OF ORIGINAL SIN. 79
Hence was that heavy burden of "vanity/' that " bondage of coiTup- tion," under which to this day " the whole creation groaneth and tra- vaileth in pain'' until it be delivered, Rom. viii. 20-22. Now, if our sin had such a strange malignant influence upon those things which have no relation unto us but only as they were created for our use, surely it is of the great mercy of God that we ourselves are not quite confounded; which doth not yet so interpose itself, but that we are all compassed with divers sad effects of this iniquity, lying actually under divers pressing miseries, and deservedly obnoxious to everlast- ing destruction. So that, —
Secondly, Death temporal, with all its antecedents and attendants, — all infirmities, miseries, sicknesses, wasting destroying passions, casual- ties that are penal, all evil conducing thereunto or waiting on it, — is a punishment of original sin ; and this not only because the first actual sin of Adam is imputed to us, but most of them are the pro- per issues of that native corruption and pollution of sin which is stimng and operative within us for the production of such sad effects, our whole nature being by it thoroughly defiled. Hence are all the distortures and distemperatures of the soul by lusts, concupi- scence, passions, blindness of mind, perverseness of will, inordinate- ness of affections, wherewith we are pressed and turmoiled, even pro- per issues of that inherent sin which possesseth our whole souls.
Upon the body, also, it hath such an influence, in disposing it to cori'Liption and mortality, as it is the original of all those infirmities, sicknesses, and diseases, which make us nothing but a shop of such miseries for death itself. As these and the hke degrees are the steps which lead us on apace in the road that tends unto it, so they are the direct, internal, efiicient causes thereof, in subordination to the justice of Almighty God, by such means inflicting it as a punishment of our sins in Adam. Man before his fall, though not in regard of the matter whereof he was made, nor yet merely in respect of his quickening form, yet in regard of God's ordination, Avas immortal, a keeper of his own everlastingness. Death, to which before he was not obnoxious, was threatened as a punishment of his sin : " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die ;" the exposition of which words, given by God at the time of his inflicting this punish- ment, and pronouncing man subject to mortality, clearly showeth that it comprehended temporal death also : " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Our return to dust is nothing but the soul leaving the body, whereby before it was preserved from corrup- tion. Farther, St Paul opposeth that death we had by the sin of Adam to the resurrection of the body by the power of Christ: " For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
80 A DISPLAY OF ARMINIANISM.
alive," 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. The life which all shall receive by the power of Christ at the last day is essentially a reunion of soul and body; and therefore their separation is a thing we incurred by the sin of Adam. The same apostle also, Rom. v., describeth a univer- sal reign of death over all, by reason of the first transgression. Even diseases, also, in the Scripture, are attributed unto sin, as their meri- torious cause, John v. 14; 1 Cor. xi. 80; Rev. ii. 22. And, in respect of all these, the mercy of God doth not so interpose itself but that all the sons of men are in some sort partakers of them.
Thirdly, The final desert of original sin, as our article speaketh, is damnation, — the wrath of God, to be poured on us in eternal tor- ments of body and soul. To this end, also, many previous judg- ments of God are subservient, — as the privation of original righteous- ness (which he took and withheld upon Adam's throwing it away), spiritual desertion, permission of sin, with all other destroying depra- vations of our nature, as far as they are merely penal ; some of which are immediate consequents of Adam's singular actual transgression, as privation of original righteousness; others, as damnation itself, the proper effects of that derived sin and pollution that is in us. There is none damned but for his own sin. When divines affirm that by Adam's sin we are guilty of damnation, they do not mean that any are actually damned for this particular fact; but that by his sin, and our sinning in him, by God's most just ordination, we have contracted that exceeding pravity and sinfulness of nature which deserveth the curse of God and eternal damnation. It must be an inherent uncleanness that actually excludes out of the kingdom of heaven. Rev. xxi. 27; which uncleanness the apostle shows to be in infants not sanctified by an interest in the covenant. In brief, we are baptized unto the "remission of sins," that we maybe saved. Acts ii. 88. That, then, which is taken away by baptism is that which hinders our salvation ; which is not the first sin of Adam imputed, but our own inherent lust and pollution. We cannot be washed, and cleansed, and purged from an imputed sin ; which is done by the laver of regeneration. From that which lies upon us only by an external denomination, we have no need of cleansing; we may be said to be freed from it, or justified, but not purged. The soul, then, that is guilty of sin shall die, and that for its own guilt. If God should condemn us for original sin only, it were not by reason of the imputation of Adam's fault, but of the iniquity of that portion of nature in which we are proprietaries.