wrong. To inflict it for the attainment of some right and desirable end may be not only just but benevolent. Is not the support of the divine law such an end ? The fact that all mankind do suffer on account of Adam's sin no believer in the Bible can or does deny. It cannot be denied that these sufferings were designed. They are included in the threatenings made in the beginning. They were expressly declared to be penal in the Bible. The sentence of condemnation is said to have passed on all men for the offence of one man. A part of the penalty threatened against sin in the great progenitor of the race was that his poster'ty should suffer the con- sequences of his transgression. They do thus suffer. It is vain, therefore, to deny the fact, and no relief is obtained by denying that those sufferings are inflicted in execution of the penalty of the law and for the infinitely important object of sustaining its authority.
§ 10, Mediate Imputation.
About the middle of the seventeenth century Amyraut, Cappel, and La Place (or Placseus), three distinguished professors in the French theological school at Saumur, introduced several modifica- tions of the Augustinian or Reformed doctrine on the decrees, election, the atonement, and the imputation of Adam's sin. La Place taught that we derive a corrupt nature from Adam, and that that corrupt nature, and not Adam's sin, is the ground of the condemnation which has come upon all mankind. When it was objected to this statement of the case that it left out of view the guilt of Adam's first sin, he answered that he did not deny the imputation of that sin, but simply made it dependent on our partici- pation of his corru))ted nature. We are inherently depraved, and therefore we are involved in the guilt of Adam's sin. There is no direct or immediate imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, but only an indirect or mediate imputation of it, founded on the fact that we share his moral character. These views were first presented by La Place in a disputation, "De statu hominis lapsi ante gratiam," published in the ".Theses Salmurienses," and afterwards more elaborately in a treatise, " De imputatione primi peccati Adami." This doctrine was formally condemned by the National Synod of France in 1644-45 ; i by the Swiss churches in the " Formula Con- sensus ; " and by the theologians of Holland. Jaeger, a Lutheran divine, in his " Ecclesiastical History," '^ is justified in saying, " Contra doctrinam Placaei — tota Gallia reformata, quin et Theologi
1 See Quick's Synodieon, London, 1692. * Tom. i. lib. ix. cap. v.
20Cj PART II. Ch. VIIL — sin.
reformati in HollandiS, surrexere." The decree of tlie French Synod of Charenton on this subject is as follows: "Cum relatum esset ad Synoduni, scripta quaedam .... prodisse, quce totam rationein peccati origiualis sola corruptione liaBreditaria in omnibus hominibus inha^rentedeHniunt, et prinii peccati Adami imputationem negant ; Damnavit Synodus doctrinam ejusmodi, quatenus peccati originalis naturam ad corrnptionem hgereditariam posterum Adae ita restringit, ut imputationem excludat primi illius peccati, quo lapsus est Adam : Adeoque censuris omnibus ecclesiasticis subjicien- dos censuit pastores, professores, et quoscunque alios, qui in hujus quaastionis disceptatione a communi sententia recesserit Ecclesiarum Protestantium, qu£e omnes hactenus et corrnptionem illam, et impu- tationem banc in omnes Adami posteros descendentem agnovernnt."
It was to evade the force of this decision that Placaeus proposed the distinction between mediate and immediate imputation. He said he did not deny the imputation of Adam's sin, but only that it preceded the view of hereditary corruption. But this is the very thing which the Synod asserted. Hereditary corruption, or sjjiritual death is the penalty, or, as expressed by the Lutheran confessions, by Calvin, and by the Protestants generally, it was an evil inflicted by " the just judgment of God, on account of Adam's sin (propter peccatum Adami)." The Formula Consensus Ecclesiarum Hel- veticarum was set forth 1675, in opposition to the doctrine of Amyraut on universal grace, to the doctrine of Placaeus on mediate imputation, and to that of others concerning the active obedience of Christ.^ In that Formula it is said : " Censemus igitur (z. c, because the covenant of works Avas made not only with Adam, but also in him, with the whole human race) peccatum Adami omnibus ejus posteris, judicio Dei arcano et justo, imputari. Testatur qnippe Apostolus 'in Adamo omnes peccasse : ' ' Unius hominis inobedientia peccatores multos constitui ; ' et ' in eodem omnes mori.' Neque vero ratio apparet, quemadmodum hereditaria corruptio, tanquain mors spiritualis, in universum genus hnmannm justo Dei judicio cadere possit, nisi ejusdem generis humani delictum aliquod, mortis illius reatuin inducens, praecesserit. Cum Deus justissimus totius terrje judex nonnisi sontem i)uniat."^
Rivet, one of the professors of the University of Leyden, published a treatise in support of the decision of the French Synod, entitled *' Decretum Synodi Nationalis Ecclesiarum Reformatarum Galliaa initio anni 1645, de Impntatione prinii Peccati omnibus Adami pes-
1 Niemeyer's Collectio Confessionum, p. Ixxxi. '•2 Art. X. ; Niemeyer, p. 733.