K 00 CHAPTER XI Consequences Sin

CHAPTER XI CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. The investigations in which we have been engaged are of importance chiefly as tending to secure just views of God s method of dealing with His rational creatures here below, and as accounting for the fact, so notorious to all observers, that all men without exception are sinners. So strange and per plexing has this fact appeared to many, that they have been driven to the most violent hypotheses in order, as they believe, to account for it. Thus men of the highest intelligence, from Augustine downwards, have not shrunk from maintaining that men derive in regular succession from Adam a vitiated nature, a nature not only destitute of positive goodness, but into which a moral virus is judicially infused as a penal consequence of Adam’s transgression. " We," says Augustine, " were all in him who did this [i.e. sinned], and so great was the actual fault that by it universal human nature became vitiated, as is sufficiently indicated by the misery of the human race: the offence was another s, but by. obnoxious succession it is ours." 1 And again, " As by carnal propagation we were in him [Adam] before we were born, as in a parent, as in a root, so the whole tree is poisoned in which we were." f * And again, " Nature and the corruption of nature are propagated together." 3 So also Calvin says :

" Original sin seems to be a hereditary pravity and corruption of our nature diffused over all parts of the soul. Since in all parts of our nature we are vitiated and perverse, on account of such corruption we are deservedly Condemned and held convicted before God, with whom only righteousness, innocence, and purity are accepted. Nor is that the obliga tion of another’s fault; for when we say that we have become obnoxious to the divine judgment through the sin of Adam, it is not to be taken as if we, innocent ourselves and not deserving it, bear the blame of his fault; but because through Ids transgression we were brought under the curse is he said to have bound us. Prom him, however, not only has punish ment come upon us, but a pestilence instilled from him resides in us, to which punishment is due." 4 As we have already seen, this opinion is one of the characteristic traits of the Calvinistic school of divines. Others again, shrinking with recoil from a doctrine which seems to involve the exemption of man from the guilt of becoming a sinner by depriving him of the power of being anything but a sinner, have resorted to the violent hypothesis of the soul’s preexistence, and have taught that in a state of being antecedent to the present each man began his career a pure and sinless being; but each fell, and then passed into this present state, each carrying with him the corrupt nature which his own fall had brought on him. This doctrine, I need not say, is utterly without any foundation in Scripture; nor is it sup ported by a single fact of consciousness or observation; and in itself it is inadequate, inasmuch as it is burdened with as great a difficulty as that which it aims at removing or avoiding; for if it be strange that all men should become sinners here, it is just as strange that they should all fall and become sinners in this supposed previous state of existence.

1 Lib.

2, Operis Imperfecti. - fiermo 14 de Verb. Apost., c. xv.

3 De Pecc. Oriy. 36. * Imtitt. ii. 1. 8. But what need is there for resorting to any such hypothesis? Is it not enough that we accept the statement of the apostle, that in Adam all die, and that through him all come under a penal condition in which, of course, they can receive no special, no gracious blessing from God (that is, in their natural state and apart from any remedial provision), but being simply left to natural influences, grow up without God, and seeking only the gratification of their own natural impulses and desires regardless of Him? That infants are in a worse state than this, that they are under condemnation to eternal death and misery because of Adam’s sin, and that they have derived from him, through their parents, a vitiated nature universally, is a position which I cannot hold. I can find no authority for it in Scripture, and in the absence of this no evidence from any other source can substantiate it, even were any such forthcoming. But whether we have reached a satisfactory result on this point or not, does not, happily, need to affect our subsequent inquiries. Whether we can account for sin by tracing it to its source in our first parents or not, the fact that sin is in the world and attaches to the race universally, so that all men are sinners, remains; and it is this fact which chiefly con cerns us. The remark of Johnson to Boswell, as reported by the latter, is quite true: " With respect to original sin," said he, " the inquiry is not necessary; for whatever is the cause of human corruption, men are evidently and confessedly so corrupt that all the laws of heaven and earth are insufficient to restrain them from crime." 1 Taking this as a settled point, the question of most importance which rises up before us is, What are the results or consequences in our world, and especially to the human race, of sin? To the consideration of this point let us now proceed.