because the eternal Word took into personal union with cmarrme himself the total genus electorum; and because, hence, ——_ we were numerically one with him on the cross, and meritorious co-agents with him in his obedience and expiatory death. But the Scriptures teach us of the sovereign election of persons to eternal life. There is no intimation of the election of a certain slice of the genus humanum. But if the genus be one spiritual substance, how can it be divided? After its division, does it cease to be one? It is too horrible to think of, that he should be in union with the entire genus, including the lost. If generation does not separate the genus into parts, then Christ must be in union with the whole genus. But if generation does separate the genus into parts, then it follows (a) that Christ's human soul and body are only individual parts’ of the genus, and Christ, therefore, can sustain no generic relation to us; (b) that the elect who were born before Christ were already parts separated from the genus, and therefore his perfect humanity could not be propagated through the oneness of the genus with them ; (c) that all infants, being born into the world corrupt, and being regenerated subsequently to their separation from the common nature, cannot receive, by any conceivable form of propagation within the genus or from the genus from which they are separated, that perfect humanity which, as second Adam, he communi- cates to his seed.
President Edwards holds a position on this subject Doctrine
Presi- ~
which it is difficult to classify, because it is inconsistent gent Fa. with itself. His doctrine of identity, which, in his work v7": on Original Sin,* he applies to our relation to Adam,
allies him, as far as the question of antenatal forfeiture
is concerned, with the high realistic view just ex- amined. According to him, there is no real causal con-
* Part iv., chap. iii.
CHAPTER Vil.
102 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
nection between the being, mode, or action of any created thing in any one moment and its being or condition the next moment. Everything which exists is in every successive moment the result of the perpetual efflux of the wis creatrix of God. There is no real identity, therefore, no real connection of any kind, between the man and his state and acts any one moment of his life and the same man any other moment. It is a direct and purely sovereign act of God which constitutes the sameness that we call identity between created moments of being in themselves really different. It is God’s bare will that makes any one of us identical with, and there- fore responsible for, his youthful self. By a mere voli-
tion, he might make the age of one man identical with, |
and responsible for, the youth of another. As a matter of fact, he has pleased to make each one of us identical
with (literally), and responsible for, the probationary life ©
of Adam. Hence we are literally, and to the same degree, and on the same ground, and through the same method, identical with Adam and responsible for his sin, as he was himself, and as we are with respect to our own acts of disobedience. This is the doctrine of the ante- cedent and immediate imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity put upon the highest ground possible. They are punished for it for the precise reason that he was punished for it—because they did it as much as they ever do anything, and because they were he as much as they ever are anything. |
On the other hand, Edwards inconsistently teaches, and evidently makes his own thoroughly, the doctrine of Placzeus and Stapfer, that we are condemned with Adam only mediately, through, and in consequence of, our having, by natural generation, corrupt natures like his. The corrupt nature is a natural result of his corruption, and the condemnation is consequent to the corruption.
BOSE Oe eee
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. SN
The corruption is not regarded as itself a punishment, and hence, on this side of his doctrine, Edwards does not teach the existence of any judicial ground of for- feiture previous to and conditioning the birth of man- kind.
Having thus, by a process of exhaustion, shown that all of the prominent alternatives of the orthodox doctrine on this subject are alike unsatisfactory and unauthenti- cated, we have raised a powerful presumption in its favour, in spite of the large residuum of difficulty which confessedly remains in the question after all is said. The doctrine of the Reformed Church is, that every human soul is born into the world under forfeiture resulting from our just legal responsibility for Adam’s action as our federal head and representative. The several .elements involved in this doctrine are as follows :—
1. By a sovereign creative act Adam was constituted the natural head and root of all mankind.