ADAM WAS, IN THE STRICT SENSE OF THE WORDS, THE FEDERAL RE- PRESENTATIVE OF THE RACE, AND THE ANTENATAL FORFEITURE, OF WHICH EACH OF HIS DESCENDANTS IS SUBJECT, IS THE PENAL CONSEQUENCE OF HIS PUBLIC SIN.
fUR doctrine is, that God, as the legitimate Guardian of the human race, and acting for its advantage, ordered its probation under the law as a covenant of life in the representative agency or federal headship of Adam, the first root and natural head of the race, in circumstances and on condi- tions as favourable for the race as possible. Adam,
_ although as well endowed and cireumstanced as any indi-
vidual of his natural order, while yet in a state of instable moral equilibrium, could possibly be, nevertheless fell ; and his sin, according to the favourable conditions of their probation, is the judicial ground of the antenatal forfeiture of his children, of the penal withdrawing from them of the influences of God’s Spirit; and hence their innate corruption is the penal consequence of Adam’s sin. We may, therefore, discuss this subject Wy tracing downward from cause to effect the headship of Adan the imputation of the guilt of his sin, and the penal con- sequences thereof in the sin and misery of his descendants. Or, on the other hand, we may trace from effects to causes the experienced facts as to man’s natural condi- tion up to the imputation of Adam’s public sin. I pre- fer the latter method for the following reasons: (a) Be-
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. 75
cause the facts of the case are indubitably proved by the cuarrer natural reason and universal experience of mankind, as well as by divine revelation. It hence follows that the weight of the facts bears as heavily upon every system of thought which admits the existence of an infinite _moral Governor as it does upon any school of Christian theology. (6) Because this method will afford us the best possible opportunity of contrasting the solution which the Scriptures give us of the terrible facts of the ease, by referring them to their legal ground in the judicial charging to his descendants of the guilt of the public sin of our representative, with every other solu- tion ever suggested by human genius. This will bring out into clear relief the fact that the Scriptural doctrine of the immediate and antecedent imputation of the guilt of Adam’s sin to his descendants, instead of being a re- pulsive and unnecessarily aggravated feature of Calvinism, is the most honouring to God and gratifying to the moral sense of men, of all the solutions of the awful but unde- niable facts of the case which have ever been attempted. None are more ready to recognize the real difhculties inherent in the doctrine of the federal headship of Adam than its stanchest advocates. But it is certain that these difficulties are the same, both in kind and degree, with those which are inseparable from those broad facts of the ease which are universally recognized by all except theo- retical or practical atheists.
These patent facts as to man’s moral and spiritual con- dition from birth, which I will here simply state and assume as universally conceded, are as follows :—
1. Every individual human being is from birth and by nature totally depraved. This general truth involves three subordinate ones: (1.) Every human being ha- bitually sins as soon as he enters a state of moral
agency. (2.) Each human being is born with an ante-
CHAPTER "VII.
76 THE.NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
cedent effectual tendency in his nature to sin. And (3.) This innate tendency in his nature to sin, with which every man enters the world, is itself of the nature of sin and worthy of punishment.*
2. Every human being is born into, and lives under, the power of a social organization called the world, all the moral forces of which oppose virtue and secure the prevalence of vice.
3. All men are introduced into existence under the dominion of an unseen spiritual empire of apostate angels, of which Satan is prince.}
These, then, are the portentous facts concerning the universal moral condition of mankind by nature. Hach individual comes into existence with a nature itself worthy of punishment, and effectually predisposing him to sin. They are, moreover, born into a corrupt and cor- rupting social organization, and subject to the mysterious and prevalent influence of an apostate spiritual empire. Yet, notwithstanding this disability under which men are born, they are still held bound, under further penalty of eternal damnation, to fulfil in disposition and act the entire unmodified law of absolute perfection. These
‘statements, moreover, do not represent the peculiar re-
sults of any school either of philosophy or theology, but the naked and undeniable facts of the case, authenticated as certain by reason, conscience, and experience, as well as by revelation. The denial of Christianity affords no escape from them, much less, of course, the denial of the truth of Augustinian theology. We have no alternative