14, to prove, is assumed as proved in vs. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. 5. This interpretation is required by the scope of the passage and the drift of the apostle's argument. The scope of the passage is to illustrate the doctrine of justification on the ground of the righteousness of Christ, by a refer- ence to the condemnation of men for the sin of Adam. The analogy is destroyed, and the point of the comparison fails, if any thing in us be assumed as the ground of the infliction of the penal evils of which the apostle is here speaking. That we have corrupt natures and are person- ally sinners, and therefore liable to other and further inflictions is indeed true, but nothing to the point. Not only does the scope of the passage demand this interpretation, but also the whole course of the argument. We die on account of Adam's sin, v. 12 ; this is true, because on no other ground can the universality oi death be accounted for, vs. 13, 14. But if we all die on Adam's account, how much more shall we live on account of Christ, V. 15. Adam indeed brings upon us the evil inflicted for the first great violation of the covenant, but Christ saves us from all our numberless sins, v. 16. As therefore, for the offence of one, we are condemned, so for the righteousness of one we are justified, v. 18. As on account of the disobedience of one we are treated as sinners, so on account of the obedience of one we are treated as righteous, v. 19.
6. The doctrine which the verse thus explained teaches, is one of the plainest truths of all the scriptures and of experience. Is it not a revealed fact, above all contradiction, and sustained by the whole history of the world, that the sin of Adam altered the relation in which our race stood to God ? Did not that sin of itself, and independently of any thing in us, or done by us, bring evil on the world T In other words, did we not fall when Adam fell % If these questions are answered in the affirmative, the doctrine contained in the interpretation of v. 12, given above, is admitted.
7. The doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin, or, that on account of that sin, all men are regarded and treated as sinners, was a common Jewish doctrine at the time of the apostle, as well as at a later period. He employs the same mode of expression on the subject which the Jews were accustomed to use. They could not have failed, therefore, to un- derstand him as meaning to convey by these expressions the ideas usually connected with them.
(13, 14) For until the law sin was in the world, &c. These verses are connected by for with v. 12, as introducing the proof of the declaration that death had passed on all men on account of one man. The proof is this : the infliction of penal evils implies the violation of law ; the vio- lation of the law of Moses will not account for the universality of death, because men died before that law was given. Neither is the violation of the law of nature sufficient to explain the fact that all men are subject to death, because even those die who have never broken that law. As, therefore, death supposes transgression, and neither the law of Moses nor the law of nature embraces all the victims of death, it follows that
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