Adam and his posterity, His sin, although not their act, is so im- puted to them that it is the judicial ground of the penalty threat- ened against him coming also upon them. This is tiie doctrine of immediate imputation.
2. Others, while they admit that a corrupt nature is derived from Adam hy all his ordinary posterity, yet deny, first, that this cor- 3-uption or spiritual death is a penal infliction for his sin ; and sec- ond, that there is any imputation to Adam's descendants of the guilt of his first sin. All that is really imputed to them is their own inherent, hereditary depravity. This is the doctrine of mediate imputation.
3. Others discard entirely the idea of imputation, so far as Adam's sin is concerned, and refer the hereditary corruption of men to the general law of propagation. Throughout the vegeta- ble and animal kingdoms, like begets like. Man is not an exceji- tion to that law. Adam having lost his original righteousness and corrupted his nature by his apostasy, transmits tliat despoiled and deteriorated nature to all his descendants. To what extent man's nature is injured by the fall, is left unfletermined by this theory. According to some it is so deteriorated as to bo in the true Scriptural sense of the term, spiritually dead, while according to others, the in- jury is little if anything more than a physical infirmity, an impaired constitution which the first parent has transmitted to his children.
4. Others again adopt the realistic theory, and teach that as generic humanity existed whole and entire in the persons of Adam and Eve, their sin was the sin of the entire race. The same numerical rational and voluntary substance which acted in our first parents, having been communicated to us, their act was as truly and properly our act, being the act of our reason and will, as it was their act. It is imputed to us therefore not as his, but as our own. We literally sinned in Adam, and consequently the guilt of that sin is our personal guilt and the consequent corruption of na- ture is the effect of our own voluntary act.
5. Others, finally, deny any causal relation, whether logical or natural, whether judicial or physical, between the sin of Adam and the sinfulness of his race. Some who take this ground say that it was a divine constitution, that, if Adam sinned, all men should sin. The one event was connected with the other only in the divine purpose. Others say that there is no necessity to ac- 30unt for the tact that all men are sinners, further than by referring to their liberty of will. Adam sinned, and other men sin. That is all. The one fact is as easily accounted for as the other.