194 PART U. Ca. VUL — SIN.
Statement of the Doctrine of Immediate Imputation. The first of the above mentioned doctrines is that presented in the Symbols of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, and by the great body of the theohtgians of those great iiistorical brandies of the Protestant community.^ What that doctrine is may be stated in few words. To impute is simply to attribute to, as we are said to impute good or bad motives to any one. In the juridical and theological sense of the word, to impute is to attribute anything to a person or persons, upon adequate grounds, as the judicial or meritorious reason of reward or punishment, i. e., of the bestow- ment of good or the infliction of evil. The most elaborate discus- sion of the Hebrew word nrin and the Greek Aoyt^o/xat, used in Scripture in relation to this subject, gives nothing beyond the sin5- ple result above mentioned.
1. To impute is to reckon to, or to lay to one's account. So far as the meaning of the word is concerned, it makes no differenc^e wheUier the thing imputed be sin or righteousness ; whether it is our own personally, or the sin or righteousness of another.
2. To impute sin, in Scriptural and theological language, is to imiHite the guilt of sin. And by guilt is meant )U)t criminality or moral ill-desert, or demerit, much less moral pollution, but the judicial obligation to satisfy justice. Hence the evil consequent on the imputation is not an arbitrary infliction ; not merelv a misf )r- tune or calamity ; not a chastisement in the proj^er sense of that word, but a punishment, i. e., an evil inflicted in execution of tho penalty of law and for the satisfaction of justice.
3. A third remark in elucidation of what is meant by the Impu- tation of Adam's sin is, that by all theologians. Reformed and Lutheran, it is admitted, that in the imputation of Adam's sin to us, of our sins to Christ, and of Christ's righteousness to believers, the nature of imputation is the same, so that the one case illustrates the others. When it is said that our sins were imputed to Christ, or that He bore our sins, it is not meant that he actually committed our sins, or that He was morally criminal on account of them, or that the demerit of them rested upon Him. All that is meant la
1 As at the time of the Reformation an influential partj' in tho IJoniish Church held, after some of the schoolmen, that original sin consists solely in the imputation of Adam'-i first siti, and as the Confessions of the Reformers were desij^ned not only as an exhibition of tiie Irutii hut as a protest against the errors of the Churcli of Rome, it will be observed that tlie I'rotestants frequently assert that oi-iginal sin is not only the imputation of Adam's sin bu/ irho hereditary corruption of niiture; and the Reformed theologians often made the lat- ter more proniiiiont than the former, becau-e the one was admitted by their adversaries, but the other denied.