of immediate imputation, and especially when the equally impor- tant doctrine of hereditary depravity was openly rejected by an influential party in the Romish Church, the Protestant theologians should apparently ignore a doctrine which no one denied, and devote their attention principally to the points which were then in controversy. Rivet, however, clearly shows that although not ren- dered prominent, the immediate imputation of Adam's sin was universally assumed. This is plain from the fact that all the evil consequences of Adam's apostasy, mortality, the loss of oiiginal righteousness, corruption of nature or spiritual death, etc., etc., were of the nature of punishment. What the Reformers were anxious to maintain was, that original hereditaiy depravity (concu- piscence, in the language of the Latin Church) was of the nature of sin, and consequently that men do not perish eternally solely propter peccatum alienum., but also propter peccatum proprium. This was specially the case with Calvin. In the Confession of Faith which he drew up for the school in Geneva, it is said, " Sin- guli nascuntur originali peccato infecti . . . et a Deo damnati, non propter alienum delictum duntaxat, sed propter improbitatem, quag intra eos est." And elsewhere he says: " Dicimus Deum justo judicio nobis in Adamo maledixisse, ac voluisse nos ob illius pecca- tum corruptos nasci, ut in Christo instauremur." Again : " Pec- cavit unus, omnes ad poenam trahuntur, neque id modo, sed ex unius vitio, contagionem omnes contrahunt." Again : " Si qusera- tur causa maledictionis, quse incumbit omnibus posteris Adce, dicitur esse alienum peccatum, et cujusque proprium." To the same effect, Beza says : ^ " Tria sunt qusB hominem reum constituunt coram Deo, (1.) Culpa promanans ex eo quod omnes peccavimus in proto lapso (Rom. v. 12). (2.) Corruptio quae est paena istius culpai, inipositam tarn Adamo, quam posteris. (3.) Peccata quce perpetrant homines adulti." ^ Principal Cunningham ^ calls atten- tion to the fact that the doctrine of immediate imputation of Adam's sin is much more ex])licitly stated in the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms than in the Confession of Faith. This he very naturally accounts for by the supposition that the denial of that doctrine by Placaeus had not attracted attention in England when the Confession was framed (1646), but did become known before t!ie Catechisms were completed.
♦ Afolo(j. pro Jnstijicniione.
« See Turrettiii, locus ix. quses. 9, and De Moor's Commentarius inJohannis Marchii Com- pendium, caput XXV. § 32, vol. iii. p. 200/., where aa extended account of this controversy may be found.
3 Tie Jiffin-mers and the Theology of the Reformation, second edition, p. 383.