| 3. It is an undeniable matter of fact that the very -penalty which God denounced upon Adam has in all its particulars come upon every one of his descendants, -from their birth upward. Death, physical and spiritual, was the penalty denounced and executed on Adam the very day he transgressed; and in the same sense it has been executed upon each of his descendants at birth. If these were penal inflictions in the case of Adam, they must be penal inflictions in the case of each one of his children. 4, The truth we contend for is expressly taught in Scripture, Rom. v. 12-21. In this passage, so plain in spite of all that men have done to confuse it, Paul says that death, which is the penalty of the law, came upon all men through the sin of one man. This great evil could not be inflicted as a penalty for violations of the law of Moses, because it had been inflicted for ages before the law of Moses was given. It could not be inflicted upon individuals as a penalty incurred by their personal sins, because it is inflicted upon infants, who have never been guilty of personal transeression. It follows, so Paul argues, that by one man’s offence death hath reigned, and that by the offence of one man judgment hath come upon all men to condemnation. Thus Paul in this passage affirms in precise terms the full doctrine of the Reformed Churches—-to wit, (a) that the law of death, spiritual and physical, under which we are born, is a con- sequent of Adam’s public disobedience ; and (6) that it is a “gudgment,” a “condemnation” —that is, a penal con- sequent of Adam’s sin. See also 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
5. ‘The apostle proves in the above passage that there is a precise parallelism between the way in which our “condemnation ”’ follows from the disobedience of Adam, and in which our “justification” or “being made right- eous’”’ follows from the obedience of Christ. Rom. v. 18: “Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came
8
CHAPTER -
VII.
The whole proved from Scripture.
CHAPTER VAT
112 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
upon all men to condemnation; EVEN so by the right- eousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto Justification of life.” If it be, then, the great central principle of the gospel that the merit or rewardableness
of Christ's obedience, graciously imputed or set to the.
account of the believer, is the legal ground of his justi- fication, it follows of necessary consequence, if the apostle’s assertion of the parallelism of the two is correct, that the demerit or rightful obligation to punishment inherent in Adam’s sin, imputed or charged to the ac- count of each of his natural descendants, is the legal ground of their antenatal forfeiture. These two com- plementary doctrines, thus bound together in the Scrip- tures, stand or fall together. It is an historical fact that whenever the one has been denied or radically miscon- ceived, the other has soon fallen with it, and thus the whole gospel been subverted. |
6. The federal or representative principle upon which this doctrine is grounded is*conformed to the entire ana- logy of all God’s dispensations with mankind. Witness God’s covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, and David. Witness the constitutions of both the Jewish and Chris- tian Churches, in which the rights of infants are prede- termined by the status of their parents. Hugh Miller draws the following deduction from a scientific review of the world and of the history of the various races and nations of its human inhabitants: “It is a fact, broad and palpable as the economy of nature, that parents do occupy a federal position, and that the lapsed pro- genitors, when cut off from civilization and all external interference of a missionary character, become the founders of a lapsed race. The iniquities of the parents are visited upon their children. In all such instances it
is man left to the freedom of his own will that is the ~
deteriorator of man, The doctrine of the Fall, in its
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. 113
purely theologic aspects, is a doctrine that must be appre- hended by faith ; but it is at least something to find that the analogies ag science, instead of running counter to it, run in peer the same line. Itis one oe the inevitable consequences of that nature of man which the Creator ‘bound fast in fate,’ while he left free his will, that the free- will of the parent should become the destiny of the child.’”’* 7. It is a very strong presumption in favour of the truth of this doctrine in the form in which I have stated it above, that beyond question it is the common doctrine of the Romish, Lutheran, and Reformed
CHAPTER Vil.
This doc- trine of imputa- tion of guilt com- mon to the Rom-
Churches. It is accurately stated in the writings of ish, tath-