and which included his posterity, was the loss of the divine favour and fellowship. The consequences of the forfeiture of the diviiu' favour in the case of Adam were, (1.) The loss of original right- eousness ; (2.) The consequent corruption of his whole nature ; and, (3.) Exposure to eternal death. These consequences come on his posterity in the same oixler : first, tiie loss or rather destitu- tion of original righteousness; and secondly, corru])tion of nature ; and thirdly, exposure to eternal death ; so that no child of Adam is exposed to eternal death irrespective of his own personal sinful- ness and ill-desert. On this ])oint Turrettin says: " Posna quani peccatum Adami in nos accersit, vel est privativa, vel positiva. Prior est carentia et privatio justitiie originalis ; posterior est mors tum temporalis, tum asterna, et in genere mala omnia, quae peccatoribus immittuntur. Etsi secunda necessario sequi- tur primam ex natura rei, nisi intercedat Dei misericordia, non debet tanien cum ea confundi. Quoad primam dicimus Adami peccatum nobis imputari immediate ad poenam privativam, quia est causa privationis justiticE originalis, et sic corruptionem antecedere debet saltem ordine natural ; sed quoad posteriorem potest dici imputari mediate quoad poenam positivam, quia isti poense obnoxii non sumus, nisi postquam nati et corrujjti sumus." ^ Vogelsang^ says: " Certe neminem sempiterna subire suj)plicia j)ropter inobe- dientiam protoplasti, nisi mediante cognata perversitate." And Mark^ says that if Placeeus and others meant nothing more by mediate imputation than that " hominum natorum actualem puni- tiouem ulteriorem non fieri nudo intuitur Adaniicse transgressionis absque interveniente etiam propria corruptione et fluent! bus hinc Bceleribus vaiiis, neminem orthodoxum possent habere obloquen- tem." But he adds, they obviously meant much more. They deny the imputation of the first sin of Adam as the cause of this inherent corruption. As Adam by his apostasy became subject to eternal death, but throutrh the intervention of redeemina: £:race was doubtless saved from it, so also although all his posterity become liable to the same dreadful penalty through their own inherent corruption, yet we have every reason to believe and hope that no human being ever actually perishes who does not |)ersonally incur the penalty of the law by his actual transgres- sion. This however is through the redemption of Christ. All who die in infancy are doubtless saved, but they are saved by grace. It is nevertheless important that the real views of the Reformed
1 Loc. IX. q-jflBst. :x. 14, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, p. 558.
» Quoted by De Moor, Commentarius, vol iii. p. 275. 3 IbiJ. p. 278
'212 PART II. Ch. Vin. — six.
Churches, on the doctrine of immediate imputation, should be clearly understood. Those churches do not teach that the first sin of Adam is the single and immediate ground of the condemna- tion of his posterity to eternal death, but that it is the ground of their forfeiture of the divine favour from which flows the loss of original righteousness and corruption of our whole nature, which in their turn become the proximate ground of exposure to final perdition, from which, however, as almost all Protestants believe, all are saved who have no other sins to answer for.
Mediate Imputation increases the Difficulties to he accounted for.
3. It is a further objection to the doctrine of mediate imputation that it increases instead of relieving the difficulty of the case. It denies that a covenant was made with Adam. It denies that man- kind ever had a probation. It assumes that in virtue of a natural law of propagation when Adam lost the image of God and became sinful, his children inherit his character, and on the ground of that character are subject to the wrath and curse of God. All the evils therefore Avhich the Scriptural and Church doctrine represent as coming upon the posterity of Adam as the judicial punishment of his first sin, the doctrine of mediate imputation represents as sov- ereign inflictions, or mei'e natural consequences. Wiiat the Scrip- tures declare to be a righteous judgment, Placseus makes to be an arbitrary dispensation.
Inconsistent with the ApostWs Argument in Rom. v. 12—21.
4. It is a still more serious objection that this doctrine destroys the parallel between Adam and Clirist on which the Apostle lays so much stress in his Epistle to the Romans. The great point which he there labours to teach and to illustrate, and which he represents as a cardinal element of the method of salvation, is that men are justified for a righteousness which is not personally their own. To illustrate and confirm this great fundamental doc- trine, he refers to the fact that men have been condemned for a sin which is not personally their own. He over and over insists that it was for the sin of Adam, and not for our own sin or sinfulness, that the sentence of death (the forfeiture of the divine favour) passed upon all men. It is on this ground he urges men the more confidently to rely upon the promise of justification on the ground of a righteousness which is not inherently ours. This parallel is destroyed, the doctrine and argument of the Apostle are over- turned, if it be denied that the sin of Adam, as antecedent to any