our account; and (c) most gigs A treats us according to the seer of that sin.
When we say that Adam’s sin was imputed to us, the Reformed Churches have always understood by it that the guilt, or legal obligation to suffer the penalty of Adam’s sin, is judicially charged to our account as the legal ground of penal treatment. That this is the true sense of the Scriptural phrase to impute sin will be found sufficiently proved in the eleventh chapter of this book. 7
7. Hence we are all born into the world under an antecedent just forfeiture of all natural rights, and right- eously subject to all the penal consequences of apostasy under the terms of the Covenant of Works—that is, to the immediate penal withdrawal of that communion and support of the Spirit of God which is the condition of spiritual life and blessedness. Connate spiritual death, - therefore, befalls us as the just punishment of the public sin of Adam, the penal responsibility for which is ours as truly as it is his. This imputation of the guilt of Adam’s sin to us, or this practical regarding and treating us as responsible for it, is (a) judicial, not sovereign ; and (b) immediate and antecedent’ to the corruption of our nature and to personal sinful actions, not mediately through them nor consequent upon them. It is to be remembered, however, that the antenatal forfeiture, in- volving the privation of those spiritual influences upon which spiritual and physical life depends, is the only penalty which comes upon us, consequent to Adam’s sin, immediately and antecedently to our own action. Other temporal and eternal punishments are doubtless neces- sary consequents (unless God mercifully intervenes) of that withdrawment of God’s Spirit which is the imme- diate penalty of Adam’s sin; nevertheless, the Scriptures always represent these as being properly and immediately
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. 107
the punishment of our own personal sins of disposition and action. This matter is clearly and fully stated, in the sense I have above given, by Turretin.* The doc- trine of the Reformed Churches he sums up in the follow- ing unmistakable words: “The question returns to these terms, Whether the sin of Adam, not any one, but the first sin (apostatizing act), not his sinful habit (that is, subjective state), but his act, is imputed to all his pos- terity, proceeding from him by ordinary generation, by an imputation not mediate and consequent, but imme- diate and antecedent? They with whom we are now holding controversy either deny imputation absolutely, or only admit a mediate imputation ; we, on the other hand, ‘with the orthodox, affirm alike that an imputa- tion is to be conceded, and that it is immediate and antecedent.”
If, then, the question be asked, Wuy? on what basis of justice does God bring new-born creatures into exist- ence under such penal conditions that total corruption of nature, the sum and root of all other evils, in every case accrues? the answer is, That their natural rights were forfeited by the public act of their federal representative before they were born, and that they are in fact as truly penally responsible for his sin as he was himself.
If, on the other hand, the question be asked, How in- herent moral corruption originates in a newly-created soul and yet the Creator of the soul be not the author of the sin? it must be confessed, in reply, that the Scrip- tures give us no direct solution, and that various answers have been given by men equally orthodox.
1. Some have maintained that, according to the great physiological law that like begets like, the depraved nature of Adam has been propagated to his descendants through their bodies, and that each soul newly created
* Locus 9. Questio 9.
CHAPTER VII.
Of the origina- tion of moral corrup- tion in the new- born soul.
CHAPTER Vil.
108 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
pure is morally corrupted the instant it is brought into union with its body, in which the vitiating virus resides.
The fatal objection to. this view is, that it is incon- sistent with the essential nature of sin. Sin is a quality or accident neither of elementary matter nor of material organization. It can exist only as a moral quality of a rational spirit. A disordered condition of body may, as we all experience, occasion in an already apostate soul inordinate animal passions, but it could never cause in a holy soul aversion from God, pride, malice, and other purely spiritual sins.
2. Another and by far more prevalent form of the ex traduce theory is that the souls, as well as the bodies, of children are propagated from their parents, and that thus the depraved nature of Adam has, by a natural law, been reproduced in his offspring in successive genera- tions. Jerome held to the immediate creation of each soul at the time of conception. Tertullian held to this
doctrine of the generation of souls. Augustine was