2. " ]Many have inferred the justice of imputation from the supposition that Adam was not only the natural or seminal, but also the moral head of the human race, or even its i-epresentative and federal head. They suppose, accordingly, that the sin of Adam is imputed to us on the same principle on which the dohigs of the head of
a family, or of the plenipotentiary of a state, are impu- ted to his family or state, although they hail no person- al agency in his doings. In the same way they suppose Christ took the place of all men, and that what he did is imputed to them. According to this theory, ( iod en- tered into a learpie or covenant with Adam, and so Adam represented and took the place of the whole human race. This theory was invented by some schoolmen, and has been adopted by many in the Romish and I'rotestant Church since the IGth century, and was defended even in the 18th century by some Lutheran theologians, as Pfaff of Tubingen, by some of the followers of Wolf (e. g. Carpzov, in his Comm. de Jmputationefncti proprii et alieni), and by Baumgarten, in Ids Ikitpnatik, an<l dis- putation ' de. imputatione pecculi Adamilici.^ liut it was more particularly favored by the ]\eformed theologians, especially by the disciples of Cocceius, at the end of the 17th and commencement of the 18th century, e. g. by Witsius, in liis OCconomia fcederum. They appeal to Hos. vi, 7, ' They transgressed the covenant, like Adam,' i. e. broke the divine laws. But where is it said that Adam was tlie federal head, and that his transgression is imputed to thcmV On tliis text Morus justly ob- serves,'Est mera comjiaratio Judaiorum peccantium cum Adamo peccante.' Other texts are also cited in behalf of this opinion.
" But, for various reasons, this theory cannot be cor- rect. For (o.) the descendants of Adam never empow- ered him to be their representative and to act in their name. (6.) It cannot be shown from the Bible that Adam was informed that the fate of all his posterity was involved in his own. (c.) If the transgression of Adam is imputed, by right of covenant, to all his pos- terity, then, in justice, all their transgressions should be again imputed to him as the guilty cause of all their misery and sin. What a mass of guilt, then, would come upon Adam ! But of all this nothing is said in the Script lu-es. ((/.) The imputation of the righteous- ness of Christ cannot be alleged in support of this the- ory ; for this is imputed to men only by their own will and consent. This hypothesis has been opposed, with good reason, by John Taylor, in his work on original sin."
8. " Others endeavor to deduce the doctrine of impu- tation from the scientia media of (iod, or from his fore- knowledge of what is conditionally possible. The sin of Adam, they say, is imputed to us because God fore- saw that each one of us Avould have committed it if he had been in Adam's stead, or placed in his circumstances. Even Augustine says that the sin of Adam is imputed to us propter consensionem, or consensum p}-cesumptu?n. This theory has been advanced, in modern times, by Reusch, in his Introductio in Theologiam revelatam, and in Bremquell's work Die gute Sache Gottes, hei Zurech- nung des Falls (Jena, 1749). But it is a new sort of justice which would allow us to be punished for sins which we never committed, or never designed to com- mit, but only might possibly have committed under cer- tain circumstances. Think a moment how many sins we all shoiild have committed if God had suffered us to come into circumstances of severe temptation. An in- nocent man might, by this ride, be punished as a mur- derer because, had he lived at Paris on St. Bartholo- mew's night, in 1572, he might, from mistaken zeal, have killed a heretic."
II. " Since none of these hypotheses satisfactorily ex- plain the matter, the greater part of the moderate and Biblical theologians of the Protestant Church are con- tent with saying, what is manifestly the doctrine of the Bible, that the imputation of Adam's sin consists in the prevailing mortality of the human race, and that this is not to be regarded as imputation in the strict judicial sense, but rather as the consequence of Adam's trans- gression" (Knajip, Theology, § 76).
IIL "The enlightened advocates of imputation do af- ter aU disclaim the actual transfer of Adam's sin to his posterity. They are v.ell aware that the human mind
IMPUTATION
626
IMPUTATION
cannot be forced up to such a point as this. But they do still urgently contend for the idea that all Adam's posterity are punished for liis sin, although they did not, in fact, commit it ; and that in this sense, therefore, they are all guilty of it, Turretin's view is, that Adam's sin impute<l is the ground or cause why men are born with original sin inherent, i. e. with natural depravity ; and this is, in his view, the punishment inflicted because of Adam's sin imputed to them. And with him many oth- ers agree. But Calvin, Edwards, Stapfer, and others, re- ject the doctrine of the real imputation of Adam's siji to his posterity, while they maintain that native inher- ent depravity is the consequence of it, which is charge- able to us as sin. This Turretin declares to be no im- putation at all, i. e. a real rejection of his doctrine. Re- jecting these views of Turretin, then, Edwards, in order to account for it how aU men came to be born with in- herent sin, labors to show that there is a physical and psychological unity between Adam and all his posterity. According to him, this would account for the commence- ment of native depravity, and when commenced it is im- puted to us as sin, and therefore punishable, on legal ground, with temporal and eternal evil. But Turretin makes all to h^ punishment from the outset, and that on the ground of the sin of Adam, wliich is actually impu- ted to his descendants" (Stuart on Ixonutn.", v, 19, p. 592). Dr. H. B. Smith, in an article in the Christian Union, takes the advanced groimd that while it must be con- ceded " that there is a proper interjiretation," and that Adam's posterity do inherit, " by virtue of their union •with him, certain penal consequences of the great apos- tasy," man can he " delivered^'jfrom these evils by " divine grace," and "that for original sin, without actual trans- gression, no one will be consigned to everlasting death" [italics are ours]. In an article in the Princeton Theo- logical Essays (i, 138 sq.), a member of the Presbyterian Church takes even more liberal ground. "We know that it is often asserted that Augustine and his follow- ers held the personal unity of Adam and his race