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ideas in him, and raise gross ones with much fury and ART. rapidity. Hereby his whole frame might be much corrupted, and that might go so deep in him, that all those who descended from him might be defiled by it, as we see madness and some chronical diseases pass from parents to their children.

All this might have been natural, and as much the physical effect of eating the forbidden fruit, as it seems immortality would have been that of eating the fruit of the Tree of Life: this might have been in its nature a slow poison, which must end in death at last. It may be very easy to make all this appear probable from physical causes. A very small accident may so alter the whole mass of the blood, that in a very few minutes it may be totally changed: so the eating the forbidden fruit might have, by a natural change of things, produced all this. But this is only an hypothesis, and so is left as such. All the assistance that revealed religion can receive from philosophy, is to shew, that a reasonable hypothesis can be offered upon physical principles, to shew the possibility, or rather probability, of any particulars that are contained in the Scriptures. This is enough to stop the mouths of deists, which is all the use that can be made of such schemes.

Joh.

To return to the main point of the fall of Adam: He himself was made liable to death: but not barely to cease to live; for death and life are terms opposite to one another in Scripture. In treating upon these heads, it is said, that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is Rom. vi. 23. eternal life. And though the addition of the word eternal, makes the signification of the one more express, yet where it is mentioned without that addition, no doubt is to be made, but that it is to be so meant: as where it is said, that to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually Rom. viii. minded is life and peace: and believing, we have life, through oh. xx. his name: Ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life. So, by the rule of opposites, death ought to be understood Joh. v. 40. as a word of a general signification, which we, who have the comment of the New Testament to guide us in understanding the Old, are not to restrain to a natural death; and therefore when we are said to be the servants of sin unto death, we understand much more by it than a natural death: so God's threatening of Adam with death, ought not to be restrained to a natural death. Adam being thus defiled, all emanations from him must partake. of that vitiated state to which he had brought himself. But then the question remains, how came the souls of his

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ART. posterity to be defiled; for if they were created pure, it seems to be an unjust cruelty to them, to condemn them to such an union to a defiled body, as should certainly corrupt them? All that can be said in answer to this is,

That God has settled it as a law in the creation, that a soul should inform a body according to the texture of it, and either conquer it, or be mastered by it, as it should be differently made: and that as such a degree of purity in the texture of it might make it both pure and happy; so a contrary degree of texture might have very contrary effects. And if, with this, God made another general law, that when all things were duly prepared for the propagation of the species of mankind, a soul should be always ready to go into and animate those first threads and beginnings of life; those laws being laid down, Adam, by corrupting his own frame, corrupted the frame of his whole posterity, by the general course of things, and the great law of the creation. So that the suffering this to run through all the race, is no more (only different in degrees and extent) than the suffering the folly or madness of a man to infect his posterity. In these things God acts as the Creator of the world by general rules, and these must not be altered because of the sins and disorders of men: but they are rather to have their course, that so sin may be its own punishment. The defilement of the race being thus stated, a question remains, whether this can be properly called a sin, and such as deserves God's wrath and damnation? On the one hand an opposition of nature to the Divine nature must certainly be hateful to God, as it is the root of much malignity and sin. Such a nature cannot be the object of his love, and of itself it cannot be accepted of God: now since there is no mean in God, between love and wrath, acceptation and damnation, if such persons are not in the first order, they must be in the second.

Yet it seems very hard, on the other hand, to apprehend, how persons who have never actually sinned, but are only unhappily descended, should be, in consequence to that, under so great a misery. To this several answers are made: some have thought that those who die before they commit any actual sin, have indeed no share in the favour of God, but yet that they pass unto a state in the other world, in which they suffer little or nothing. The stating this more clearly, will belong to another opinion, which shall be afterwards explained.

There is a further question made, whether this vicious inclination is a sin, or not? Those of the Church of Rome,

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as they believe that original sin is quite taken away by ART. baptism, so finding that this corrupt disposition still remains in us, they do from thence conclude, that it is no part of original sin; but that this is the natural state in which Adam was made at first, only it is in us without the restraint or bridle of supernatural assistances, which was given to him, but lost by sin, and restored to us in baptism. But, as was said formerly, Adam in his first state was made after the image of God, so that his bodily powers were perfectly under the command of his mind; this revolt, that we feel our bodies and senses are always in, cannot be supposed to be God's original workmanship. There are great disputings raised concerning the meaning of a long discourse of St. Paul's in the seventh of the Romans, concerning a constant struggle that he felt within himself; which some, arguing from the scope of the whole Epistle, and the beginning of that chapter, understand only of the state that St. Paul represents himself to have been in while yet a Jew, and before his conversion: whereas others understand it of him in his converted and regenerated state. Very plausible things have been said on both sides, but without arguing any thing from words, the sense of which is under debate; there are other places which do manifestly express the struggle that is in a good man: The flesh is weak, though the spirit is willing: the flesh lusteth against the spirit, as the spirit lusteth against the flesh. we ought to be still mortify- Gal. v. 17. ing the deeds of the body; and we feel many sins that do so Rom. viii. easily beset us, that from these things we have reason to conclude, that there is a corruption in our nature, which gives us a bias and propensity to sin. Now there is no reason to think that baptism takes away all the branches and effects of original sin: it is enough if we are by it delivered from the wrath of God, and brought into a state of favour and acceptation: we are freed from the curse of death, by our being entitled to a blessed resurrection and if we are so far freed from the corruption of our. nature, as to have a fœderal right to such assistances as will enable us to resist and repress it, though it is not quite extinct in us, so long as we live in these frail and mortal bodies, here are very great effects of our admission to Christianity by baptism; though this should not go so far as to root all inclinations to evil out of our nature. The great disposition that is in us to appetite and passion, and that great heat with which they inflame us; the aversion that we naturally have to all the exercises of religion, and the pains that must be used to work us up

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to a tolerable degree of knowledge, and an ordinary measure of virtue, shews that these are not natural to us: whereas sloth and vice do grow on us without any care taken about them: so that it appears, that they are the natural, and the other the forced growth of our souls. These ill dispositions are so universally spread through all mankind, and appear so early, and in so great a diversity of ill inclinations, that from hence it seems reasonable and just to infer, that this corruption is spread through our whole nature and species, by the sin and disobedience of Adam. And beyond this a great many among ourselves think that they cannot go, in asserting of origi

nal sin.

But there is a farther step made by all the disciples of St. Austin, who believe that a covenant was made with all mankind in Adam, as their first parent: that he was a person constituted by God to represent them all; and that the covenant was made with him, so that if he had obeyed, all his posterity should have been happy, through his obedience; but by his disobedience they were all to be esteemed to have sinned in him, his act being imputed and transferred to them all. St. Austin considered all mankind as lost in Adam, and in that he made the decree of election to begin: there being no other reprobation asserted by him, than the leaving men to continue in that state of damnation, in which they were by reason of Adam's sin; so that though by baptism all men were born again, and recovered out of that lost state, yet unless they were within the decree of election, they could not be saved, but would certainly fall from that state, and perish in a state of sin; but such as were not baptized were shut out from all hope. Those words of Christ's, John iii. 3, Except ye be born again of water and of the Spirit, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God, being expounded so as to import the indispensable necessity of baptism to eternal salvation; all who were not baptized were reckoned by him among the damned: yet this damnation, as to those who had no actual sin, was so mitigated, that it seemed to be little more than an exclusion out of heaven, without any suffering or misery, like a state of sleep and inactivity. This was afterwards dressed up as a division or partition in hell, called the Limbo of Infants; so by bringing it thus low, they took away much of the horror that this doctrine might otherwise have given the world.

5.

It was not easy to explain the way how this was propagated: they wished well to the notion of a soul's pro

ART.

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pagating a soul, but that seemed to come too near creation; so it was not received as certain. It was therefore thought, that the body being propagated defiled, the soul was created and infused at the time of conception: and that though God did not create it impure, yet no time was interposed between its creation and infusion: so that it could never be said to have been once pure, and then to have become impure. All this, as it afforded an easy foundation to establish the doctrine of absolute decrees upon it, no care being taken to shew how this sin came into the world, whether from an absolute decree or not, so it seemed to have a great foundation in that large discourse of St. Paul's; where, in the fifth of the Romans, he compares the blessings that we receive by the death of Christ, with the guilt and misery that was brought upon us by the sin of Adam. Now it is confessed, that by Christ we have both an imputation or communication of the merits of his death, and likewise a purity and holiness of nature conveyed to us by his doctrine and spirit. In opposition then to this, if the comparison is to be closely pursued, there must be an imputation of sin, as well as a corruption of nature, transfused to us from Adam. This is the more considerable as to the point of imputation, because the chief design of St. Paul's discourse seems to be levelled at that, since it is begun upon the head of reconciliation and atonement: upon which it follows that as by one man sin entered into the world, and Rom. v. 12. death by sin, and death passed upon all men, for that (or, as to the end. others render it, in whom) all have sinned. Now they think it is all one to their point, whether it be rendered, for that, or in whom: for though the latter words seem to deliver their opinion more precisely, yet it being affirmed, that, according to the other rendering, all who die have sinned; and it being certain, that many infants die who have never actually sinned, these must have sinned in Adam, they could sin no other way. It is afterwards said by St. Paul, that by the offence of one many were dead: that the judgment was by one to condemnation: that by one man's offence death reigned by one. That by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation: and that by one man's disobedience many were made sinners. As these words are positive, and of great importance in themselves, so all this is much the stronger, by the opposition in which every one of them is put to the effects and benefits of Christ's death; particularly to our justification through him, in which there is an imputation of the merits and effects of his death, that are thereby transferred to us;