, Mr. Lawson, Dr. Hammond, [Page 48] Mr. John Ball, Mr. Gibbons, (late of Black-fryers,) Mr. Truman, (in his great Propitiat. &c.) (three Non-Conformists,) Mr. Gataker, &c. I name them but as I remember them.
And now Sir, was this a task worthy so solemn an invitation before God, and Conscience, and the World? If I should name Mr. Hotchkis of Pardon, Mr. Benj. Woodbridge, and many more such 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 [Page 49] 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, [Page 50] 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, Vasqu [...], Ruiz: Or if you had rather, one Bradwa [...] 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, i [...] foro Conscientiae, in foro Humano, Civili, Ecclesiastico, &c) which are given by great Divines? And how various the definitions [Page 51] 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 [Page 52] 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 [Page 53] 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 [Page] [Page 65] [...] [Page 66] 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 [Page 67] 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 [Page 68] 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 [Page 69] 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 [Page 70] 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 [Page 71] 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 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.
[Page 72] 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 [Page 73] 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 [Page 74] 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 [Page 75] 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 [Page 76] 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, [Page 77] 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.
[Page 78] 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 [Page 79] 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 [Page 80] 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. [Page 81] [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 [Page 82] 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. [Page 83] 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 [Page 84] 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 [Page 85] 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 [Page 86] 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 its 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 [Page 87] 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 the Law]; that is, As a serpent could not wound us without its sting, so neither could death have any power over us to kill us, but for sin: nor sin have any force to oblige us to this punishment, but by the Law. This is spoken of the death of infants as well as others, (unless you will deny their resurrection): go. sin is the sting, that is, the deserving cause, even of their death. Mic. 1. 5. [For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel]. Hence Satan is said to have the power of death, Heb 2. 14. as the executioner of God's wrath for sin; from whom Christ delivereth us.
2. If the death of infants be an act of God's justice on them, then it is a punishment: (for it is no act of remunerative justice, go. it must be of punitive justice, if [Page 88] of any). But it is an act of God's justice on them; as I prove. 1. It is the execution of God's sentence, Gen. 3. 19. go. it is an act of his justice on them that were sentenced: which was mankind.
2. It is their condemnation, Rom. 5. 18. go. it is an act of justice on them.
3. Subjects are ordinarily secured from being by their Soveraigns put to death without any desert of theirs, even by the justice of the Soveraign: but infants are God's subjects: go. ordinarily they are secured by his justice from being put to death by him without any desert of theirs.
The major is proved, 1. From the very nature of Government and Justice. Governing Justice consisteth in giving to all the subjects according to their deserts, ut bonis bene sit, & malis male: go. to kill the innocent, and that ordinarily, is contrary to Governing Justice. 2. From the Law of Nature and Scripture; which constantly threatneth the sinner, and only the sinner, and promiseth good to them that sin not. Now the contrary opinion, 1. either denieth God to be a King to infants, (of which anon); or, 2. denieth his Justice, 3. and nullifieth the use of his Law, which is to be Norma judicii.
2. That infants are God's subjects, is [Page 89] proved, 1. In that they are of the number of reasonable creatures, (though yet they have not the use of reason, and go. are not perfect members of his Kingdom). 2. In that they are to be entred into the holy Covenant with him, as his subjects, (Deut. 29. &c.) 3. In that they have promises and threatnings in his Laws. 4. They are subjects in all particular Common-wealths, which are but parts of his universal Kingdom. But this I have proved at large in my Treatise of Infants Church-membership and Baptism.
Obj. But God is an absolute Lord as well as a King or Ruler, and go. may do with his own as he list. Answ. His dominion or propriety is in order of nature antecedent to his Government or Kingdom, and so in that antecedent instant he may do with his own what he will; and so he may still: but then by becoming a Governor to the rational nature, he thereby signifieth that he will give to all according to their works, or moral aptitude; for God cannot be an unjust Governor; nor without justice. And his Laws do signifie this yet more.
Moreover, the contrary opinion overthroweth all our consolation, and leaveth us uncertain whether God will not damn all the godly; at least it denieth them any comfort from the light or law of Nature, and the [Page 90] justice of God, though they had no sin of their own. For if God notwithstanding all his Governing Justice, may and do ordinarily kill the innocent because he is an absolute Lord, then he may damn the innocent hereafter for ought we know notwithstanding his governing justice: For instance, the adversaries must on the same grounds say, that for ought they know all infants that die in infancy are damned. For God may, no question, torment his own, as he is an absolute owner of them, as well as kill them. And if his natural justice give no security from damnation to the innocent, then neither can his righteous Laws, and then they can have no security at all: which is false and injurious to God and man.
Obj. Bruits die without their desert. Answ. God is not the Rector of bruits, nor are they his subjects, and go. he is not engaged by any relation to deal with them in justice, nor are they capable of justice, remunerative or vindictive, nor are they under any Law.
Arg. 4. Infants are capable of moral good, (and have such): go. infants are capable of moral evil, (and have it). The capacity is the chief thing in controversy: for if we prove that they are capable of having virtue or vice in habit or [Page 91] disposition, without consent, then I find none that will deny the consequence, that de facto they have it. That infants have moral good, is proved thus: 1. Else they could not be inwardly sanctified: 2. Else they did not morally differ one from another: 3. And so one were no more amiable to God than another: 4. Nor one any more fit for Heaven than another: and so none should be saved that die in infancy, as being unqualified for salvation: or if holiness inherent be needless, then all might be saved as well as any. 5. And then Baptism, nor any priviledges of holy birth, or dedication to God, could give no hope of any moral good upon them. 6. And thus they are made meer bruits that are capable of no moral good or evil. All which are most absurd, and disproved in my Treatise of Infant Baptism.
The consequence is undeniable. If they are capable of moral good, without actual moral volitions, so are they of moral evil: for there is eadem ratio. If a disposition to holy action be a moral good or virtue, then a disposition to evil actions is vice or moral evil.
Arg. 5. Infants have a privation of moral good: but a privation of moral good is a moral evil: go. infants have a moral evil. The major is proved, in that Adam's posterity [Page 92] should have been born in original righteousness, or moral goodness, if he had not sinned: go. it is a privation of a moral good to be born without it, and not a meer negation. The minor is undeniable; privations belonging by reduction to the kind of that which they are a privation of: else a privation would be but a meer negation; that is, no privation at all.
Arg. 6. All that are the members of Jesus Christ, and saved by him, or for whom he died as a Redeemer, are (when existent) sinners: but infants are the members of Christ, and saved by him; he is their Redeemer, and died for them: go. they are (when existent) sinners: go. they have original sin. The major I prove from Matth. 1. 21. [Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins]. If it be the very reason of his denomination, (why he is called a Saviour), because he saveth his people from their sins, then he is a Saviour to none but sinners: but the antecedent is true: go. &c. The antecedent is in the Text most plain. The consequence is undeniable; because the essence or formal reason denominateth: go. he can be called a Saviour to none other. And to prevent all cavils, note that, 1. it is sin it self, and not meer suffering, much less undeserved suffering that connoteth [Page 93] not sin as the cause, that is here mentioned. 2. That it is [their sin], and not other mens sin, that they are said to be saved from. Nothing go. but violence can evade this evidence.
Matth. 9. 12. The whole need not a Physitian, but the sick. To be sick is to be sinful: to be a Physitian is to be the Saviour: go. those that have no sin have no need of a Saviour.
Eph. 5. 23, 25, 26, 27. [Christ is the Head of the Church, and Saviour of the Body]: and how doth he save them? [Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing]. So that to be a Saviour to the body, is to sanctifie, cleanse, and wash it, that it may be without spot. Those go. that have no spots or filth to be washed and cleansed from, cannot be of that body, or have Christ for their Saviour.
Rev. 1. 5, 6. The Apostle speaks in the name of the Church, [Vnto him that hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,—be glory, &c.] If infants come to Heaven, they must give this praise to Christ for washing them from their sins, as well as others.
[Page 94] His work on the Cross was to purge, or make purgation of sin, Heb. 1. 3. He died for our sins, 1 Cor. 15. 3. He died for us while we were sinners and enemies, to reconcile us to God, Rom. 5. 6, 8, 10. He came to give his life a ransome for many, Matth. 20. 28. He gave himself a ransome for all, 1 Tim. 2. 6. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin, should live to righteousness, by whose stripes we are bealed, 1 Pet. 24, 25. For Christ also once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, 1 Pet. 3. 18. Christ our Passover is sasacrificed for us, 1 Cor. 5. 7. He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, Heb. 9. 26. He was once offered to bear the sins of many, ver. 28. By his own blood he entred into the holy place, having obtained eternal Redemption. He offered himself without spot to God, to purge our consciences, &c. And for this cause he is the Mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first Testament, they that are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance, Heb. 9. 12, 14, 15. He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole World, 1 Joh. 2. 2. If one died for all, then were all dead, 2 Cor. 5. 14. that is, in sin, and for sin. Joh. 1. 29; Behold the [Page 95] Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World. A multitude of such passages of Scripture tell us, that Christ's death was for sinners only; and go. that he died for none but sinners: for what need had the innocent of a satisfaction to Justice, and of a Sacrifice, and Ransome, and Redemption? No one text of Scripture can be produced, in which Christ is said to die for any that had no sin, or to be the Redeemer or Saviour of any such. And go. to say that he died for infants, to procure them supernatural Grace, and Heaven, and not to save them from their sin, is vain. Scripture knows no such design of Christ's death. And the very privation of that rectitude which they call supernatural grace, is sin; as is manifested: nor can a rational creature be shut out of Heaven, but penally for his sins; it being a very grievous punishment.
And for the minor, (that Christ died for infants, and is their Saviour, &c.) it's proved: 1. In that he is oft said to die for all the World. 2. In that there is no other name under Heaven given by which we can be saved. 3. In that he hath taken infants into his Church and Covenant, before and since his incarnation: and took them in his arms and blessed them, and said his Kingdom was of such. 4. In that he would have gathered [Page 96] the Jewish infants with their Parents into his Church, Matth. 23. 37. 5. Else they are not Christians, (no not imperfect ones), nor to be baptized. Many more proofs I have given in the foresaid Treatise of Infant Baptism. And few I think deny the minor.
Arg. 7. All that ought to be baptized with the Christian Baptism, are sinners. But some infants ought to be baptized with the Christian Baptism: go. they are sinners.
The minor I shall suppose to be proved in the foresaid Treatise. The major I have proved at large in my Disput. of Right to Sacraments: especially pag. 79, 80. where it's proved that Christ hath commanded or instituted no other Baptism but what is [for remission of sin:] (to p. 88.) The sign it self (the washing by water, and burying under it, and rising from under) sheweth that this is essential in the signification: what else but sin are we to be washed from?
Read over all the texts of Scripture that speak of Baptism, as instituted by Christ; and when you have found that no one of them intimateth such a thing as baptizing them that are no sinners, washing them that are not unclean, then tell us why we should believe that there is such a thing. Nay it importeth a false dissimulation with God; when we will assert infants to be washed by [Page 97] the blood of Christ, when we believe that they have no sin, and need no such washing.
Arg. 8. If infants have no sin, they must either never come to Judgment, or be justified by the Law, or their meer innocency, without remission by a Redeemer: but the consequent is false: go. so is the antecedent. The consequence is undeniable, in that no justice can condemn the innocent: the Law will justify them that have no sin; for its commination hath nothing against them: such go. need not pardon by a Redeemer.
The falshood of both parts of the consequent, is proved easily. 1. Many Scriptures shew that all men shall be judged, Heb. 9. 27. all that die. Rom. 14. 12. Joh. 5. 28, 29. all that are in the graves; with many such places. 2. If infants be not judged, they would neither be justified nor condemned: but that's not true, go. &c.
2. And that all infants (nor any) are not justified by the Law, or their own Innocency, is plain in the Apostle's arguings, Rom. 3. 4, and 5. throughout: and in the Epist. to Galat. Rom. 3. 20. by the deeds of the Law there 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, [Page 98] 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? [Page 99] 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. [Page 100] 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 [Page 101] 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: [Page 102] 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 [Page 103] 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 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 [Page 104] 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: [Page 105] 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 [Page 106] 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 [Page 107] 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 outgoings 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 [Page 108] 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 is not begotten, but with the soul, nor would the semen inanimatum come to be an embrio. 5. We are sure that semen in corpore animatur anima illius cujus est corpus. 6. The conceit of two or three souls, (which is the last refuge), and that the rational only is created, is at large confuted by many; and it feigneth man not to procreate his kind, when bruits do theirs; nor to beget children indeed, but something else that is irrational. And yet even this way, (supposing God to have at the creation by a decree, annexed his creating act of the rational soul, to mans procreating of the sensitive), the propagation of original sin might be defended.
Obj. But by this doctrine still God is made the cause of the sin: for you say he is the total cause of the soul, even as much as if man were no cause.
Answ. God causeth it two waies: 1. At [Page 109] the first creation of man, he put a virtue into the souls of our first Parents to propagate their like, on supposition of his requisite universal influx, to bring that cause or virtue into act. 2. As an universal cause he effectually procureth second causes to do their part, and draweth forth their virtue, and communicateth on his part all that belongeth to the universal cause to communicate. Now if God be the Author of Original sin, it must be by one of these two acts, viz. by Creation, or by his universal Causation and influence: but it is by neither of these. Not by creation, giving the generative specifying virtue to man: for he made man upright, and commanded him to continue so, and so it was an upright nature that he should have propagated, if he himself had not depraved it by sin. Not by his universal concourse or causality; for that causeth only the soul as such, and not as defective or corrupted: as the Sun causeth the life of a toad as well as of a lion, and of a stinking weed as well as of a flower of the greatest beauty and sweetness; but is no cause of the ugly venemous nature of the toad, or of the stinking nature of the weed, save only by accident; nor is it any fault in the Sun, that such creatures are generated by it: so though God is the cause of generation by his universal [Page 110] influx, yet is he not the cause of Original sin: for the universal cause supposing the specifying virtue in the seed, doth work on all things according to their natures: and though God was and is the specifying cause by creating the procreating force in man, yea and by his constant creative emanation, yet he created not the vice, and go. is not the cause of that.
Obj. But a lame man doth not beget a lame child; nor a blind man a blind child. Why then should a sinner beget a sinner, and corrupted Parents have a corrupted issue?
Answ. The eye and leg are not the soul, which hath the generative power, nor yet essential parts of the body. But let any of the essentials of the body (as the brain or heart) be depraved, and it will appear in the issue, (especially if it be so with both the Parents): much more when the soul is depraved, by whose power the body it self is formed, and which is most essential to the man, the pravity must needs be communicated. Lameness and blindness in the Parents alter not the procreating seed, but consist with its integrity. But none can communicate that which he hath lost, and hath not either actually or virtually himself.
Obj. Righteousness and holiness were not communicable by natural generation if Adam [Page 111] had not fallen: go. by generation we have no privation of them.
Answ. 1. The antecedent is false: they would have been propagated to posterity as health and beauty to the body, as I proved in the beginning. 2. If generation as such had not conveyed them, yet if God had affixed, by a standing law, his supernatural gifts to natural procreation, it would have proved (against the consequent) that we are sinfully defective in being without them.
Obj. Learning and wisdom are not now derived to posterity.
Answ. Nor any thing that is acquired, and not natural.
Obj. Godliness is not now conveyed by nature: go. it should not have been so then.
Answ. I deny the consequence: 1. Because that holiness that was natural then, is supernatural now. You may propagate eye-sight to your children because it is natural: but you can neither restore your own, nor theirs, when it is put out, without a supernatural power. 2. Because though Adam was our natural head and root, and so had power to hold or lose the grace which he had received for himself and us, yet when it came to the work of our restoration, he being utterly insufficient to recover himself or us, the work is put into another hand, and Jesus Christ [Page 112] the second Adam is now our Root and Head; and as he purchased all, so all our mercies are at his disposal, and he giveth them out as he seeth meet: and go. as he gave Adam pardon and holiness for himself, so will he give to all his members for themselves; himself being still the treasury of his Church, and keeping the keys of life in his own hands. 3. Sanctification is imperfect in this life, and go. leaving some corruption, no wonder if that be propagated by the best. 4. But yet as Adam should have conveyed an innocent holy nature to his children if he had not lost it; even a legal righteousness, such as he had himself: so now (though generation do it not, yet) Christ in his Gospel Covenant hath made over a Gospel Righteousness to the infants of the sanctified, (who devote themselves and their children unto God in the Baptismal Covenant): so that as posterity is unhappy through their first Parents sin, so children may recover happiness from Christ by means of their Parents faith and holiness, and dedicating them to God in Christ.
Obj. Foolish Parents beget wise children: go. wicked Parents may beget godly children.
Answ. 1. I grant that God may graciously sanctifie the seed of the ungodly: but that [Page 113] is not by their procreation. 2. I deny the consequence; because that foolishness comes from the distemper of the organs, and the bodies ineptitude to serve the soul, and no alteration may be made by it upon the seed of generation. But when the soul is depraved by sin, there is no virtue left in nature to rectify that by generation, and hinder the propagation of the pravity. 3. And still as to guilt, all these objections say nothing. No man can convey the innocency which he had not.
Obj. Adam when he was pardoned had no guilt: go. he could not convey what he had not.
Answ. 1. There is a threefold guilt: 1. Reatus facti: 2. Reatus culpae: 3. Reatus ad poenam. To be guilty of the fact, is to be truly one that did commit it, or participated therein. To be guilty of the fault, is to be truly culpable by reason of that fact, it being really 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 [Page 114] 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.
[Page 115] 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 [Page 116] 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 [Page 117] 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 [Page 118] 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.
[Page 119] 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 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. [Page 120] 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 [Page 121] 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 [Page 122] 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.
[Page 123] 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 [Page 124] 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 [Page 125] 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.
[Page 126] 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 [Page 127] 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 [Page 128] 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 [Page 129] 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 [Page 130] 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 quicun (que) 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 ubi (que) 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 [Page 131] 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; inquinato (que) illo per inobedientiae peccatum, mortem & poenas corporis tantum, in omne genus humanum, & secundum communem legem transfudisse, non autem & Peccatum, cui pro poena debebatur utra (que) 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 [Page 132] 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 qu [...]madmodum Ecclesia Catholica ubi (que) diffusa semper intelle [...]it; (and so on as above, Conc. Mel.) Hanc fidei & sanctorum patrum normam imitand [...], 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, [Page 133] 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 reputa [...]ively ours: and the corruption is the habit [Page 134] 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 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 [Page 135] 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 [Page 136] 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 [Page 137] 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 [Page 138] 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.
[Page 139] 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 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 [Page 140] 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 offspring (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.
[Page 141] 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 [Page 142] 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.
[Page 143] 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, [Page 145] 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 [Page 146] 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.
[Page 147] 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 [Page 148] 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 [Page 149] 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 [Page 150] 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, [Page 151] 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 some penalty of sense too, as well as of loss: 1. Because he may, if he please, [Page 152] 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, [Page 153] 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 [Page 152] [...] [Page 153] [...] [Page 154] 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 [Page 155] 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 [Page 156] 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 [Page 157] 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 [Page 158] 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 [Page 159] 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 [Page 160] 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 [Page 161] 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.
[Page 162] 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, 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. [Page 163] 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 [Page 164] 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.
[Page 165] 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 [Page 166] 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 [Page 167] 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 [Page 168] 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 [Page 169] 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 [Page 170] 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 [Page 171] 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 [Page 172] 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 [Page 173] 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 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 [Page 174] 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 [Page 175] 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 [Page 176] 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 [Page 177] 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 hazard [...] 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 [Page 178] 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 [Page 179] 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 [Page 180] 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 [Page 181] 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 [Page 182] 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 [Page 183] 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 th [...]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 [Page 184] 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 [Page 185] 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 [Page 186] 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 [Page 187] 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 [Page 188] 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 [Page 189] not be guilty of the following sins of our neerer Parents, which otherwise we 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. [Page 190] 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 [Page 191] 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.
[Page 192] 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, [Page 193] 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 [Page 194] 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 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 [Page 195] 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 [Page 196] 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.
[Page 197] 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 [Page 198] 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.
[Page 199] 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 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 [Page 200] 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: [Page 201] 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 [Page 202] 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 Commonwealth 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 [Page 203] 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 [Page 204] quoad [...]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 [Page 205] 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 [Page 206] 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 po [...] 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 [Page 207] 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 [Page 208] 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.
[Page 209] 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. [Page 210] 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 [Page 211] 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 [Page 212] 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.
[Page 213] 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.
[Page 214] 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 [Page 215] 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 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.
[Page 216] 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 [Page 217] 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 [Page 218] 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 [Page 219] 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 [Page 220] 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: [Page 221] on supposition, that according to the course of nature the one first guilty subject procreate 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.]
[Page 222] 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 [Page 223] 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.]
[Page 224] 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 [Page 225] 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 child [...] be born in it. There might [...] be a Law to prohibit a child in the womb to come forth, as to prohibit the [...]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 p [...] [...]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 [Page 226] 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 [Page 227] 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,—Ita (que) 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 [Page 228] 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 [Page 229] 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 [Page 230] 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 [Page 231] 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 [Page 232] 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 [Page 233] 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 [Page 234] 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 [Page 235] 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 [Page 236] 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.
[Page 237] 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 [Page 238] 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 kind [...]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. [Page 239] 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 [Page 240] 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 [Page 241] 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 [Page 242] 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.
[Page 243] 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 [Page 244] 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 [Page 245] 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.)