ON THE CORRUPTION OF HUMAN NATURE. 109

of the divine dispensations respecting the salvation of mankind.

A close attention to the arrangement of this Epistle is calculated to be eminently useful in discovering the method according to which the leading doctrines of the Gospel may be most clearly and successfully explained.

The Epistle opens with a description of the general sinfulness and depravity of mankind. The Christian faith is offered for the salvation of the soul; and it is with the soul as well as the body, that the existence of an evil or a danger must be established, in order that the remedy may be diligently sought and gratefully applied. St. Paul, therefore, whose professed object in writing to the Romans, was to supersede the necessity of the works of the Jewish law, and to show the insufficiency of the works of the moral law, in order to prove the Gospel doctrine of justification by faith, begins the whole by a declaration of the equal need, to

both Jew and Gentile, of some mode of acceptance and reconciliation with God.

It is by the course of this argument, that he is brought to give a specific account of the way in which mankind were reduced to that state of corruption and helplessness, which he had described in the opening of his Epistle. This he traces to the fall of our first parents, and lays it down as an irresistible truth, that the disobedience of Adam brought his posterity under a curse which would have extended to them universally, had it not been taken off by the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

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Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed

upon all men, for that all have sinned:-There"fore, as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so, by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." Rom. v. 12 & 18. The result of his argument is indis

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putable, though some of its members are obscure. It is clearly elucidated by the context, and forms a natural conclusion to the statement of the preceding chapters; for, having proved, from the acknowledged sinfulness of both Jew and Gentile, that "all the world was guilty "before God;" so that all boasting, whether of divine favour or of man's merit was excluded; and that even to Abraham, the reward could not be reckoned "of debt, but of grace;" nothing was more natural than that the Apostle should anticipate the question, ποθέν το κάκον; what brought the human race into this guilty state? To meet this difficulty, he shows that Adam's sin entailed on himself and his posterity a corrupted nature, and death its punishment; which he argues, is evidently an hereditary penalty; inasmuch as we know that infants and idiots die, who cannot be subject to the punishment of any personal transgression. This prepares the reader for the conclusion which had been aimed at throughoutthat the soul of man is in a forfeited state, and only redeemed by Christ; that Christ alone is

the author of that salvation, which of themselves they were wholly unable to accomplish; that "God commended (established) "his love towards us, in that, while we were "As

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yet sinners, Christ died for us." v. 8.

by one man's disobedience many (or morλoi, man"kind) were made sinners; so, by the obedience "of one, shall many be made righteous."

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Moreover, the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin "hath reigned unto death even so might grace

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reign through righteousness unto eternal life "by Jesus Christ our Lord." v. 21.

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The important doctrine of the original curse entailed upon the posterity of Adam, which is here formally proved, is generally alluded to as an acknowledged truth in other passages of the Epistles.

"Since by man came death, by man came also "the resurrection of the dead. For, as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be

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made alive." 1 Cor. xv. 21.

And again,

2 Cor. v. 14, "We thus judge, that if Christ "died for all, then were all dead."

This, then, is the Apostle's doctrine of original sin, which is summed up in our ninth Article as the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore, in every man born into the world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation." It is evident that this doctrine paves the way to the whole dispensation of the Gospel. If mankind had not been in a lost state, there would have been no need of Christ's becoming man, or suffering death to redeem them: so, unless it is clearly understood and felt that mankind are incompetent to justify themselves in the sight of God, the doctrine of justification through Christ's death cannot be sincerely or cordially received.

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