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  SYSTEM BIBLICAL THEOLOGY V1 (1888)
  by W.L. Alexander
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The first volume of Alexander's systematic biblical theology from 1888,
presenting the doctrines of Scripture in an organized framework that traces
theological themes through both Old and New Testaments.

  Chapters: 32

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 000 - AlexanderWL - System Biblical Theology V2
    2. A 00 CHAPTER I. Creation of Man
    3. B 00 - CHAPTER II The Constitution Of Man
    4. B 01 Refer  natural constitution  man  God's
    5. B 02  Soul and spirit  used  parallel with
    6. C 00 - CHAPTER III Primitive Man
    7. D 00 - CHAPTER IV Probation, Temptation
    8. D 01  The Temptation.
    9. D 02 - The Fall
   10. E 00 - CHAPTER V The Universality
   11. E 01 - The Testimony of Scripture
   12. E 02 -  The Testimony of Human Life
   13. F 00 - CHAPTER VI Evil Origin Evil
   14. F 01 Definitions of Evil
   15. F 02 The, Origin of Evil
   16. G 00 - CHAPTER VII The Nature
   17. G 01 General Testimony Scripture concerning
   18. H 00  CHAPTER VIII The Principle Six
   19. H 01  The Psychological Law of Man's acting
   20. H 02  The Principle of Moral Goodness
   21. H 03  The Principle of Sin
   22. I 00  CHAPTER IX Kinds of Sin
   23. I 01  In respect law which transgression
   24. I 02  In respect compass act itself
   25. I 03  In respect  party charged
   26. J 00  CHAPTER X The Source Sin
   27. J 01   General Considerations.
   28. J 02  Tlie Testimony of Scripture
   29. J 03  Tlic Connection  Adams  Race
   30. K 00  CHAPTER XI Consequences  Sin
   31. K 01   The Consequences  Sin  Man
   32. K 02  Consequences  Sin  World

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  CHAPTER 1: 000 - ALEXANDERWL - SYSTEM BIBLICAL THEOLOGY V2
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System Biblical Theology V2 (1888)

AlexanderWL.

CONTENT CHAPTER I. CREATION OF MAN1 CHAPTER II THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.9 1.
refer to the natural constitution of man as God’s creature.10 2. Soul and spirit
are used as parallel with each other.12 CHAPTER III PRIMITIVE MAN.18 CHAPTER IV
PROBATION, TEMPTATION, AND FALL OF MAN.22 The Temptation.27 The Fall31 CHAPTER V
THE UNIVERSALITY OF SIN32 1. The Testimony of Scripture.32 2. The Testimony of
Human Life.39 CHAPTER VI EVIL THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.46 1. Definitions of Evil.47 2.
The, Origin of Evil.51 CHAPTER VII THE NATURE OF SIN.59 1. The General Testimony
of Scripture concerning Sin.64 CHAPTER VIII THE PRINCIPLE OF SIX.68 1. The
Psychological Law of Man’s acting.70 2. The Principle of Moral Goodness.71 3.
The Principle of Sin.80 CHAPTER IX KINDS OF SIN.84 1. In respect of the law of
which they are a transgression85 2. In respect of the compass of the act itself,
there are85 3. In respect of the party charged with them, there are86 CHAPTER X
THE SOURCE OF SIN.88 1. General Considerations.89 2. Tlie Testimony of
Scripture.89 3. Tlic Connection of Adams Sin with that of the Race.92 CHAPTER XI
CONSEQUENCES OF SIN.118 1. The Consequences of Sin to Man himself.120 2.
Consequences of Sin to the World.130


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  CHAPTER 2: A 00 CHAPTER I. CREATION OF MAN
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CHAPTER I. CREATION OF MAN FIRST DIVISION. ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN I.

WE now enter upon the second of the main divisions of our subject, ANTHROPOLOGY,
or THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING MAN.

Man is the creature of God; and the Bible not only affirms this, but in its
earlier chapters gives a detailed account of the original formation of man, and
the condition in which he was placed when he entered on the stage of being.
Having first arranged the earth, and called into being the various plants and
animals which occupy its surface, and having prepared for man a fitting and
pleasant habitation, God brought man into existence. In doing this He proceeded
with more of form and solemnity than He had used in the preceding steps of His
work. Instead of merely giving the command to exist, instead of merely summoning
into being by an almighty fiat, or calling on the earth to bring forth the
creature He was about to frame, God, as if to mark the singular importance of
the act He was about to perform, stirs up Himself, as it were, to a higher
exercise of His creative energy, and marks this as in a peculiar sense the work
of His hands. " And God said," we read, " Let us make man in our image, and
after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26); and in a subsequent record we are told that
"formed man" that is, shaped, fashioned, elaborated him with care, as a potter
does a vessel, or an artist a statue, the verb used being "fl, which is the word
used of the working of the potter (Isaiah 64:7) and of the artist (Isaiah 44:9;
Isaiah 44:12; Isaiah 54:17). The material of which man was thus formed is
described as " of the dust of the earth; " and when thus formed, God " breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul " (Genesis
2:7).

All this indicates deliberation and care on the part of the Creator in the
formation of man, as if He gave special con sideration to this, and took special
pains to make His work perfect, doing it with His own hand, and proceeding in it
step by step until it was complete. i. When it is said that God formed man from
the dust of the earth, it is not necessarily implied that the Creator took of
the moistened dust or clay of the earth and formed out of it a statue in the
form of man. This may have been; but all that the words oblige us to believe is
that the body of man is composed of the same elements as the dust of the ground.

Man’s body is thus, as the apostle expresses it, " of the earth earthy" (1
Corinthians 15:47). The constituent elements of the human body are the four
principal gases, with lime, potash, and a little iron, sodium, and phosphorus,
the commonest elements in the inorganic kingdom. As respects his body, man is
thus part and parcel of the material creation, differing from the lower animals
and the vegetable world only in form, position, and capacity. The material of
his body is not different in kind nor finer in nature than that of theirs. The
same structure of bone and tissue and nerve which anatomy discloses in man it
unfolds in the lower animals: the different processes by which the animal body
is preserved, and by which it decays, are the same in both; and with an almost
endless diversity of outward form, there is yet such an analogy between the
parts of the bodily frame in man and in the lower animals, that we are conducted
by an exact process of observation and induction to the conclusion that all
animal forms are but variations of one primitive type, from which the Creator
has in each instance departed only in so far as was necessary to fit the animal
for the place it had to occupy and the functions it had to discharge, a
generalization which has been proclaimed as one of the achievements of modern
science, but which was not unknown to the ancients, as the following sentence of
Augustine shows: " Nullum est creaturoe genus quod non in homine possit
agnosci." ] But though man is thus associated by his material structure with the
lower animals, he is yet, even in respect of this part of his nature, the
greatest of God’s terrestrial works. In the erectness of his posture, in the
sublimity of his look, in the symmetry of his form, in the delicacy of his
organs, in the beauty of his complexion, in the refinement of his senses, and in
the sensibility which is diffused over his whole frame, he possesses advantages
to which none of the lower animals can lay claim. Nor are these advantages the
result of culture and progressive development. Even those who would trace man
back to the ape are compelled to admit that the oldest specimens of human beings
which have been discovered not only exhibit no approach to the ape type, but are
physically as perfect as any which the most advanced age of civilisation can
furnish. Even Mr. Huxley says of one of the oldest fossil skeletons that has
been brought to light, that the brain might have been that of a philosopher; and
Professor Dana, an eminent American geologist, says: " No remains of fossil man
bear evidence to less perfect erectness of structure than in civilised man, or
to any nearer approach to the man-ape in essential characteristics. The existing
man-apes," he continues, " belong to lines that reached up to them as their
ultimatum; but of that time which is supposed to have reached upward to man, not
the first link below the lowest level of existing man has been found." 2 The
absence of all intermediate links between the anthropoid ape and the lowest type
of man is pronounced by Mr. Darwin to be amazing; and doubtless it is to him and
his fellow-evolutionists as perplexing as it is amazing, for it is fatal to
their whole theory of the origin of man. ii. After the formation of man from the
dust of the earth, the next step in the creation process was the infusing into
his frame of life: " The Lord God," we are told, " formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul " (Genesis 2:7). By some this last expression has been taken to mean
that 1 Ad Oros., quoted by Klee, Katholische Dogmatik, 2:282.

Geology, p. 603, 2nd cd. quoted by Rev. Joseph Cook in Monday Lectures, 2:5. man
was then endowed with his highest and most distinctive quality, that of mind or
spirit. The phrase, however, rvn ^33, cannot be taken as referring to the mind
or spiritual part of man. It is the same phrase which in Genesis 1:20 is
rendered " the creature that hath life;" in Genesis 1:24, and Genesis 2:19;
Genesis 9:12, Genesis 9:15-16, " living creature ;" and Genesis 1:30, " the
breath of life," in all which passages it is used of the lower animals, or of
the animal creation as such in the general. " The expression, therefore," to use
the words of Dr. Pye Smith, " sets before us the organic life of the animal
frame, that mysterious something which man cannot create nor restore, which
baffles the most acute philosophers to search out its nature, and which reason
combines with Scripture to refer to the immediate agency of the Almighty." It is
thus something common to man and the lower animals. There is, however, this to
be noted, that whilst the lower animals had their life, like the plants, from
the earth by the divine word of power (Genesis 1:20), the life of man was
conveyed into him by a special act of the divine inbreathing. Life in man is
thus something higher than life in the lower animals; it is something divine,
and is given to and sustained in man by the direct agency of God: " in Him we
live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

It is further to be noted here that life is something distinct from organization
something that is neither identical with it nor flows directly out of it. When
God had formed man, his organization was perfect; nothing more needed to be
added to it; nothing more was added to it. But there his body lay inert,
senseless, motionless, in nothing differing from the inorganic masses around it
save in its greater symmetry.

Something more was required ere that body could live; and that was supplied by
God when He breathed into that sense less organism the breath of life. Life,
therefore, is the immediate gift of God, a boon which He bestows, withholds, or
resumes as He sees meet. iii. When God purposed to create man, He purposed to
form him in His own image according to His likeness: " Let us make man," said
He, " in our image, after our likeness " (Genesis 1:26), and accordingly in the
image of God man was created. This is what constitutes man’s supreme dignity,
gives him his chief worth, and raises him far above all the rest of the animal
creation. This is affirmed of man alone of all God’s creatures. The physical
universe is spoken of as God’s thought (Psalms 92:5), as founded by His wisdom
(Proverbs 3:19), as illustrat ing His perfections and declaring His glory
(Psalms 8:1-9, Psalms 19:1-5), and as evidencing to the intelligent mind of man
the invisible things of God (TO. aopara avrou), " even His eternal power and
Godhead " (Romans 1:20). We find the sun also set forth as the emblem of God,
and light as the emblem of His intelligence, purity, and glory (Psalms 84:11,
Psalms 104:2; 1 Timothy 6:16 ; 1 John 1:5); but the sun is nowhere said to have
been formed in His image, nor is His likeness to be found in the light. It is
not even of angels said that they have been formed in the image and likeness of
God; though, as they are called " sons of God," they must to a certain extent at
least bear the image and likeness of Him whose sons they are. The special
ascription of this to man may indicate that in him the divine image, and by
consequence the divine sonship, inheres in a higher degree than even in angels;
and this falls in with what other intimations lead us to conclude that man, as
respects his original constitution, possesses a nature higher than the angelic,
even as in his regenerated and glorified state he is destined to a higher
position and dignity than theirs. This much at any rate we are justified in
drawing from this consideration, that in the possession by man in his creation
of God’s image and likeness lies his supreme distinction and glory.

Man, it is said, was made in the image of God. But when God purposed to create
him, He said, " Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness," ttrKDls
pi>y2. A twofold model was thus proposed for man’s formation. There is a
&$tinction here which it is important to observe. The distinction lies not in
the nouns O? and rfiOT, for these two are quite synonymous; it lies in the
prepositions prefixed to them, the one of which indicates that there is a
certain form in which man was actually made, the other that there is a model or
norm according to which he was made. The latter expres sion is not merely, as
Oehler suggests, intended " to fix and strengthen the meaning " of the former,
nor merely to " express that the divine image which man bears is really one
corre sponding to the original pattern." ] It rather, as Dorner 1 Theology of
the Old Testament, 1:211.

VOL. I. L remarks, " points to the future " to what man was destined to become
in the full development of his higher nature. " In reference to what he
possesses already " (to quote again fronc, Dorner), " he is created in the
divine image as his model; but in reference to the chief matter his destination
he has in God a norm and ideal." l

Keeping this in view, we can understand how man, even after the fall, is
described as being in the image of God, as he is in Genesis 9:6. Notwithstanding
his sin and fall, man still retained that in which he had been formed, though he
had fallen away from that normal perfection for which he was originally
destined. We can see also why nowhere in Scripture is the state in which Adam
was in Paradise presented as that to which man is to aspire, and to which
redeemed man shall be raised. Adam never attained to that likeness after which
he was created. In Christ alone, the second Adam, was the perfect image of God
realized; and it is to Christ, therefore, we are taught to look as the realized
ideal of perfect humanity, and to conformity to Him that we are called to
aspire. When Adam begat a son, he begat him in his own image and likeness; and
so all men, descended from him, who was of the earth earthy, bear the image of
the earthy. Only through Christ can we be brought to bear the image of the
heavenly; only through Him can we attain to God-likeness, and so reach the grand
end for which man was originally destined. The divine image in which and after
which man was formed was thus, as Dorner remarks, " partly original endow ment,
partly destination." 2 But let us now inquire more particularly what is to be
understood by the divine image in which man was made? It may help us to a
satisfactory decision on this point if we look at the way in which the word "
image " is used in the Bible. In the Hebrew Scriptures the word so rendered is
D.^f, and in the Greek of the N. T. it is iK(i)i>, Both are generally used in
the sense of a representa tion of some object by means of that which resembles
it, 01 is supposed to resemble it; but both also occur in the sense of a model
or archetype according to which something else ii formed. Thus Adam is said to
have begotten " a son in his;

1 System of Christian Doctrine, 2:77:2 Ibid., p. 78. own likeness, after his
image " (to?3Q in^. 3, Genesis 5:3), that is, according to the model of himself.
So the apostle speaks of believers being " conformed to the image " of the Son
of God (Horn. 8:9), i.e. to Him as the model of all excellence; of their
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and beingchanged into the same
image (2 Corinthians 3:18), and of the new man which believers are to put on as
being renewed after the image of Him that created him (Colossians 3:10). This
last passage indicates the sense in which the word " image " is used when man is
said to have been created in the image of God; in God Himself was found the
model or archetype after which man was formed. Man is not the image of God in
the sense in which Jesus Christ is who is " the brightness of the Father s glory
and the express image of His Person " (Hebrews 1:3); but being made after or
according to God’s image, man is in a sense the image of God, and is called by
the apostle His image and glory (1 Corinthians 11:7). But it still remains to
inquire, In what sense was man formed after the model of God? In other words,
what was that archetype of which man was made to be the ectype or
representation? Now, there are three ways in which one intel ligent being may be
the model of another: he may be so as respects substance or nature; he may be so
by analogy of constitution; he may be so by moral resemblance. Of these the
first is excluded in the case before us by the nature of the case; no mere
creature ever can be either consubstantial with God or of like substance with
Him; this belongs only to a Being who could say, as Christ says, " I and the
Father are one" (John 10:30). But neither of the other two is incom patible with
the conditions of creature-being; and it is in the combination of them that we
find the just and full explanation of the statement we are considering. Man was
made after the image of God, inasmuch as in constitution he was made analogous
to God, and as in character he resembled God.

" God is a Spirit." This is our highest conception of God, so far at least as He
may be conceived by us. Positively we may not be able to say what spirit
properly and absolutely is; but negatively and by way of comparison we can
arrive at a just and clear thought on this point, and hence may form a
representation in our minds of the Most High. We are taught, moreover, to regard
Him as possessing certain attributes, both intellectual and moral, and, further,
as a Being who has revealed Himself to us we ascribe to Him a certain character,
and think of Him as exhibiting certain qualities appropriate to a perfect moral
and spiritual nature. This is the represen tation we form of God when we think
of Him aright, and after this, as a model and archetype, man was originally
formed. He was constituted an intelligent and moral agent, possessing a
spiritual nature distinct from his material organi zation analogous to the
spirituality of God, and exhibiting a character, mental and moral, resembling
that of God. Man received from his Maker a spiritual nature which constitutes
properly himself his proper personality; he was endowed with capacities of
intelligence and moral judgment; his mind was pure and his affections holy; and
his character was wholly in accordance with that of God. God made man upright.

There was no flaw, no defect, no blot on any part of his nature. As he stood
before his Creator, perfect in every limb, fair in every feature, with the light
of intelligence beaming from his countenance, and the beauty of perfect
innocence and the crown of unsullied purity shining upon him, the eye of God
rested on him with complacency, and the voice of God pronounced him " good." By
some of the ancient Fathers it was held that by man s being made after the image
of God nothing more is meant than that as God is over all, so man is like Him
set over all things here below; as God is the Lord of the universe, so man is
the lord of that part of the universe in which he has been placed; and this view
has been adopted by not a few in more recent times. But in the narrative of
Moses the placing of man over the lower creation is represented as a different
thing from his being made in the image of God; the one is the consequent of the
other; man has authority over the creatures around him, because he was made
after the image of God. To make these two identical is to confound man s title
to sovereignty with the grounds on which it rests.

Others of the Fathers took the more comprehensive view of the import of this
phrase; they place the divine image in which man was created in the intelligent
and self-govern ing nature with which man has been endowed (TO voepbv teal
avTi~oicriov\ as comprehending, therefore, intelligence as well as moral purity.
It has been too common with evangelical divines to restrict it to the latter of
these. That conformity to the divine character and holiness forms an essential
part of that image in which man was formed, cannot be doubted. The Apostle Paul,
in describing the restoration of man as fallen to the image of God, describes it
as a being created anew in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24). But
to restrict the phrase to this meaning is a mistake. The apostle in another
passage speaks of the new man in believers being renewed in knowledge after the
image of Him that created him (Colossians 3:10), so that he regarded
intelligence as well as moral purity as included in the image of God in which
man was framed. And as Scripture continues to speak of man as still retaining
the divine image after the fall, as when, for instance, murder is forbidden on
the ground that man is in the image of God, and calumny is on the same ground
denounced as a heinous sin, and man is on this ground represented as still
holding dominion over the lower creation; and as we know that by the fall man
lost his moral resemblance to God, we can understand such state ments only by
regarding the image of God after which man was formed as relating to both moral
character and mental constitution. The former of these man lost by the fall; the
latter he retains, and with it his authority over the lower creation and all the
responsibility which such an endowment entails. Sin, indeed, has tarnished and
enfeebled this part of man’s nature also, but not to such an extent as to
require his being created anew before this part of the divine image is restored
to him.

(i.) Man being thus formed after the image and in the likeness of God, has in
him the element and principle of an endless life. " Since life in fellowship
with God is by its nature an imperishable and eternal life, and since man was
formed for this, and this was from the beginning funda mentally existent in him,
it follows that immortality is some thing belonging to the original nature of
man. It is true that it is said that God alone hath immortality (1 Timothy
6:16); but this does not contradict the above. For though God alone bears in
Himself the power of endless life, He yet bestows this on man inasmuch as He
originally communicated to man the basis of immortality, and made him for an end
less life. Hence we may truly say that immortality belongs to the nature of
man." 1 Man has not immortality absolutely as his; but he has it so in the
constitution God has given him that it is against his nature to cease to be.

(ii.) Man being made after the image and likeness of God, it is not surprising
that God, in revealing Himself to him, should represent Himself
anthropomorphically. It is not merely in accommodation to human modes of thought
that God thus represents Himself. This may be the case with such representations
as ascribe to God parts and passions, or as present Him as sitting on a throne,
or walking, or handling, and such like. But it is not so with those
representations which ascribe to Him the acts and affections of our spiritual
nature. These are not mere figures. There is a sense in which God does think and
feel; not, indeed, exactly as we do, but in a manner analogous to ours. As
thought is to us, so is what is called thought in God to Him; and so of anger,
joy, love, and other mental affections ascribed to Him; these all indicate
something in Him analogous to, though not identical with, what they are in us.
Now, this analogy rests for its basis on the fact that man was made, as respects
his spiritual nature, in the likeness and after the image of God, The analogy
holds good, is a reality and not a mere rhetorical figure, because in God
Himself is that according to which man was originally made. God speaks to us of
Himself after the manner of man, because man was originally made after the
manner of God.

(iii.) Man being made originally after the image of God, has in him the natural
fitness to become a son of God. So Adam is called in Scripture (Luke 3:38) in
virtue of his creation; and correspondent to this God, because He has created
man, stands to him in the relation of a Father (Malachi 2:10; comp. Acts 17:28).
This relation has been put in abeyance by man’s sin. But it has not been
annihilated.

Man still retains the natural capacity to become a child of God; he has but to
return to his allegiance and be at peace with God to find himself restored to
his primordial place among 1 Hahn, ThcoL d. N. T., p. 389. the sons of God. When
by faith in Christ he becomes united to Him, he enters with and through Him into
a state of sonship: to as many as receive Him, God gives the right (egovaia,
that which e^ecrrt, is allowed, permitted, authorized) or privilege to become
the sons of God (John 1:12). No new faculties, no new capacities, are given to
them; they are simply restored to their proper place by that which deprived them
of their privileges and that which hindered their return to God being taken
away.


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  CHAPTER 3: B 00 - CHAPTER II THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN
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CHAPTER II THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN. In reading Scripture it may be held by us as a safe
general rule, that beyond the sphere which limits the special objects for which
Scripture, as a revelation from God, was given to men, we are not to expect
infallible instruction, nor to be surprised or disturbed should we find
statements which we are compelled to regard as not in exact accordance with a
more advanced state of knowledge than that attained by the society in the midst
of which the sacred writers moved and for which they wrote. In all matters
pertaining to religion, whether dogmatical statements of divine truth or
practical instruction respecting worship and moral conduct, or the record of the
fates and progress of the Church of God on earth, we may expect to find the most
perfect accuracy, for these are points on which it is the professed design of
the Bible to give infallible direction. But on points on which the sacred
writers touch only incidentally, or to which they refer only as casually lying
in their way as they pass on to their peculiar theme, we have no reason to
expect that equal care will be shown to avoid mistaken or partial statements.

It was no part of the design of the sacred writers to give the world instruction
on these points, and we should not deal with them as if this formed part of
their design. Of this sort are their references in Scripture to natural
phenomena or questions of philosophic speculation. To set the world right on
such points formed no part of the direct design of Holy Scripture. Hence the
writers of Scripture spoke on such points as the people around them spoke, often
with very imperfect knowledge, sometimes even erroneously. This should not
disturb us, and we should as little labour to force the statements of Scripture
into accordance with the doctrines of the advanced science of modern times, as
we should allow ourselves to be troubled by the invidious zeal of the enemy of
revelation in collecting and pointing out the deficiencies, in a scientific
point of view, of the sacred writers. These state ments have an archseological
interest as indicating the amount and kind of knowledge possessed by the ancient
Hebrews regarding natural phenomena and subjects of scientific specula tion; and
it is interesting to observe how even here the Bible maintains its superiority
over all works of contemporary author ship, the cosmology and natural science of
the Bible being almost as far superior to what we find in the traditions of
other nations as it falls below the discoveries of modern times.

Even here we may directly recognise an indication of the superintending hand of
God in the composition of this book; for it is certainly very remarkable that
the sacred writers whilst, on the one hand, not going beyond the intelligence of
the men of their own day by anticipating the scientific dis coveries of a later
age, should invariably express themselves in a way which commits them to none of
those gross physio logical and cosmological errors and absurdities with which
heathen writers, when they touch on such points, abound. To keep men from making
gross blunders on subjects of which they are ignorant, as much demands the
agency of a supernatural power as to guide them to state truth in words they
were unable to understand. And in a series of writings, the design of which is
to teach religious truth, not to antici pate scientific discovery, this is all
we have any right to expect, even though the whole series and every word of it
be given by inspiration of God.

There is one department, however, of philosophic research so closely connected
with the main purport of the Bible that we may expect to find the sacred writers
to do more than incidentally touch upon it, and may anticipate that what they
say on it will bear the test of scientific scrutiny.


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  CHAPTER 4: B 01 REFER  NATURAL CONSTITUTION  MAN  GOD'S
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1. refer to the natural constitution of man as God’s creature. By the
constitution God has given him man is fitted for the purposes God designs him to
serve, for being acted upon by that discipline through which it is God’s will he
should pass, and for being profited by that provision which God has made for his
spiritual and eternal welfare; and as these are matters pertaining to the very
substance of religion, we expect that the Bible will have something to teach us
concerning man s constitution as a being capable of religious relations and of
being affected by religious interests.

We have already considered the account which Moses gives of the creation of man,
and of the endowment he received at the hand of his Creator when he came forth
at His com mand. In what was said regarding the creation of man, our view was
chiefly historical and simply expository. I propose to follow up that summary by
an attempt at a more scientific analysis and compend of what Scripture teaches
generally concerning the nature and constitution of man. The most general
statement which the Bible gives con cerning man’s nature is that he is a being
consisting of body and spirit. For body (awfjia) we sometimes have flesh (1^3,
o-apf), and for spirit (Trvev^a) we sometimes have soul (^ v Xn\ an( l sometimes
we have the combination body, soul, and spirit. All are agreed that " body " and
" flesh " are synonymous terms, the former describing the material part of man
in its organic totality, the latter describing it with refer ence to its
constitutive substance or its characteristic affections. But opinions differ as
to the terms used to designate the immaterial part of man, some regarding soul
and spirit as essentially distinct, others viewing them as designations of the
same object viewed under different aspects and relations.

Hence has arisen the question: Does the Bible represent the nature of man as
consisting of two parts or of three? or, as it is sometimes expressed, Is the
Biblical analysis of man’s nature a Dichotomy or a Trichotomy 1 i. This question
can be answered only by attending to the usage of the words translated " soul "
and " spirit " in Scrip ture. If we find them used interchangeably or
synonymously, we shall then conclude that the Scripture doctrine of man s nature
is a dichotomy; and if, on the other hand, we find them used so distinctively as
to indicate that the sacred writers regarded the soul as a different part of
man’s nature from the spirit, we shall then be constrained to regard their
doctrine as a trichotomy.

It is impossible for us here to examine in detail all the passages of Scripture
in which these words occur in reference to man. NOT is this necessary. It is
enough if we can adduce crucial instances on either side that is to say,
instances which agree with the one hypothesis, but are utterly irreconcilable
with the other. By such instances the hypothesis with which they are
irreconcilable is thereby excluded.

Now, we find that the terms soul and spirit are constantly used so as to exclude
the supposition that they denote essen tially different parts of man’s nature.

(i.) In the first place, we find soul and spirit used indiffer ently as the
antithesis to body or flesh. Thus (Romans 8:10) the apostle says, " The body is
dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness; " in 1
Corinthians 5:3 he speaks of being " absent in body but present in spirit; " in
1 Corinthians 6:20 he exhorts believers to glorify God " in their body and in
their spirit ;" comp. also 1 Corinthians 7:34; Ephesians 4:4; James 2:26. In all
these passages spirit evidently denotes simply the higher, the immaterial part
of man as distinguished from the lower, the material. But we find " soul " used
in the very same way. Thus our Lord says, " Fear not them which kill the body,
but are not able to kill the soul" (Matthew 10:28); of the Messiah it is
predicted that His soul should not be left in Sheol or Hades, neither should His
flesh see corruption (Psalms 16:10; Acts 2:31); and in 1 Peter 2:11 the apostle
con trasts the soul with those fleshly lusts which war against it. In these
passages soul evidently denotes, not a particular part of man’s inner nature,
but that nature itself, and as such, just as in the former spirit is used. But
had there been an essential distinction between soul and spirit, they would not
have been used thus indifferently to denote the same object.


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  CHAPTER 5: B 02  SOUL AND SPIRIT  USED  PARALLEL WITH
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2. Soul and spirit are used as parallel with each other.

Thus Mary in her song says: " My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath
rejoiced in God my Saviour " (Luke 1:47). As this song is constructed on the
principle of the Hebrew parallelism, we must regard soul and spirit here as
synonymous, different names of the same thing.

(iii.) The same qualities, acts, and emotions are ascribed to the soul and to
the spirit. Thus, Jesus is said to have sighed deeply in His spirit (Mark 8:12),
to have groaned in His spirit and been troubled (John 11:33), to be troubled in
His spirit (xiii. 21); and so also we read that His soul was exceed ing
sorrowful (Matthew 26:38), that His soul was troubled (John 12:27); and we read
elsewhere of the spirit being refreshed and of the soul being in prosperity,
etc. (2 Corinthians 7:13; 3 John 1:2). We have also the apostle speaking of his
spirit being refreshed (1 Corinthians 16:18, etc.), and in Matthew 11:29 the
same expression is used of the soul. Again, what in one place is called "
filthiness of the spirit " (2 Corinthians 7:1), is in another described as lusts
that war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). Objects to which the same qualities
and susceptibili ties are thus ascribed cannot with any propriety be regarded as
specifically distinct and different.

(iv.) In reference to salvation we have the phrase " to save the soul," and the
phrase "to save the spirit," both used with out any perceptible difference of
meaning (comp. 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 10:39; James 5:20, with 1
Corinthians 5:5; 1 Peter 4:5); and so, on the other side, we read of perdition
as a killing of the soul, a losing of the soul, whilst salvation is set forth as
living according to God in the spirit (1 Peter 4:6). It is evidently of one and
the same object that these things are said.

(v.) The departed are spoken of sometimes as souls and sometimes as spirits. "
Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades" (Psalms 16:10; Acts 2:27; Acts 2:31); John
saw under the altar the souls of those that had been slain for the word of God
(Revelation 6:9), and the souls of them that had been beheaded for the witness
of Jesus (Revelation 20:4). On the other hand, when the disciples saw Jesus
walking on the sea they thought they had seen a spirit (Luke 24:37; Luke 24:39);
the Sadducees say that there is neither angel nor spirit (Acts 23:8); believers
are come to the spirits of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12:23); Christ went
and preached to the spirits in prison (1 Peter 3:18). It is evident from these
instances that the immaterial and immortal part of man may be designated either
soul or spirit.

(vi.) Death is sometimes called a giving up of the spirit and sometimes a giving
up of the soul, as restored life is spoken of as a returning of the soul, or the
soul being still in a man (comp. Matthew 27:50; John 19:30; Acts 7:59, with John
10:17; Acts 20:10; Genesis 35:18; 1 Kings 17:21).

(vii.) God, who is emphatically a " Spirit " (comp. John 4:24, and this
frequently-recurring phrase " Spirit of God," or " God the Spirit "), speaks
also of Himself as a soul (Matthew 12:18; Hebrews 10:3).

(viii.) In fine, as men when they agree are said to be of " one soul " (Acts
4:32; Php 1:27), so the believer in union with the Lord is said to be joined to
Him in " one spirit " (1 Corinthians 6:17); and believers who are exhorted to
stand "in one spirit," are in the same connection admonished to strive together
"in one soul" (Php 1:17). With these instances before us of the free interchange
and synonymous usage of the words soul and spirit in Scripture, it is vain to
attempt to maintain that they designate radically distinct parts of human
nature; in other words, that soul is different from the spirit, in the same
sense as the body is different from both. We must therefore hold by a dichotomy
as the scriptural view of man’s constitution: he consists of body and soul, or
of body and spirit. 1 ii. But whilst we cannot regard the soul and the spirit of
man as numerically different, it would be an error on the other side were we to
maintain that they are in no sense whatever to be distinguished from each other.
As we have already seen that the material part of man may be indifferently
called " body " or " flesh," and yet that these terms present that one object
under different aspects, so in regard to the immaterial part of man, it may be
called either soul or spirit, and yet in strict propriety these terms designate
that object under different aspects, or in respect of different characteristics.

Every one must feel that there are certain connections in which it is more
proper to use the one term rather than the

1 " Impossibile est in uno homine esse plures animas per essentiam differentes,
sed una tantum est anima intellectiva, quse vegetativse, et sensitive, et
intellect! vse officiis fungi tur." Aquinas, Sum. TheoL, P. 1. qu. 76, a 3.
other. For instance, when the apostle says, " I serve God in the spirit," or
when he speaks of praying in the spirit, or of the Divine Spirit witnessing with
our spirit, etc., we feel that it would not be proper in such passages to
substitute soul for spirit. Again, when our Lord speaks of a man losing his
soul, or when we read of the redemption of the soul, we feel that it would quite
alter the meaning were we to substitute spirit for soul. We find also the sacred
writers sometimes using soul and spirit as distinct from each other, as, e.y. t
when the word of God is said to divide soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12), or when
the apostle prays God to sanctify believers, body and soul and spirit. It is
evident, then, that in some sense there is a difference between soul and spirit.
In ivkat this differ ence consists, however, it is by no means easy to say. If
from nothing else, this is evident from the variety of answers which have been
given to the question.

Thus Tholuck says on Hebrews 4:12, "According to our view TI here denotes the
faculty that goes out upon the sensible , the faculty that is directed to the
non-sensible; " and he regards this as the general though the invariable usage
of. these words as well as the corresponding Hebrew & aJ and nn.

He would thus make the Biblical analysis of our mental constitution very much
the same as that proposed by Locke, who ranks all mental phenomena under the two
heads of sensation and reflection.

Delitzsch distinguishes them thus: " Trvev/jia is the creative life-principle in
man as an immaterial agent, ^f%?7 is the same as an agent bound to matter; the
latter has the idea of body inseparable from it, it is the soul, i.e. The spirit
organi cally united to body; " and he adds, " The human soul stands related to
the human spirit as the divine Soga to the triune divine essence." So also, in
reference to the Hebrew words, Oehler says: " nn is the name given to man’s soul
from its substance, which is the fountain of the body’s life itself separate
from the earthly material of the body; it is called K BJ, from the life which it
has or had in the body and con joined with the body; nil is that in the living
being from which and by which it lives; t^S3 is the being itself which lives." 1
Nitzsch says: " The soul is the unity of spirit and body, 1 De V. T. Sentent. de
rebus post mortem futuris, p. 15. the individual life, the finitude of the
spirit. The concept of the individual, with its relation to spirituality and
conse quently to real personality, is afforded by the soul alone. It is the Ego
construed in its universal first self-consciousness, in its universal
definitiveness. But as human, not brutal, the soul is also spiritual, rational,
capable of self-determination, and made and designed for this, in the concreated
consciousness of dependence on God and freedom in God to go in and out as the
sensuous emotion may give occasion."

These extracts, if they do not throw very much light on the subject, yet serve
to show how difficult it is to enunciate in any clear and distinct manner the
difference between the soul and the spirit of man. Perhaps all that can be
safely said on the subject is that the spirit has primary and chief reference to
that part of our inner nature which has to do with thought as thought, while the
soul has respect rather to that part of our nature which occupies the ground
common to body and mind, the region of sensation, appetite, and sensuous
emotion. iii. I proceed to make a few remarks on this inner nature of man,
whether called soul or spirit, in order to bring out what the Bible teaches
concerning it.

(i.) Various names are given to the inner nature of man viewed under different
aspects. Thus it is called vovs in regard to its being the seat of knowledge and
will (Romans 14:5; Ephesians 4:23; Php 4:7; 2 Thessalonians 2:2); Sidvoia,
evvoia, voyfiara, and such like, with the same reference; and tcapBim as the
personal seat and collocation of the entire mental energies and
susceptibilities, whether of sensation, thought, or emotion (Matthew 12:34-35;
Romans 8:27; Romans 9:2; Romans 10:10; 1 Corinthians 4:5; 1 Corinthians 14:25;
Ephesians 5:19, etc.).

(ii.) In the soul or spirit lies the proper personality of each man. Each man
has his own soul or spirit; to speak more exactly, is his own soul or spirit.
The body is his, not he. Hence the Scriptures speak not only of the spirit as
within the body, subsisting there as a distinct substance, but they identify the
soul or spirit with the man himself. Thus St.

Paul when he says, " Therefore we are always confident, knowing that whilst we
are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord j " and again, " We are
willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord " (2
Corinthians 5:6; 2 Corinthians 5:8), evidently identifies himself with his soul
as separate from his body; the soul is the we that are to be pre sent with the
Lord after its present home in the body is broken up; that which thinks, wills,
and feels within us constitutes, according to the apostle, the real Ego, that
which makes the proper being of the man.

(iii.) This soul or spirit is immortal, not indeed essen tially and by its own
original propriety, for God alone hath immortality, and that which has begun to
be can never abso lutely and in itself rise above the possibility of ceasing to
be; but by the divine grace and decree, %a/?m T?}? rov \6jov /AeToiWa?, as
Athanasius expresses it. " God," says the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, "
created man to be immortal; and made him to be an image of His own eternity"
(ii. 23). This truth, indicated with varying degrees of clearness in many parts
of the 0. T., is enunciated with unqualified distinctness iii the New. Comp.
Matthew 10:28; Matthew 20:32; John 12:25; 1 Cor. 15:32; 2 Corinthians 5:1, etc.

Whilst, however, it is maintained that the soul is not neces sarily and in
itself immortal, but has received this from God, and holds it by His will and
ordinance, it has, on the other hand, to be maintained that the soul has not in
itself any principle of dissolution or cause of decay; so that it can cease to
exist only by a special act of the divine power. This must ever present a
serious objection to the doctrine of annihilation; for unless proof can be
adduced that God directly puts forth His power to destroy the soul He has put
into man, the presumption is that it continues to exist though separated from
the body at death. " It is probable had man not fallen, that after a continuance
in the earthly state for a period of probation adapted to effect the best and
most useful exercise of all His physical, intellectual, and moral faculties,
each individual would have been translated (as Enoch?) to an eternal
confirmation of holiness and happiness, in a higher condition of existence." 1
iv. A question has been raised as to the way in which the succession of souls is
kept up; and at one time this furnished occasion for keen discussion among
theologians. Three different views have been advanced on this point.

1 Dr. J. Pye Smith, Theology, p. 357.

(i.) That each soul descends from a pre- existent state and enters into the
body, which, by natural processes, has been prepared for it. This doctrine,
which seems to have been honoured from Plato’s idea of an avd^vqo-^, was held by
the Jewish writer Philo, and, among the Christian Fathers, by Origen. It was
condemned by the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 543. Strange to say, it has
found in recent times an advocate in Kant, who, in order to account for the
radical evil which he was obliged to admit is to be found in man, adduces the
fact of a pre-existent state in which man was evil, and from which the soul came
bearing the taint of its former state. Other German writers have espoused this
idea, and even Julius Miiller seems to favour it in order to account for
original sin. A strenuous advocate of it has appeared in Mr. Beecher, an
American divine; and something like it seems to have been in the mind of
Wordsworth, though he presents it under a different aspect and with an opposite
intent when, in his famous ode on " Intimations of Immor tality," he wrote, "Our
birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : The soul that rises with us, our life’s
star, Hath elsewhere had its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire
forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we
come From God who is our home." The opinion, however, is one not only wholly
unsupported by Scripture, but directly opposed to some of its clearest state
ments; as, for instance, the account of the Fall in Genesis 3:1-24., and the
apostle’s declaration that " by one man sin entered the world," which could not
be did each man derive his sinfulness from his pre-existent state.

(ii.) Creationism. According to this view each soul is created directly by God
and placed by Him in the body. Jerome says this is the orthodox view; and
certainly it is the one supported by most of the Fathers, who believed, as
Clement of Alexandria expresses it, that ovpavoOev Tre^Trerat 77 ^rv-^r).

It was also held by many of the schoolmen; and it is the view generally held by
divines of the Eomish Church, as well as by many evangelical theologians. It is
supposed to find support from such passages as Isaiah 57:16; Zechariah 12:1;
Acts 17:24; Hebrews 12:9. But these prove nothing more than that God is the
former of man’s spirit no less than of his body; and say nothing as to the place
where or the time when the spirit is formed, or as to the manner of its union
with the body. Of those who hold this view some regard the soul as coming pure
from the hand of God, and as becoming corrupt through connection with the body;
which involves the heathen and Gnostic notion of the inherent vileness of
matter.

(iii.) Traducianism. Those who hold this view deny that each soul is created
immediately by God, and maintain that it is derived by traduction from the
parents just as the body is. The whole man, body and soul, they regard as
begotten and derived. Some hold this view in connection with a materialistic
view of the soul, and some have even gone the length of asserting that the soul
is divisible, and that a por tion of the soul of the parents is communicated to
the child. By those who hold this view, whether in its extreme or its more
moderate form, reference is made in support of it to Genesis 5:3, where, in
announcing the birth of Seth, it is said that Adam " begat a son in his own
likeness, after his image." An appeal is also made to our Lord’s words, " That
which is born of the flesh is flesh." But these passages really prove nothing as
to the point in question; the former only asserts that Seth was wholly like his
father, and the latter that like produces like. It is urged also by
Traducianists that only on this hypothesis can we account for the transmission
of a sinful nature from parent to child. But this assumes that a sinful nature
is actually transmitted from parent to child, an assumption which many who hold
that all mankind are involved in Adam’s guilt refuse to accept. At any rate, it
is hardly competent to bring in one hypothesis to support another. On the whole,
I cannot help thinking that the safest course is to hold none of these views,
but to leave the subject in that obscurity in which it seems to be left by God
in the Bible. " De re obscurissima," says Augustine, " disputatur non
adjuvantibus divinarum Scripturarum certis clarisque documentis." If, however,
one of these views must be adopted, I think the second, that of Creationism, is
on the whole the one least burdened with difficulties, and most in accordance
with the general representation of Scripture and with the nature of the soul as
immaterial and indivisible.


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  CHAPTER 6: C 00 - CHAPTER III PRIMITIVE MAN
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CHAPTER III.

ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.

III. PRIMITIVE MAN.

Having taken this survey of man in his origin and natural constitution, we may
endeavour to realize him in thought as he was in the first stage of his
existence on earth, as he was when he came forth, as Scripture relates, from the
hand of his Creator.

Now, in respect of this I cannot but believe that we often impose upon
ourselves, and cherish a picture which is not consonant with the reality, and
foster an illusion which is not a little heightened and strengthened by the
strong language commonly used in speaking or writing of man’s condition in
Paradise as one of absolute perfection. From such language we are apt to carry
away the notion that Adam was a being not only physically complete and perfect,
but also a being whose intellectual and moral nature was in its highest degree
developed, a being, in short, to whom nothing needed to be added to render him
perfect in all his parts. Along with this, we are apt to fancy that his
condition in Paradise was one of the most perfect felicity which the human
nature is capable of enjoying.

Now, that this is an illusive view of man’s primitive condition will, I think,
appear from the following con siderations : i. On a mere general survey, and
looking at man simply in his physical and intellectual aspect, it must strike
one that the highest state of man is not and cannot be that of a naked animal,
with nothing to do but to keep a garden, already richly furnished with all that
is " pleasant to the eye and good for food." Viewing man, even in the lowest
state in which we find him now, we feel that he must have been made for higher
ends and worthier pursuits and nobler en joyments than this. It is inconceivable
that with capacities for thought and work, such as man even in the lowest state
of civilisation is seen to possess, the perfection of his nature and his supreme
felicity can have been realized in a state of such simplicity and in a sphere so
limited as that which Paradise afforded to our first parents. ii. It must also,
I think, strike one that if Adam was the perfect being intellectually and
morally he is often represented as having been, it is inconceivable that he
should have fallen before so slight a temptation, or yielded to so trifling an
impulse as that by which he was led to transgress the divine prohibition. Eve
was seduced as a little child might be by a mere trifle by talk insidious,
indeed, and subtle, but by which a being of high intelligence and firmly
established moral character could not have been led astray; such an one would at
once have seen through the artifice, detected its falsehood, and spurned its
impiety. As respects Adam, he, the apostle tells us, was not deceived; he so far
surpassed his wife in intelligence that he saw through Satan’s device; he saw
that what he was invited to do was wrong; but what shall we say of his moral
faculty or of his mental strength when we see him, for what reason we know not,
but apparently from mere softness and desire to please his wife, knowingly
transgressing the express command of God, a command which he had been so
solemnly enjoined to keep? To me it appears incredible that any being of high
moral capacity and mental vigour a being approximating even remotely to the
perfec tion of manhood could have allowed himself to be drawn so easily to do
what he knew to be wrong, and what he had been forewarned would bring such
terrible consequences. iii. The law of man’s nature is that he reaches
perfection only by a slow process of growth and gradual development, secured
through the due exercise of his faculties. This is inseparable from his
constitution as a free intelligent agent. That God could create an intelligent
being from the first absolutely perfect, so that he neither needed to become nor
could become more complete either intellectually or morally than he was at the
moment of his creation, is not to he denied, for with God all things are
possible. But such a being would not be like any of those whom God has formed.

Such a " monstrum perfect ionis " would be an anomaly in God s universe a piece
of strange symmetrical spiritual mechanism (if that be not a contradiction in
terms), in whom thinking would be a sort of clock-work, and in whom there could
be neither goodness nor badness morally. It was not so that God made man Man, as
he came from the hand of his Maker, was a free, intelligent, self-governing
agent, capable of development, and needing experience, trial, and use in order
to attain both the proper growth of his physical and mental faculties and the
strengthening, maturing, and perfecting of his moral nature. Of every such being
it is in a very im portant sense true that he is his own maker. From God he
receives the faculties and capacities by which he is to be enabled to fulfil the
functions of his position; but he must himself use these, and use them wisely
and well, if he is really to advance in culture and rise towards the perfection
of his being. " Mankind," as Bishop Butler remarks, " is left by nature an
unformed, unfinished creature, utterly deficient and unqualified, before the
acquirement of knowledge, experience, and habits for that mature state of life
which was the end of his creation." l This is the law under which man, as he
exists now, is placed; he becomes strong bodily, men tally, and morally, not all
at once, nor by mere mechanical processes, nor by natural instinct, but by the
free and voluntary use of the capacities God has given him amid the varied
experiences of life. " Nature," to quote again from Butler, " does in nowise
qualify us wholly, much less at once for this mature state of life. Even
maturity of understanding and bodily strength are not only arrived to gradually,
but are also very much owing to the continued exercise of our powers of body and
mind from infancy." 2

Butler even goes the length of maintaining that a person brought into the world
with all his powers in full maturity would at first be " as unqualified for the
human life of mature age as an idiot," and he questions " whether the natural 1
Analogy, Part I. cli. v. p. 146 (Bohn’s edition).

2 Hid., i<. 145. information of his sight and hearing would be of any manner
of use at all to him in acting before experience." Be this, however, as it may,
there can be no doubt that it is only by experience that man in his present
state advances to maturity. Now, we have no reason to believe that it was
otherwise with our first parents. Their nature was the same as ours, and it is
to be presumed that the same law applied to them in this respect as to us. They
could reach perfection only by the continuous use of the faculties they
possessed.

It would seem even that their moral perception needed the discipline of evil
before it could be fully developed; for it was after they had sinned that God
said, " Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil," i.e. to
make moral distinctions, to discern between good and evil (Genesis 3:22). Not
that they needed personally to sin in order to attain to this, but that it was
only by experience that they could arrive at an apprehension of the distinction
between good and evil. And as it was only by experience that their moral nature
could be fully matured, so we may safely affirm of their whole nature that it
could reach per fection only by the free and intelligent use of those facul
ties, physical, intellectual, and moral, with which God had endowed them.

" God created man as little as possible," is the dictum of a recent writer, "
meaning thereby that we were endowed with the germ and crude capacity of that
state for which we were intended, but that the exercise of our freedom was
necessary to raise us up to the positive attainment of the dignity and bliss of
perfect moral being." " Mere animal natures are finished from the first; God
took everything that concerned them upon Himself, and left them nothing to do.
But it was His will that man should be His fellow-worker in the great feat of
his own creation, and thereby in the completion of all creation; the Father left
the mighty work unfinished, so to speak, until the child should set his seal on
it." l

We must think of man, then, in his first estate, as he came from the hand of his
Creator, not as a perfect, fully-matured being, but rather as a man-child, a man
with noble capacities, 1 Monsell, Religion of Redemption, p. 10. but these as
yet undeveloped, and with everything to learn, an innocent, pure, guileless
being, with no bias to evil, without any knowledge of evil, with affections
tending naturally to good, and with a soul capable of rising to a freedom like
that of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold sin, and who cannot be tempted
of evil. Adam was placed in Paradise as in a school, a training-place suited to
a beginner, and where the lessons and the discipline were such as his almost
infantile condition required. As one of the schoolmen 1 expresses it :

" Paradisus est locus inchoantium, et in melius proficiscentium; et ideo ibi
solum bonum esse debuit, quia creatura a malo non initianda fuit non tamen
summum"

" The actual constitution of the first man," says Dorner, " must not be so
conceived as to imply that he was spared all labour and the conquest of the
world intellectual and readjust as little as he was spared spontaneous moral
effort. ... It is of no dogmatical importance how high the prerogatives of the
first man are placed, provided only two limits are observed 1. That God is not
made the author of evil; 2. That man is not precluded from a course of ethical
development by a too much or too little. Both are observed by regarding the
first man as created with a pure, innocent nature, with a natural bias to good
or a natural love for God. Beside this, there was in him, along with
consciousness of self and the world, a natural bias to self and the world. These
qualities cannot be antagonistic to each other. As they came from the Creator’s
hand they existed in immediate, good, though still not perfect and indissoluble
unity. On the other hand, this unity needed to be ratified by the will, by the
good use of freedom. Actual living relation to God, because depending on the use
made of freedom, cannot be perfect in the begin ning, but must be the outcome of
several divine acts." 2

I have referred to the descriptions which are often given, both in discourse and
in writing, of man’s estate in Paradise as fostering a delusive conception of
his actual condition and attainments in the first stages of his existence. The
poets are here chiefly in fault. Take, for instance, the following lines from
Montgomery’s exquisite poem, " The World before 1 Hugo de St. Victor.

2 System of Christian .Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 82. the Flood," in which a
descendant of Adam describes his great progenitor,

" "With him his noblest sons might not compare In Godlike feature and majestic
air; Not out of weakness rose his gradual frame; Perfect from his Creator’s hand
he came; And as in form excelling, so in mind The Sire of men transcended all
mankind. A soul was in his eye, and in his speech A dialect of heav n no art
could reach : For oft of old to him the evening breeze Had borne the voice of
God among the trees; Angels were wont their songs with his to blend, And talk
with him as their familiar friend." This is very beautiful, but it is poetry,
not history. That man was created in this state of consummate perfection,
transcending in intelligence as in form all mankind, is a vision of the
imagination, not an expression of actual fact. That Adam was no imbecile, that
his original state was not that of a savage, that he from the first possessed
intelligence as well as a capacity of growth in mental power and attainment, and
that he was not only absolutely sinless, but positively good, the Scripture
distinctly leads us to conclude. But beyond this we have no right to go. All
that we really know is that he was made good in every respect, and that he was
placed in a sphere which was a training-place for the whole man, fitted for the
development of all his powers.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: D 00 - CHAPTER IV PROBATION, TEMPTATION
========================================================================

CHAPTER IV PROBATION, TEMPTATION, AND FALL OF MAN.

ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN. Our first parents were placed in Paradise as in a school
and in a sanctuary. They were surrounded by all that was necessary for their
comfort and well-being, and they were brought into contact with what was
calculated to develop the faculties with which they had been endowed, and fit
them for the high ends for which they were originally designed. They had to keep
the garden and they had to keep themselves.

They had to unite wholesome and moderate labour with the exercise of their
mental powers, and the discharge of those moral and religious duties imposed
upon them by the rela tions they sustained to each other, to animate creation
around them, and to their Creator and Benefactor in heaven. They were thus in a
state of training as well as of enjoyment; there was something they had to
become as well as something they had to possess and use. But there was a
peculiarity, in a moral respect, in their position beyond this. By the
appointment of God they were not only under training, but under probation. There
were not only certain results to be developed by natural process, not only
certain ends to be secured by appropriate means, but certain mighty issues were
suspended upon certain contingencies in their conduct. They were put upon their
trial as free agents, and their final happi ness was made to depend on the
issues of that trial. By their own conduct was to be determined whether they
should continue to enjoy blessing or be brought under a penalty.

They were thus taught from the first that they were not only the objects of the
divine beneficence, but the subjects of the divine government; " the proper
formal notion of government," as a great thinker has observed, being " the
annexing of pleasure to some actions and pain to others, in our power to do or
forbear, and giving notice of this appointment beforehand to those whom it
concerns." J Such was the constitution and order of things under which our first
parents were placed.

They were surrounded with blessing, but they were at the same time under law;
and the test of their obedience was to be at the same time the criterion of
their felicity. In considering this part of man’s primal history, we shall take
up in order the following points: 1. The probation under which our first parents
were placed; 2. The temptation by which they were assailed; and 3. The success
of that temptation. i. The Probation.

(i.) This assumed the form of a restriction upon their 1 Butler, Analogy, Part
1. ch. 2. absolute right to do as they would with the place in which God had
placed them. That garden was given to them as their own to use it as they
pleased, with one limitation, of all the trees of the garden they might freely
eat, excepting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This they were
peremptorily forbidden even so much as to touch; and on the day they ate of it
they were assured that they should surely die. On their conformity, then, with
this restriction depended their enjoyment of life and all the blessings of their
favoured con dition; and the probation under which they were placed had for its
design to test how far they were willing to submit to the will and authority of
God as their Ruler and Law giver.

It is essential to the idea of probation that certain condi tions should be
fulfilled in respect of the parties who are the subjects of it. First, they
should clearly understand what is required of them; what they are to do or to
refrain from doing; second, they should be perfectly free to do or to refrain
from doing as required; and thirdly, that they should distinctly understand what
will be the consequences of their failing of what is thus required of them. In
the case of our first parents, all these conditions were complied with. They
were placed under a single and most intelligible prohibition, respect ing which
there could be no possibility of mistake or uncer tainty on their part; there
was no power constraining them to do what they were thus positively forbidden to
do; arid they had clearly before them the consequences to which they exposed
themselves by a transgression of the divine prohibi tion under which they were
placed in that terrible threatening of death, which was announced by God as the
certain and immediate penalty of disobedience. Whether they understood all the
consequences which such conduct would involve may be doubted. It may be doubted
even whether they fully comprehended any of them. But this at least they knew,
that all that then constituted life to them in the fullest and highest sense of
that term would be forfeited by disobedience, and that all that was terrible in
death not the less terrible because practically as yet unknown would thereby be
incurred.

(ii.) To some it has appeared as if there was something in this arrangement
unworthy of the dignity of the parties involved in it, or unbecoming the wisdom
and beneficence of Him to whom it is ascribed; and hence doubts have been cast
on the historical integrity of this part of the Mosaic narrative.

Why, it has been asked, make the fate of men depend on anything so trivial as
the eating, or abstaining from eating, of the fruit of a particular tree? Would
it not have been more becoming, more wise, more satisfactory, better in every
way, if there was to be a probation at all, to have made it turn on obedience to
some great moral principle, or the carrying out of some system of moral acting,
such as was worthy of a being of intelligence and moral power like man, a being
so highly endowed in these respects that he is said to have been made in the
image and likeness of God? An objection of this sort it will not do to attempt
to foreclose by the brief and objurgatory demand, " Nay, but, man, who art thou
that repliest against God? " for those who advance such objections are precisely
those who are least disposed to admit that it is God who has spoken here. We
must therefore take up the objection on its merits, and obviate it by showing
that the positions on which it rests are untenable. In the outset I have to
observe that the objection is not the same with all by whom it is advanced. To
refute it satisfactorily, therefore, it will be necessary to take it up Tinder
different aspects, these being determined by the feature of the arrangement
which has appeared to different parties the offensive one.

1. And, first, there are some who seem to stumble at the littleness of the trial
to which man was thus exposed, and on which such mighty results were made to
depend. Had some great thing been required of our first parents as the test of
their obedience, these objectors would have been better pleased; but to make all
depend on so small a matter as the eating of one kind of fruit rather than
another, is to them offensive, and in their judgment unreasonable and absurd.

Now, let us understand those who urge the objection under this aspect. What is
it exactly in the littleness of this test by which they are offended? Do they
object to the making of great results flow from apparently little and trivial
causes?

If so, they must be prepared to object to one of the most manifest of those laws
under which this world is administered; for nothing can be more obvious and
certain than that the mightiest and most permanent effects are constantly
resulting from the most apparently trivial and transient causes. Or do they
object to so feeble a test of man’s obedience being imposed? If this be their
meaning, it is obvious to reply that so much the more was the arrangement
favourable to man, and therefore beneficent and gracious. The more insig
nificant the self-denial required in order to obedience, the easier the
obedience and the more probable the success of the probationer. In appointing so
easy a test, God dealt with man as one who was in many respects but a grown
child; one who had no experience, however great his faculties; and one on whom,
therefore, it was only some simple test like this that could have been laid so
as to gain its end. Never, we may say, \vas a moral experiment conducted under
circum stances more favourable to the subject of it. It was an experiment, if we
may so speak, as nearly in vacuo as the necessary conditions of it would admit.
If man could not abide a test so simple and so easy as this, we may safely rest
assured that under one more difficult and severe his failure would have been
only more prompt and perspicuous.

2. As others advance this objection, it assumes the shape of a protest against
the dishonour which it is alleged is done to God by the representation of Him as
a being who would make a condition of spiritual advantage dependent on an
external act. But those who urge this objection seem to have forgotten
altogether the real circumstances of the case. By an external act they obviously
mean the physical process of taking and eating the forbidden fruit. Is there any
one, however, who for a moment dreams of putting that forward as the essential
and qualifying element in the test to which man was subjected in the garden of
Eden? A mere physical act as such has no moral character at all; and though it
may be the index of a man’s moral state or tendencies, it is not, nor ever can
be, an adequate test of them. The test to which Adam and Eve were subjected was
not so much whether they would eat or not eat this particular fruit, but whether
they would respect and obey or neglect and transgress God’s prohibition. In
itself the fruit of the forbidden tree may or may not have been noxious. This is
of no importance as respects the probatory use to which it was put by God; it is
the fact that as soon as God forbade our first parents to eat of it, their doing
so became sin, which made it a fitting criterion of man s spiritual destinies.
It was not, therefore, on any mere external act that man’s fate depended; it was
on such an act as con nected with, flowing from, and giving evidence of a
particular state of mind. The hinge in Adam’s testing turned really not so much
on his eating or abstaining from this fruit or that, but on his obeying or
transgressing God’s commandment. Was such a test unfair to man? Was it unworthy
of God?

3. Another form in which the objection to the Mosaic account of the trial of our
first parents is presented is that in which stress is laid on the purely
positive and apparently arbitrary character of the test by which their obedience
was to be tried. Why, it has been asked, should a duty which became such only
because it was enjoined have been prescribed, instead of one of those duties
which flow out of man’s position and relations as an intelligent and moral
being? Now, to this it may be replied, on the one hand, that the appointment of
a positive rather than a moral test was the only arrange ment possible in the
case; and, on the other hand, that supposing another arrangement possible, this
was the more favourable and advantageous to man. This was the only arrangement
possible; for how is the virtue of a sinless being to be tested but by means of
some positive precept? In such a being moral truth is so perfectly a part of the
inner life, that it is only when a positive duty is enjoined that the mind comes
to a consciousness of objective law and extrinsic govern ment so as to render
obedience. Morality, in short, is for such a life, and not a law; it is part and
parcel of themselves, and not something laid upon them by authority; and con
tinuance in it, therefore, can no more afford a test of their obedience to God
as a governor than the regular performance of the animal functions would be a
test of a man’s loyalty or good citizenship. The necessity of the case, then,
rendered the appointment of a positive test indispensable, if there was to be
any real test at all. But even supposing a moral test could have been proposed,
was it not much more in Adam’s favour that his obedience should have been tested
by a positive enactment? What God required of him was thus clearly and
unmistakably brought before him. There was no room left for doubt as to what was
incumbent on him, and what he consequently had to do or to refrain from doing.
One plain, positive law, simple in its enunciation, definite in its require
ments, and easy of obedience, was all that was laid upon him as the test of his
loyalty to his Sovereign and Lord. He had but to hear to understand: he had but
to obey to live. The very simplicity of the constitution under which he was
placed was an evidence of the divine benevolence towards him. While the test was
fully sufficient for the end it was designed to answer, it afforded man, so to
speak, the best possible chance of success in the probation under which he was
placed.

4. Some profound thinkers have started the doubt whether it be possible for a
limited intelligence, left to the freedom of its own will, to avoid
transgressing the boundaries of duty, and so falling into sin. Without entering
at present into so difficult a speculation, we may admit that a limited intelli
gence is, from the very fact of its limitation, very likely to be exposed to a
strong inducement from mere curiosity, not to speak of other motives, to pass
beyond the limits within which it may be confined. What lies on the other side
of this barrier which I am forbidden to pass? Why am I for bidden to pass it?
What will be the result to me if I do pass it? These and such like questionings,
working in the mind, are very likely to result in a daring attempt to remove the
barrier, or to overleap it, and thereby, if it be a moral barrier, to plunge
into sin. Obviously, therefore, the kindest and best arrangement for man in his
state of primeval pro bation was one which should reduce the action of such
provocative curiosity to the lowest possible form, which should hem him in by no
vague, mystic, uncertain prohibi tion, but by one perfectly single and
intelligible, and which should leave him in no doubt as to the certain misery
into which he would bring himself if he suffered any motive to carry him beyond
the limits which that prohibition prescribed.

Such an arrangement the wisdom and the goodness of God instituted for our first
parents in their probationary state; their continuance in happiness was made to
depend on their submission to one simple and most intelligible restriction; they
had but to refrain from the fruit of one tree, while of all the others they
might freely eat; and they knew beforehand what the consequences would be of
their violating this restriction. Life and death were thus set before them,
which they would choose; and whilst everything around them and belonging to them
furnished them with induce ments to pursue the course by which they would secure
the former, the motives that might work in them towards what would entail on
them the latter were reduced to the lowest possible degree. Who shall say that
in such an arrangement we have not an illustration at once of the beneficence
and the wisdom of God?

How long our first parents continued in the state in which they were created by
respecting the divine prohibition, we are not informed, and it is idle to
conjecture. We may presume, however, that it was long enough to enable them
fully to prove the fitness for them of the place which God had prepared for
their habitation, and to make some advances in that process of culture and
development of which it was adapted to be the sphere. We have now to turn to the
contemplation of the circumstances which led to their fall from their original
felicity and their banishment from that garden of delights which God had given
them to enjoy.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: D 01  THE TEMPTATION.
========================================================================

The Temptation. In considering the Temptation by which our first parents were
seduced from their obedience, we shall notice, first, the Tempter, and then the
process by which he succeeded in his designs. In the narrative of Moses the
temptation of our first parents is said to have been effected by the serpent,
described by him as " more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God
had made." The comparison here implied does not necessarily shut us up to the
conclusion that the tempter was one of the lower animals, for the whole effect
of the com parison may be simply to intimate that the agent here intro duced was
more crafty than any of those living things with which Adam and Eve were
acquainted; they knew all the beasts of the field which God had made, and could
measure their power; but now they were to come into contact with an agent of
deeper craft, and whose subtlety they could not easily measure or master. But a
comparison like this plainly necessitates our regarding the tempter here as an
actual being; a being having a substantive existence, and possessing certain
properties which rendered comparison between him and the lower animals possible.
Comparison may be between quality and quality, between being and being; but not
between being and quality. And as we are sure of the actual being of one side of
the comparison here, we must set out with the conviction that the other side of
the comparison is an actual being also.

There is no one, I presume, who takes this narrative literally as it stands; no
one who believes that one of the serpent tribe of its own accord, and by no
impulse beyond itself, acted the part of the tempter on this occasion. In
departing from the purely literal interpretation, however, w r e need not recoil
to the opposite extreme, and regard this account as wholly parabolical and
allegorical. The style of the historian is that of plain narrative, not that of
allegory; what precedes and what follows is simple historical narration; and
there is not the slightest intimation here of any departure from that style.

All attempts, therefore, to give an allegorical colouring to this part of the
narrative must be repudiated as arbitrary, and as forcing upon the passage a
sense which it plainly does not bear.

We therefore set aside at once the notion that we have here a highly figurative
delineation of the working of evil thoughts or unlawful curiosity in the human
breast. The serpent here is not a thought but a thing; and so we must hold it if
we would not be found dealing lawlessly with God’s word.

(i.) Who, then, was the tempter here? If not a mere animal serpent, what being
is it that appears here under this designation? On this point we have the
authority of Scrip ture for speaking without hesitation. We know that it was
Satan who tempted Eve; our Saviour tells us that that fallen spirit, the devil,
was " a man-murderer from the beginning; " and we find him on this account, and
with obvious reference to the narrative before us, called by Paul the "
serpent," and by John " that old serpent." On this point, then, we can indulge
no doubt. The only question that can legitimately arise is whether Moses applies
the term serpent to the devil directly as Paul and John do, or whether he would
intimate that the evil spirit assumed the form of a serpent, and in that form
addressed Eve. I cannot say that it seems to me of much importance which side of
this alternative we embrace; on either view that which is essential is
preserved, viz. The fact of an actual temptation by the Wicked One of our first
mother. Nor is it very easy to determine on which side the prepon derance of
evidence lies. The statement of the apostle, that Satan transforms himself into
" an angel of light," seems to point to some well-known instance of such a
manifestation of the adversary’s power and craft, and besides the case before us
there is no other instance on record in which he may be supposed to have assumed
such a disguise. Nor can we sup pose any case in which such a disguise would be
found so suitable for his purposes. To what being was Eve so likely to listen
without suspicion and without fear as to one whom she saw in the appearance of
those shining visitants from the heavenly world whom she had been accustomed to
welcome as messengers of light and love? But whilst this supposition favours the
conclusion that the term " serpent " here is a mere designation of Satan, and
intimates nothing as to his having made use of the animal serpent for his
purpose, the subsequent part of the narrative in which an animal serpent seems
to be certainly introduced as having had to do with the temptation of Eve, taken
in connection with the prevailing belief of the Jewish Church, the traditions of
the Oriental nations, and extensive prevalence of serpent-worship, and a belief
in the power of divination possessed by the serpent in the ancient world, would
rather conduct us to the conclusion that a real serpent was in some way employed
by Satan as his instrument in this transaction. And perhaps it is to indicate
this that Moses says emphatically " the serpent " here; meaning thereby not the
serpent tribe generally, which are not remarkable for subtlety, certainly not
superior in this to many other of the lower animals, but this one particular
serpent this terrible foe who in serpent’s guise came crawling into Paradise,
and has left the poison of his trail on all earth s treasures ever since.

(ii.) Let us now consider the process by which the tempter accomplished his
designs. Saluting Eve as the less en lightened, the less cautious, the less
reflective, and therefore the more likely to prove a ready victim, he with
apparent simplicity and artlessness put to her the question, " Yea hath God
said, Ye shall not eat of every tree in the garden? " as if he only desired
information on a point which had excited his curiosity. Under this simple
question, however, was con cealed a dark insinuation against God, as if it
surprised the speaker to find Him holding back from the creatures He had formed
and so richly endowed any part of the produce of the place He had given to them
as their own. The tempter evi dently sought to stir in Eve’s mind some suspicion
of the perfect goodness of God, and to beget the thought that in what appeared
an unreasonable and needless restriction there was caprice or tyranny. Too
crafty to rush directly to his point, or to place before the mind of Eve the
vile insinuation as something coming from him, he by quietly assuming an air of
incredulity and astonishment insensibly leads his victim in the direction where
doubts and difficulties about the divine wisdom and goodness might spring up as
the spontaneous product of her own mind. If such doubts, however, were excited
by his question in the mind of Eve, she seems instantly to have subdued them,
for she at once, with the genuine simplicity of unsuspecting innocence, answers
his question, dwelling on the largeness of the divine bounty in placing at their
free disposal all the other trees of the garden, and inti mating the fearful
penalty by which His prohibition of the one tree in the midst of the garden was
sanctioned. Finding from her perfect ingenuousness that he might proceed more
openly, and, indeed, must do so if he was to gain his end with her, Satan no
sooner hears her utter the dreaded penalty than he proceeds boldly to play the
liar, to call in question the sincerity of God, and to deride her fears, founded
on the belief that God was sincere in what He had said, and meant to execute
what He had threatened. " And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof then your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil." How daringly,
but at the same time how cautiously and adroitly, he proceeds ! First, he boldly
impugns the veracity of God, assuring the woman that it was not true that death
was con sequent on the eating of the fruit, and probably confirming this by
showing with what impunity he himself partook of it. He thus took away from her
the great conservative power which a belief in God’s faithfulness necessarily
exercises over those who are placed under His law; and having thus, as it were,
broken through the defences that encompassed her moral nature, he sets himself
to work on her appetites and desires.

Taking occasion from the name of the tree, he hastily in sinuates that it
possessed an intrinsic power to make those who ate of it wise; and perhaps also
he dwelt on the beauty of its fruit and dilated on its sweet and nutritious
qualities, for we find that the attention of Eve was forcibly drawn to these
properties of it; she saw that it was pleasant to the eye, and good for food. It
was her curiosity, however, and her ambition which the tempter sought chiefly to
excite and play upon her desire to know what had been veiled from her view, and
to grasp what had been thought too precious a thing for her to possess. And with
the promise of enlighten ment and power, should she obey his counsel, he
artfully couples the audacious assertion that God knew that such would be the
effect upon His creatures of their partaking of that fruit, and therefore had
forbidden it; thus insinuating that it was not from any regard to their welfare
that He had thus acted, but simply from a jealous dread of their attaining an
eminence where they might claim equality with Him.

Thus gradually, cautiously, and craftily did the arch-deceiver weave round our
first mother the meshes of his web, and ensnare her to her ruin. The steps by
which Satan advanced to his end were first to disturb the serene repose of piety
in the rnind of Eve by suggesting doubts or questionings respecting the divine
good ness; then to drive from her mind the restraints which fear of God’s
threatening imposed by leading her to doubt the divine veracity; then to work
upon her appetites and desires; and finally, to crown the whole by making her
regard God as her enemy, and as one who could be actuated in His dealings with
His creatures by a paltry and pitiful jealousy. With whatever other feelings we
may regard this exhibition of his ingenuity, we cannot iail to see how fully it
illustrates all that the Scriptures teach of his craft and cruelty, and how
strongly it enforces those admonitions which bid us not be ignorant of his
devices or indifferent to his wiles.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: D 02 - THE FALL
========================================================================

The Fall

Let us now turn to glance for a little at the immediate effect of the
temptation. And here it is interesting also to observe the process by which evil
consummated its triumph over Eve. The narrative of Moses, brief as it is, may be
viewed as an articulate illustration of the analysis of the Apostle John in his
theory of evil as consisting of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye
and the pride of life. The woman, we are told, when she looked saw that the tree
was good for food: there was the lust of the flesh, the craving of irregular
appetite and lawless desire; and that it was pleasant to the eyes: there was the
lust of the eyes, the inordinate love and desire of what is merely beautiful and
attractive with the craving after the possession of what merely j nriches and
magnifies; and that it was a tree to be desired to make one wise: there was the
pride of life, the unholy love of pre-eminence, the restless curiosity that
would pry into what God has concealed, the ambition to grasp power above our
due, and the impious assumption, if not of equality with God, yet of a right
over ourselves independent of God. These three affections are the main sources
and occasions of the evil which now predominate in the world; and we see they
had all a share in bringing about the first sin that w r as committed on its
surface. They saw the origin of evil in our race; and as they sat at its cradle,
they have ever since nourished and led it; nor shall it utterly perish until
they have been entirely subdued, and man’s whole nature has been restored to its
pristine purity.

There is another statement of the X. T. which receives in interesting
illustration from the process by which Eve idvanced along the path into which
the tempter had drawn ler. " Lust," says the Apostle James, " when it hath
conceived, bringeth forth sin." This is the genealogy of trans gression; first
there is the evil desire, and then by natural consequence from that the evil
act. So was it with our first mother; she began with lust and ended with sin.
She allowed a forbidden desire to be nourished in her heart, and this quickly
developed itself into a forbidden deed. A deceived heart led her aside; a mind
betrayed by Satan betrayed her in turn. And as lust leads to sin, so sin
naturally tends to propagate itself. Hence no sooner had Eve herself sinned than
she sought to draw her husband into the same snare.

Adam, however, was not deceived as she had been. He followed her example, but it
was with his eyes open. Whether it was mere thoughtless indifference, or a too
yielding affection for his wife, or a sort of chivalrous feeling that he would
share with her in the risks she had incurred, that moved him, we cannot tell;
but certain it is that what he did he did fully aware of the evil of it and the
consequence of it. In any case his sin was great. He preferred a brief
indulgence to the claims of duty and of gratitude. Forgetful of God and His
authority and His law, lie looked only at the beautiful and smiling image, and
listened only to the horrid words of the fair but fallen partner of his life.
Thus was he drawn to follow her example and to partake her sin. Then was man’s
first disobedience complete. Then was the ruin of our race accomplished. Then
was the covenant broken and the curse incurred. Then was the image of God in man
blotted and defaced. Then was discord produced between earth and heaven. Then
did the bowers of Paradise, a moment before the abodes of stainless innocence,
become the sorrowful scenes of guilt and passion and shame. At this sad sight

" Earth trembled from her entrails, as again In pangs, and nature gave a second
groan; Sky lour cl, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops Wept at completing of
the mortal sin." x 1 Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book ix.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: E 00 - CHAPTER V THE UNIVERSALITY
========================================================================

CHAPTER V THE UNIVERSALITY OF SIN SECOND DIVISION. SIX.

I. The UNIVERSALITY OF SIN. From contemplating man in his original condition and
early degeneracy, let us now turn to contemplate his actual condition in a moral
point of view as he now lives and acts upon earth. And here, first of all, let
us look at


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: E 01 - THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE
========================================================================

1. The Testimony of Scripture. The assertion which the sacred writers make
respecting man is that he is a sinful creature that sin is universally
characteristic of our race, that all men, without exception, are sinners in the
sight of God. Not only is this directly asserted in many passages, but the
entire history of man as presented in the Bible, and all that the Bible proposes
for man’s culture and benefit, presuppose this. This last con sideration renders
it of importance that we should be thoroughly settled on this point, inasmuch as
without a just and clear view of it we shall not be in circumstances to
apprehend aright the remedial system to the development of which the Bible is
chiefly devoted, and which constitutes the substance and supreme use of
Christianity. Of the passages in which the universal sinfulness of our race is
formally asserted, there is none more worthy of notice than that embracing the
reasoning of the apostle 12 Chronicles 3:9-10; 2 Chronicles 3:11, etc. " We have
before proved (irporjTcao-d/jieOa, previously accused or indicted) all, both
Jews and Gentiles, to be under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous,
no, not one. There is none that uriderstandeth: there is none that seeketh after
God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable;
there is none that doeth good, no, not one." These sentences are quoted by the
apostle from Psalms 14:1-3. They strikingly depict the uni versal sinfulness of
the race. The Psalmist represents Jehovah as looking down from heaven to see if
there were any that understood, any that sought after God; as searching with His
omniscient eye to discover if haply there were any that had not gone astray from
Him and from goodness; and as finding the melancholy result that not one is to
be seen who is not a sinner against Him. Destitute of a just sense of God or
understanding of His claims, and without any desire of the heart towards Him,
they have sunk into moral degeneracy and worthlessness. The great principle of
morality being wanting or dormant within them, they speedily plunge into all
prac tical vice and ungodliness; having turned aside from God, each goes in his
own way, but all along a downward and darkening path. One character of evil
attaches to them all; on all the same verdict must be pronounced. " All are
under sin " under its dominion, under its curse; and He, who on man’s first
creation proclaimed him " very good," now says as He looks on him, " There is
none good, no, not one." In the following verses Paul, still quoting from the 0.
T., and chiefly from the Psalms, goes on to set forth some of the manifestations
of this depravity in man. He denounces men as pernicious, noxious, deceptive,
and slanderous; as given to malediction and bitterness; as indulging in
violence, and prone to sudden gusts of passion; ready ever to commit murder
through their lust of revenge; and so mischievous and hurtful in their courses
that destruction and misery be come prevailing characteristics of their ways or
mode of life.

It is not the design of the apostle, of course, to charge each of these forms of
evil upon all individually; what he in tends is, in the first instance, to
overthrow the self-confidence of the Jews by showing from their own books the
extent to which, in spite of their privileges, sin and corruption had prevailed
in their nation, and thereby to contribute to the support of his general
position that all men are sinful before God. This latter consideration tends to
obviate an objection which has sometimes been urged against the conclusion we
would draw from the apostle’s language here. These passages, it has been said,
are all cited from the 0. T., and they occur there in a special application, so
that they merely prove, what no one would deny, that there have been as there
are bad men in the world; they do not prove that all men are sinful and evil.
But even if we allow that, as originally used by the 0. T. writers from whom
they are taken, they do not assert the depravity of any beyond those to whom
they are applied by them, yet the use which the apostle makes of them here shows
us that he meant them to bear on the proof of the universal depravity of man.
The general position he lays down is that " All men are under sin; " and to this
the passages he cites are applicable only on the supposition that they directly
con tain or somehow involve the assertion of the universal de pravity of man.
Now, allowing that they do not all directly assert this, how does it appear that
they lend support to the npostle’s thesis? I reply, in two ways. In the first
place, Paul employs them to assert forcibly and in language that would tell upon
his readers the position he would maintain.

Whether these 0. T. writers assert it or not, there is no doubt that he asserts
it; and as he preferred using language borrowed from them for the purpose of
conveying his assertion of it more forcibly, it is surely absurd to argue from
this that his assertion is thereby rendered invalid. It must be borne in mind
that it is not with the apostle as it is with us in this respect; when we would
prove a theological truth, we must see to it that the passages we cite from
Scripture actually assert that truth, or logically involve it in the sense in
which we wish it to be received. But the apostle needed not this support. His
own assertion is as valid as could be that of David or Isaiah; and if he saw
meet to express his own position in language borrowed from them, his meaning is
to be interpreted from his own con text, not from that in which the passages
originally occur. The N". T. writers use the 0. T. for various purposes, and it
would be a serious mistake to say that the passage as quoted by them has in
every case exactly the same signification, neither more nor less, that it has as
used by the writers from whom they quote. But, secondly, the apostle’s argument,
as expressed in these words of the 0. T. writers, is an argument a fortiori,
especially as addressed to Jews. These passages are from their own Scriptures,
and primarily they relate, by the sup position, to the Jewish people. Their
truth, as forming parts of the divine word, no Jew could question; and the
inference, that if such things could be truly said of the Jewish people, much
more could they be said of the heathen, is one which no Jew would feel the least
inclination to question. Thus the apostle shuts up his readers to the admission
of the universal sinfulness of mankind.

Even assuming, then, the passages quoted by Paul were not, as originally used,
intended to enunciate this truth, they, as adduced by him, do most distinctly
and forcibly announce it. Of one of them, however, it cannot be justly said that
it does not, as uttered by the original writer, proclaim the sinfulness of the
race as such. The language of the 14th Psalm, from which Paul largely quotes, is
used, not of this class or that, nor of one nation rather than another. The
language is as general as possible, and is evidently intended to apply to all
men alike to man as man under whatever peculiarity of outward circumstances he
may be found. " The Lord looked down upon the children of men, to see if there
were any that did understand, and seek God [i.e. any one individual who
regulated his life wisely, and was piously affected towards God].

All have gone aside together [i.e. one and all, "^H.]; they are corrupt; there
is none that doeth good, not so much as one "

(ver. 3). No language could be more general than this, and therefore there is
hardly an interpreter who does not understand it as intended to apply to the
whole race. Both by David, then, and by Paul is the universal sinfulness of the
race asserted in the striking words which the former uttered by divine
inspiration, and which the latter by the same inspiration quoted from him. In
the words used by the Psalmist, and quoted by the apostle, there seems to be an
allusion to an equally general assertion of the universal sinfulness of man
uttered at an early period in the history of the race. In the days of Noah, God,
we are told, " looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh
had corrupted his way on the earth "

(Genesis 6:12). This, of course, applies only to the men of that generation as
respects its primary and immediate appli cation; but the allusion to it by the
Psalmist would seem to imply that as it was then so it has continued; earth is
still rilled with a guilty and sin-loving race.

There is another statement of the apostle bearing on this head which deserves
notice. In Romans 5:12 he argues that " as by one man sin entered the world, and
death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned [e
(/> a> TraWe? ijfjLaprov]." Interpreters differ as to the proper render
ing and force of the words e</> here; some making them mean " in whom,"
i.e. in the one man by whom sin entered; others rendering them " even so;"
others " into which;" others, as in the common version, " for that; " and
others, " provided that," " on the supposition that," " it being supposed that."
But for our present purpose it matters not which of these renderings we prefer,
though either of the last is better than any of the others. What concerns us is
the apostle’s decided assertion that all have sinned. These words not only
assert without qualification that all men are sinners, but it is essential to
the apostle’s argument that they should be so understood. His reasoning is this:
Death is a penal inflic tion, and under a just government a penalty is inflicted
only on those who are guilty of the offence to which it is attached. But death,
comes upon all men without exception; whence it follows that all have without
exception incurred guilt, or become sinners. In the universality of the doom we
see convincing evidence under the just government of God of a universal offence.
To these passages we may add such general statements as the following: 1 Kings
8:46-47; 2 Chronicles 6:36; Ecclesiastes 7:20, Ecclesiastes 7:29; Job 14:4; Job
15:14; Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:23; Galatians 3:22; 1 John 1:8. Many such
statements are found in the Bible, and indeed the doctrine of man’s sinfulness
and guilt so pervades the entire book that, like the figure upon the ancient
shield, it could only be by destroying the book that it could be obliterated.

Among the proof passages commonly adduced on this head is 2 Corinthians 5:14:
"For we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead," i.e. in sins.
If this statement of the apostle relates to mankind, the passage is undoubtedly
valid for the purpose for which it is adduced; for if all mankind are dead in
sins, undoubtedly all mankind are sinners; the two propositions are almost
identical. But it may be doubted whether the passage is to be thus understood;
and I refer to it particularly because of the opportunity I am thereb}^ afforded
of bringing before you another, and, as I think, a much better exegesis of it. I
regard the apostle as referring here not to a state common to all men, but to a
peculiarity in the condition of Christ’s people, His elect Church, viz. that
they have had fellowship with Him in His death, that they died in His death, and
thereby have become dead with Him. This is a view of the believer’s connection
with Christ which Paul gives elsewhere. Thus, in Romans 6:2-11 he speaks of
believers being dead to sin, being baptized for Christ’s death, as being planted
together in the likeness of His death, as having had their old man crucified
with Him, as having died with Him, and as consequently to be reckoned as dead
unto sin. Of the mean ing of such language we shall fall very far short if we
under stand by it merely that through Christ’s death in some way we are
delivered from sin; the apostle plainly intends to teach that believers are one
with Christ partakers of Christ persons having fellowship with Christ in His pro
pitiatory work, so that in His death they died and are thereby freed from sin.
In like manner in writing to the Galatians (Galatians 2:20), Paul says of
himself, " I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but
Christ that liveth in me; " where the same idea of the believer’s participation
with Christ in death and subsequent life is set forth. To the same head are to
be referred such statements as in Colossians 3:3, " Ye are dead, and your life
is hid with Christ in God; "

1 Timothy 2:11, "It is a faithful saying, For if we died with Him
(a-vvaTreddvofiev) we shall also live with Him," etc. I regard all these
statements as resting upon one basis as flowing out of one fontal thought, viz.
that salvation, includ ing justification and sanctification, comes to a man in
virtue of his faith in Christ uniting him to Christ so as to become one with
Him, and thereby bringing him to a participation of all that was secured by
Christ’s obedience unto death and resurrection from the dead. But, be this as it
may, the passages I have cited plainly show that in some sense it is true of
Christians that they are dead that this is a peculiarity of their spiritual
condition; and it is to this, I take it, that the apostle refers in the passage
we are now considering. That this is the meaning of the passage appears from the
following considerations: 1. The proper rendering of the passage is, " We judge
thus, that if one died for all, then the all (ol Travres, for whom he died) died
(aireOavov, the aorist here describes an event contemporaneous with that
described by the previous aorist, atreOavev)" Whatever it be, then, that is
affirmed by the words ol irdvres direOavov, it must be something which took
place when the el? airkQavev, not something which was true of the race apart
from Him.

2. The assertion apa ol Travres direOavov is adduced by the apostle as logically
involved in the previous assertion el? vTrep irdvrwv aTredavev. This is the
force of the apa here follow ing the el of the preceding clause, " if," " then."
But the fact that all men are sinners, and dead in their sins, is in nowise
logically involved in the fact that Christ died for all.

Take this latter statement in what sense you please, it cannot be held as
logically included in the fact that the whole race of men are dead. This is a
fact which stands quite independent of Christ’s death, and. indeed, so far from
flowing out of the latter, is presupposed by it. As it is a fact which would
have remained such whether Christ had died for us or not, so, on the other hand,
it was because this was a fact that Christ died. We cannot suppose the apostle
to reason so illogically as to make the truth of a fact flow out of an act which
itself flowed out of the fact.

3. In the 15th verse Paul describes a class of persons as ol fwfTe?, " they that
live." Now, these are certainly identical with the Trdvres VTrep tov et?
direOave, and this would lead to the conclusion that the word iravrts is used
here, as it often is, for a limited totality, i.e. not for all men, but for all
of a particular class, viz. those who, united to Christ by a living faith, are
held to have died in His death and to live in His life.

4. Paul draws in the 16th verse an inference from what he has asserted in the
14th verse: "Wherefore," says he, " hence forth know we no man after the flesh."
Here the apostle asserts that Christians from the time forward of the event
previously referred to (diro rov vvv) know no man after the flesh, i.e. do not
esteem men according to a carnal selfish manner, and therefore are not moved by
men’s opinions or judgments in the discharge of duty. Now, what is it that the
apostle says produces this effect upon the believer? It is the fact of his being
dead. But this cannot mean being dead in sins, for that would have the contrary
effect, the effect of shutting up to a carnal earthly way of regarding men; it
must mean being dead to sin, the having undergone that death to which he refers
in the 6th chapter of the Epistle to the Eomans as realized by the believer
through connection with Christ, and for which with a view to which he was
baptized. When men thus die they pass out of the state in which they form carnal
selfish judgments; they become new creatures, with whom old things, including
such methods of judging, have passed away; they are alive through the Spirit,
and so, being spiritually -minded, they judge according to the spiritual
judgment and with a just spiritual discernment. On these grounds I would take
this passage out of the class of those in which the universal sinfulness of man
is asserted, and rank it with those that set forth the great spiritual truth
that believers have died in the Saviour’s death, and are alive again through His
life. We have no need to press into the service of our thesis passages of
doubtful applicability; as already intimated, Scripture is full of state ments
on this head of the clearest and strongest kind. " In truth," as Dwight
observes, " no doctrine of the Scriptures is expressed in more numerous or more
various forms, or in terms more direct or less capable of misapprehension." l

Besides those express statements to which we have referred, the fact of man’s
sinfulness is involved in many of the most characteristic revelations of the
Bible. It is involved in the provision of a sacrifice for the sins of the world;
it is involved in the declaration that Christ came to seek and to save the lost;
it is involved in the assertion that if a man die without an interest in Christ
he dies in his sins and must perish; for, as Chalmers pointedly puts it, " If it
be through the blood of Christ, the blood of expiation, that all who get to
heaven are saved, then does it follow univer sally of them who get to heaven as
of them who are kept out of heaven, inclusive of the whole human race, that one
and all of them have sinned; " 2 it is involved in the sentence that by the
deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified, which means, of course,
that no man has ever kept the law so as to be held righteous by it; it is
involved in the necessity 1 Theology, Sermon 29. 2 Institutes of Theology, 1. p.
385. of regeneration before any man can see the kingdom of God, fur, as Dr. Pye
Smith observes, " the Scriptures represent holiness of character in any of
mankind as the exception, and as owing to grace which makes men new creatures
and all things new; whereas the wickedness of extremely depraved men is put as
affording fair specimens of human nature, because it is the spontaneous
unchecked growth of our nature; " l and it is involved in the announcement that
our bodies are to be changed so as to be delivered from a cor rupting and
polluting virus before they can appear in the heavenly glory. The peculiar
character of the Christian dispensation as a dispensation of repentance involves
the assumption of the universal sinfulness of the race. The gospel is a call to
the race as such to repent and return unto God. " God now commandeth all men
everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). But what need of universal repent ance,
except on the supposition of universal sinfulness? The whole need not a
physician, but they that are sick; the Lord carne to call sinners, not righteous
persons, to repent ance; and when, consequently, we hear Him addressing this
call to " all men everywhere," we cannot doubt that in the view of heaven all
men are sinners, and further, that unless this be admitted and realized, there
is no just apprehension of the true nature and design of Christianity obtained.

It thus appears that the testimony of Scripture is decisive in respect of the
fact that all men are sinners. " They that have read the sacred volume," says
Howe, " cannot be ignorant that all flesh have corrupted their way; that the
great God, looking down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there
were any that did understand, that did seek God, hath only the unpleasing
prospect before His eyes even of a universal depravation and defection; that
every one of them is gone back, they are altogether become filthy; there is none
that doeth good, no, not one; all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God; that this world lieth in wickedness; and that this was not the first state
of man, but that he is degenerated into it from a former and better state; that
God made man upright, but that he became otherwise by his own many inventions;
that by trying conclusions to better 1 First Lines of Theology, p. 383. a state
already truly good, he brought himself into this awful plight; and by aiming at
somewhat above, sunk so far beneath himself into that gulf of impurity and
misery that is now become to him as his own element and natural state." l


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  CHAPTER 12: E 02 -  THE TESTIMONY OF HUMAN LIFE
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2. The Testimony of Human Life.

" The Scripture hath concluded all men under sin: " this we have already seen to
be the sum of the Scripture testimony regarding the moral character and
condition of our race. It is not to Scripture alone, however, that we may appeal
in this case; the same conclusion is supported by the testimony of
consciousness, by certain phenomena of human conduct, and by certain facts in
human experience.

(i.) The testimony of consciousness conspires with the Bible doctrine that all
men are sinners. All men know that they have done wrong, that they are
continually doing wrong.

They not only perceive that, tried by a certain assumed standard, they have
deflected from the path of goodness and virtue, but they blame themselves for
this, they cannot but blame themselves for it. In this self-blame lies the con
sciousness of sin. A man never thinks of blaming his head for aching, or his
foot for being clumsy, or his nose for being twisted, because he knows that with
these aberrations sin has nothing to do; they are not the result of free choice.
But let a man perceive that he has acted in a way that is crooked, perverse, or
mischievous, and he at once pro nounces of his conduct that it is wrong, and
condemns himself for it. It is true that by habit he may blunt his sense of the
evil of his conduct; but this is effected rather through his diverting his
attention from this aspect of his conduct than from his having ceased to feel it
to be wrong and blameworthy when he fairly considers it. If \ve would see how a
vivid consciousness acts in this matter, we must go back to the commencement of
the man’s wicked career; we must look at the workings of his mind when the sin
was new to him, when he was tempted to commit it for the first time.

How painful and agitating were the exercises of his mind ere he came to the
point of yielding to the temptation; and when 1 Living Temple, Part II. cli.
iv.; Works, vol. iii. p. 291, Rogers ed. he had committed the sin, how bitter
and agonizing was the remorse that ensued ! In some minds the remembrance of one
sin committed, it may be in secret and never brought to li<rht so as to bring
down censure from others, abides as a constant source of theme and
self-reproach, covering the coun tenance with blushes, and causing the heart to
throb at the very thought of it, "Some fatal remembrance, some sorrow that
throws Its bleak shade alike on his joys and his woes."

If any were to question the fact that man is conscious of sin, we might appeal
to the curious fact that men who will repudiate at once the charge of being
guilty of any particular sin they know they have not committed, will yet not
only suffer themselves to be accused of sin in the general, but will even go
voluntarily where they know this charge will be brought against, nay, will
prefer a man who prefers it against, them boldly and strongly to one who merely
feebly suggests it, or tries to explain it away. Let a preacher, c.y. t tell a
congregation of respectable people that they are thieves, and drunkards, and
liars, and unclean, and they will very soon forsake his teaching; but let him
tell them plainly and forcibly that they are sinners, that they all do what is
wrong, that they are verily guilty and blameworthy before God, and they will not
only take no offence, but will commend and approve his teaching. Why is this but
that they know in themselves that what he says is true?

Now, whence this self-blame, this self-reproach, but from the consciousness of
sin? and if there be no one who is altogether a stranger to this, does it not
manifestly follow that there is no one of our race who is not at the bar of his
own con science adjudged to be a sinner?

(ii.) We appeal to certain phenomena of human conduct as attesting the existence
of sin in all men.

1. And here the first that strikes us is that all men impute Uame to their
fellow-men for what they do that is wrong.

There is no man who seriously believes that his neighbour is not blameworthy
when he injures him. Why is this? We never attach blame to the storm that
injures our crops, to the lightning which strikes our cattle dead, or even to
one of the lower animals which injures us. Why, then, do we blame our fellow-men
when they do us harm? Because, simply, we regard them as moral agents, and count
their doing of harm to us sin. But if, when they harm us, they are counted
sinners, are they not also sinners whatever wrong they do?

It is not merely because it is against us that they have done wrong that we
impute blame to them; it is because we regard them as free agents who could have
done otherwise if they had pleased, and who are consequently to blame for not
doing otherwise. Whenever men, then, act wrongly, they are liable to blame they
are to be counted sinners; and as no man ever yet lived who did not do wrong, as
no person ever knew a man who at no time swerved from the path of right, we are
shut up to the conclusion that all are sinners wilful wrong-doers, who are
therefore to be blamed.

2. Another phenomenon of human conduct to which we may appeal in support of this
position is the unwillingness men have to think or speak about God. That such is
the fact needs hardly to be proved. Men like not to retain the knowledge of God
in their thoughts. They are ready to say in their hearts, " No God." They resort
to every expedient to banish Him from their reflections. They cannot, indeed,
eradicate the religious principle wholly from their bosoms; they must have
something to worship and fear; but to meet this they resort to the expedient of
inventing a God for themselves, to whom, either in gross idolatry or with more
or less of avowed and open superstition, they do homage, rather than keep before
them the knowledge of the living and true God. So familiar is this to us, that
in civilized society it has become a sort of recognized courtesy that God shall
not be spoken of; and were any one to introduce the subject into a company, not
of bad men, but men of ordinary average good character, there would be
immediately, if not by words, yet by most significant signs, clear indications
given that the sub ject was felt to be a most unwelcome one, and that his intro
duction of it was a most unseasonable one, if not a piece of unpardonable
rudeness. Now, how is this fact to be accounted for? No one can say the subject
is unworthy his notice. No one can pretend that it is otherwise than most proper
and necessary that intelligent and accountable creatures should have their
thoughts occupied with God, and should often con verse together concerning Him.
And it would be idle to trace the reserve which men show in respect of God to
any feeling of reverence for Him such as would prompt them to confine their
consideration of Him to their most secret and solemn moments; for the very men
who are most unwilling that the truth should be brought before them concerning
God are the most ready to consider and embrace every false or sceptical view
that can be thrown out in relation either to His perfec tions or His government.
I can see no way of accounting for this fact but by referring it to the
existence of sin in men, and the consciousness of it in every human breast. A
company of pure and sinless intelligences would not, if placed in a world like
this, be so shy of God so averse from think ing and speaking of Him, whilst all
around proclaims His majesty and His beneficence. The conduct of man in this
respect can be accounted for only by the supposition that he is not sinless and
pure. " The only and true explanation is that God and the soul are themes that
move disturbance.

They suggest blame; they lacerate, in this manner, the com fort of the mind." "
Men," adds the same writer, " are under a subtle and tacit but damning sense of
blame, and cannot bear, on all occasions, or anywhere but in the public assem
blies of religion, to have subjects introduced that remind them of it, and stir
again the guilt of their conscience." ] To all pure and intelligent beings the
name of God is a name of joy: that among men it should have power to strike into
silence or inspire with uneasiness is an ominous circum stance which can be
accounted for only by the fact that man though intelligent is not pure, but
feels himself guilty before God.

3. Another fact to which we may appeal as showing from man’s conduct his
consciousness of sin, is the fact that all men act on the supposition that sin
is a thing to be con stantly dreaded or guarded against. Whatever men may think
or say of themselves, all men show by their conduct that they cannot implicitly
trust others in this respect. They feel that they have an enemy in the souls of
their fellowmen against which they have to guard. Hence they surround 1
Bushnell, Nature and the, Supernatural, p. 155. themselves with protection of
every kind. In simple states of society they cultivate powers of self-defence,
go abroad more or less prepared for battle, and lie down at night with weapons
within their reach. In states where society is better organized, men surround
themselves with the protection of penal laws, directed against the various
offences by which one man may suffer at the hand of another; and not relying
wholly on these, they seek by various other precautions to protect themselves
and their property and their households from the sin of others. What are the
locks and bars by whicli we secure our dwellings against the intruder, the
bonds, and receipts, and deeds by which we seek to guard against fraud and
deceit the oaths by which we endeavour to constrain men to speak truth, and
other such like contrivances with which all who live in society are familiar,
what are they but evidences that men universally hold themselves prepared for
wrong, and have to guard against it? Now, why this con stant expectation of
evil, this constant dread of harm, this uneasy state of preparation against
possible iniquity? Is it not because men know that there is a terrible reality
in the world called sin, and that from the influence of this no man is free, so
that the only way to be at all secure is to act on the presumption that there is
no quarter from which the incursions of the enemy are not guarded against? In a
sin less state of society, in a society where sin was the exception, would not
such precautions be regarded as needless and preposterous?

4. Another fact to which we may appeal under this head is the necessity
universally felt for family discipline. "A child left to himself," says the wise
man, " bringeth his mother to shame" (Proverbs 20:15); and to the truth of this
all experience gives testimony, so that wherever such a parent is seen following
such a course with his child, the common sense of the neighbourhood confidently
anticipates a result such as Solomon announces. Now, why is this? Why may not
children be left to themselves to spring up as the flowers, or to develop their
powers as the birds without control, with out check, without chastisement? Why
should their young life be disturbed by law, and discipline, and reproof, and
punishment? Why should all wise men who care for their children act on the
principle that the best thing they can do for them is from the beginning of life
to subject them to a system of discipline which it is often far more painful for
the parent to enforce than it is for the child to submit to? Can any rational
defence be offered for this, except that it is a known and undeniable fact that
sin is in the bosom of every child, and that it is only by keeping him from the
beginning under a scheme of government that that sin can be kept from growing
into a monstrous and all-commanding power before which all moral restraint would
be impotent, and by which life would be rendered a scene of lawless ferocity and
reckless indulgence?

5. We appeal once more under this head to the fact that all men confess their
sinfulness by adopting a religious system which is exclusively adapted to a
sinner. There have been many different forms of religion in vogue among men, but
however they may differ in other respects, they all agree in this, that they
presuppose man’s guilt, and profess to meet and provide for emergencies thence
arising. In all of them we find the idea of propitiating an offended Deity; in
all of them the rite of sacrifice is inculcated as a means of attaining this
end; in all of them penances, mortifications, and painful inflictions are
recommended as means of securing the divine forgiveness; in all of them
ablutions as a method of purging away pollutions are set forth as important; in
short, they are essentially expiatory in their character and pretensions. Now,
why is this, but that man feels himself a sinner, and knows that he can come
into the presence of Deity only to be con demned and punished for his sin unless
some method of removing it be found? In the piety of a sinless being such ideas
and acts have no place; they would never so much as enter his mind. An offering
of expiation is a confession of guilt. As has been strikingly said with regard
to the offering ot human sacrifices, a rite which " has prevailed under every
form of nature-worship," there goes up from all such painful and costly
expiations " a dreadful, in some sense a prophetic, cry for help on the part of
man, conscious that he is without God, and which could only on Golgotha be
resolved into hymns and thanksgivings." l 1 Kurz, History of the Christian
Church, p. 4:6.

(iii.) In turning to the facts in human experience which go to attest man’s
universal sinfulness, we may, in the outset, appeal to the large and unqualified
admission of this which men, the most competent to speak on such a subject, have
in all ages made. If we turn, for instance, to the literature of nations, what
ample admissions do we find of this fact alike in poetical, historical, and
philosophical composition ! The experience which breathes through all the
remains of ancient literature is that of men who were not ignorant of right and
wrong, who were not weak so as to be unable to follow the right and refuse the
wrong, but who were and felt themselves to be wicked, prone to prefer the wrong,
and who knew that in consequence of this they were constantly doing wrong.

"Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor," are words which express the
experience, not merely of the man who uttered them, but of all men in all ages,
so that they have passed into a proverb. " Nemo sine vitiis nascitur," exclaims
Horace; J and says a poet of Greece, 2

" There appears," says Aristotle, " another something besides the reason natural
to us which fights and struggles against the reason; and just as the limbs of
the body when under paralysis are when they would move to the right are carried
away to the left, so is it in the soul."

How pointed is the language of Plutarch in speaking of the mingled good and evil
of our nature: " Some portion of evil is, mingled in all who are born; for the
seeds of our being are mortal, and hence they share in causing this, whence
depravity of soul, diseases, and cares creep upon us." 4 How uniform also was
the belief of the ancients in the defilement with which the soul went into the
future world, and the need of a severe purga tion there before it could be
admitted to the place of the blessed !

" Quisque suos patimur manes; exinde per amplum Mittimur Elysium, et pauci Ireta
arva tenemus :

Donee longa dies perfecto temporis orbe Concretam exemit labem, purumque
relinquit jEtherium sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem." 5 1 Sat., i. 3. 68:2
Sophocles, Electra.

3 Eth. Nicom., 1:11:4 De Consol. ad Apoll 5 JSneid, 6:743.

" That the world lieth in wickedness," says Kant, " is a lament as old as
history, nay, as old as the oldest poetry. The world began, it is allowed, with
good, with a golden age, with a life in Paradise, or with one still happier in
communion with heavenly being. But this felicity, it is admitted, has vanished
like a dream; and now man’s course is even with accelerated speed from bad
(morally bad, with which the physically bad ever advances pari passii) to worse.
A few moderns have advanced the opposite opinion, which, how ever, has found
favour only with philosophers, and in our day chiefly among psedagogues, that
the world is progres sively tending from bad to better, or, at least, that the
basis of this lies in human nature. But this opinion assuredly is not derived
from experience, if it is of moral goodness and badness, not civilisation, they
speak; for the history of all times speaks decisively against it." * " Profound
observers of the human nature," says Halm, " in great numbers since Kant have
acknowledged the truth of the Biblical doctrine, that the root of man’s nature
is corrupt, so that each feels himself by nature morally sick and unfree, and no
one is able of his own strength to fulfil the divine law, though he acknow
ledges it to be good and inviolable."

It is needless to multiply extracts: those I have given may be taken as a
specimen of how the universal experience of mankind falls in with and attests
the position so fully asserted in Scripture of man’s universal sinfulness and
guilt.

We might further dwell here on the fact that human experience taken on the most
extensive scale refuses to acknow ledge that it has ever come to the knowledge
of a sinless and perfect man, a fact utterly inexplicable on the supposition
that men generally, or that some men, are sinless. We might advert also to the
fact that experience attests that it is much more easy to find a clever and able
servant or agent than one thoroughly honest, virtuous, and trustworthy. But it
is unnecessary; the fact is so notorious that no man ventures formally to deny
it, and it is only by ignoring it, or by the most curious expedients of
word-juggling, that those who are 1 Religion inmrhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vemunft, p. 1. Comp. also Part I. 3, p. 26 ff.

* Lekrbuch, p. 364. unwilling to contemplate or admit it get rid of its solemn
presence or explain away its existence. Of these expedients one of the most
common is to apply to this fact in the experience of our race some term, or to
refer to it in phraseology, which insinuates that it is rather a misfortune that
has befallen man, a calamity that has come upon him, than a state for which he
himself is responsible, and which entails on him guilt. Thus it is spoken of as
a disorder or a disease which has overtaken man, and Mr.

Theodore Parker speaks largely and eloquently of it as a " mis direction of
human nature." Now, what is such language intended to convey? Those who use it
cannot mean us to take it literally; they cannot mean that when a man goes
contrary to the order of the moral world he simply suffers some disarrangement
or suffering, such as he endures when his digestive powers are out of order, or
when a limb gets dislocated; they cannot mean that when moral law is trans
gressed by man an occurrence of the same kind has taken place as happens when an
arrow shot from a bow swerves from the course it was intended it should follow,
or a bullet fired from an ill-grooved rifle goes awry. In such a case everything
like blame or censure would be out of place, and right and wrong would be terms
of no moral significancy. On this principle all denunciation of vice is an
absurdity, and all punishment of crime a piece of gratuitous cruelty. On this
principle some of Mr. Parker’s own most eloquent and valuable utterances must be
regarded as mere idle words, for they are denunciations of slaveholding and such
arts as wicked and criminal. To take his doctrine literally, therefore, is to
fix on him a charge of gross inconsistency and idle vituperation. But if such
phraseology is not to be taken literally, how is it to be taken? To this no
definite answer can be given by those who use it. The truth is they do not use
it for the purpose of conveying a definite utterance of opinion. They employ it
rather to conceal opinion than to express it. Their object is, without denying
our position, to rob it of all its force. They cannot shut their eyes to the
fact that evil has laid hold upon every individual of our race; but they seek to
escape from unpleasant feelings in the presence of this fact by calling it by
names that suggest other ideas than those of guilt and blame. It is a poor
expedient, and as foolish as it is poor. It is a mere trick of wordcraft which
may deceive the unwary, but leaves the case exactly as it was. Were it worth
while reasoning with those who resort to such expedients, we might express to
them our wonder that it does not occur to them to ask, Why should men blame
themselves and others for doing what they call wrong? That men do so blame
themselves and others is undoubtedly certain. We may appeal to any man’s
consciousness and experience in support of this. An individual, perhaps, here
and there, may by dint of long practice have succeeded in silencing the monitor
within, or may so little heed it that he is in nowise hindered by it in his
career of sin. But he knows that it took him a long time to do that, that it was
not without a hard struggle that he succeeded in that, and that the voice within
though silenced is not dead, but is still prone to rise up and stun him with its
reproving utterances.

It is curious, also, to observe how the very persons who teach these views of
human nature severely blame and censure others when they do them any wrong. Is
this reasonable on their ground? Do they blame the elements when through their
disorder some grievous injury is sustained by them in person or property? Do
they blame the wind which blows down a tree or a house? Do they seriously
pronounce censure on an epidemic, or animadvert on the moral im propriety of a
pestilence? But if not, why blame a man if when he does what is wrong he is
simply the victim of disease, or is simply following the bent of unfortunate cir
cumstances? Does not this inconsistency show that they do not really believe
their own theory, but in spite of them selves feel it to be true that the
unalterable law of this universe is the law of right, and that the man who
breaks that law in any of its requirements is not unfortunate and to be pitied,
but is guilty and to be blamed?

There is thus abundant testimony from within man’s own soul and experience, as
well as in nature without him, to the fact of sin. The testimony of Scripture is
thus amply con firmed. And they who would aright estimate man’s condition and
prospects as an intelligent agent must take this fact fully into consideration.
If it is overlooked or misinterpreted, an essential factor in the calculation
will be missed, and the whole conclusion thereby vitiated.


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  CHAPTER 13: F 00 - CHAPTER VI EVIL ORIGIN EVIL
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CHAPTER VI EVIL THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

We have seen that sin has entered our world, and that it prevails universally
over the race, so that there is not a man that liveth and sinneth not. We have
seen also how it was that sin was introduced into our world, and by whose means
man was drawn into it and brought under its power. Before proceeding to consider
the effect upon the race of the first sin of the first man, there are two
inquiries of a more general kind to which it may be proper to advert. These are,
What is evil? and, What is the origin of evil in the universe?

These questions have engaged the attention of thoughtful men from early times.
In respect of the first, conclusions have been reached which may be regarded as
satisfactory; but though many attempts have been made to answer the second
question none of them has been successful, and we must be content to leave it as
an insoluble problem. Some of the more important of these attempts, however, it
may not be out of place or iminstructive to notice.


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  CHAPTER 14: F 01 DEFINITIONS OF EVIL
========================================================================

1. Definitions of Evil. To the question, What is evil? we may reply generally,
that it is the antithesis or negation of good. It is not possible to give other
than a negative definition or description of it. It is not something positive.
In the abstract, evil is want of conformity to good; in the concrete, it is
anything that is opposed to or comes short of actual good. Good is something
positive, evil is simply the absence or negation of good. In this all are
agreed. " All evil," says Origen, " is nothing, since it happens as not being."
l " No nature," says Augustine, " is evil, and this name is only of the
privation of good/ 2 a statement which he after repeats in the course of his
writings. Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero all taught that by nature all things are
good; evil arises when there is a dereliction from nature or a negation of it. "
Evil," says St. Basil, " is not a living substance and endowed with soul, but an
affection of the soul contrary to virtue sprung from the desertion of good, so
that we have no need to seek for a primitive evil." 3 " Properly speaking/ says
Leibnitz, "evil formally has not an efficient cause, for it consists in
privation, that is, in that it is not made by an efficient cause. Hence the
schoolmen are wont to call the cause of evil deficient." 4 But I have nowhere
seen this point more clearly and accurately exhibited than by the French
philosopher Bartholmess. " Considered in an abstract manner," he says, " evil is
the negation of, or the antithesis of, good. Now, good in any being is the
entire and facile development of its nature conformably to itself, to its end,
and to its law. God alone realizes for us the idea of the absolute good, because
He possesses the plenitude of being, and encounters no limit to His attributes.
God also enjoys absolute and boundless felicity. The idea of a perfect being,
therefore, excludes the possibility of evil as its proper negation. With created
and finite beings evil consists in their very imperfection, or in the
disagreement between their nature and their end, their actions and their law.
The complete, regular, and facile accomplish ment of all the particular ends
concurring to a general end is order, or the general good; the derogation from
order, the infraction of the universal law, or of those which regulate each
being in particular, constitute evil. It thus appears that evil is not in itself
anything positive; it is resolvable into either a negation, an imperfection, a
defect, or a discordance between the end of beings and their development." 5 A
threefold division of evil has been signalized, viz. into 1 Ha/rot, vi KKXIOC,
ol^ iv inrriv, Ifit xa.} olx. i v rvy^Kvu. De Princip. 2:2.

2 " Cum omnino natura nulla sit malum, nomenque hocnon sit nisi privationis
boni." De Civit. Dei, 11:22.

3 In Hexcem. Horn. 2:4 Theodicee, Ft. 1:20.

5 Dictionnaire ties Sciences Philo&ophiques, T. iv., p. 61.

Metaphysical, Physical, and Moral. The first, malum metapliysicum, has been
defined by Leibnitz 1 as "in the general consisting in the imperfection of
things, even such as are non-intelligent; " the second, malum physicum, as
relating " specially to what incommodes intelligent substances; " and the third,
malum morale, as " belonging to the vicious actions of such." Stapfer defines
them thus: " Malum metaphysicum is defect of ulterior or greater perfection in a
thing, and consists, therefore, in limitation of essential determinations; " or
it may be called " the absence of ulterior reality and per fection in creatures;
" Malum physicum is "whatever is thought to render the state of things as
respects natural effects more imperfect than they would have been had they been
other than they are; " and Malum morale is " that on account of which men’s
actions are said to be vicious." 2 Or we may state the distinction thus: Every
existence has an ideal or ulterior perfection; when it comes short of that there
is evil.

Every sentient being has happiness as its end; whatever impedes or destroys this
is evil. Every intelligent being is bound to be morally good and virtuous;
wherever there is a departure from this, or a coming short of it, there is evil.

It may, however, be doubted whether the first of these should not, as well as
the last, be restricted to intelligent existences; inasmuch as it is only as it
affects them that imperfection in themselves, or in other existences, is an
evil. It may be further observed that even in reference to intelligent exist
ences imperfection is not so much an evil as a possible cause or occasion of
evil; for limitation, or even defect, if it do not lead to unhappiness or sin,
and if it do not hinder the due development of the being towards its proper end,
cannot with strict propriety be called an evil. All creature perfection is
necessarily relative perfection; absolute perfection belongs only to God;
consequently, if imperfection were in itself an evil there would be no creature,
however exalted and holy, who would be free from evil. Not only so, but it may
be better for a creature to be imperfect, as compared with an

1 " Metaphysicum generatim consistit in rerum etiam non intelligentium
imperfeetione; physicum accipitur speciatim de substantiarum intelligentium
incommodis; morale de earum actionibus viciosis." Causa Dei Asserta, 30-32.

2 Stapfer, Institt. Theol. Polem., T. 1. p. 110. ideal or absolute perfection,
than to be perfect, because thereby bore fitted for the position he has to
occupy in the universe.

(i.) We may satisfy ourselves, then, with a twofold division of evil physical
and moral: the former being whatever is opposed to or less than good, in the
sense of happiness; the latter whatever is opposed to or less than good in the
sense of rectitude, virtue, or holiness. We may further distinguish between the
absolutely good and the relatively good; the former of which is to be desired
for its own sake, the latter of which may be desired as a means to an end. A
correspon dent distinction of evil may be made; the antithesis of the absolutely
good being the absolutely evil, which cannot be chosen by perfect wisdom and
holiness, either for itself or as means to an end; and the antithesis of the
relatively good being the relatively evil, which, though not to be chosen for
itself, may be used by infinite goodness and wisdom as a means to an end, and
which in the case of physical evil may be even desired as the means best adapted
to secure some end that is good.

(ii.) Moral evil is often identified with sin. It would be more correct to say
that sin is moral evil viewed under a certain aspect, viz. as lawlessness
(avofjiia), as " illegalitas sen difformitas a lege." ] Moral evil is evil in
genera; sin is evil in specie; the former is malum in se, the latter is malum
prohibitum; and as the commission of what law forbids entails guilt and exposes
to punishment, this latter becomes also malum culpcc.

(iii.) The relations of physical and moral evil may be stated thus: 1. Physical
evil is by the divine ordinance the consequence of moral evil, and frequently
the outward exponent of what is hid from created vision. 2. Physical evil is
malum pcence, the punishment which is made to fall on the being who has been
guilty of the malum culpce: " Evil," says Augustine, " is twofold; there is the
evil which a man does and the evil which he suffers; what he does is sin, what
he suffers is punishment. The Divine Providence moderating and governing all
things, man so does evil as he wills that he suffers ill which he would not." 2
3. Physical evil may often 1 Calovius, System. Locc. Theol, v. p. 14.

2 " Dupliciter appellatur malum, unum <piod homo facit, alterum quod patitur;
be the means of preventing moral evil, and of securing the opposite good; it may
thus become not merely, as Hierocles calls it, TrovTjptas larpiKij, but even a
mediate or subsidiary good. 1

4. The converse may not lawfully take place; moral evil may not be resorted to
for the averting of physical evil; God never directly wills evil that good may
come; and He has forbidden this to us.

5. It is nevertheless possible, for aught we know to the contrary, that moral
evil may be the condition without which intelligent creature existence cannot
reach its highest and most perfect development, i.e. becomes entirely and for
ever superior to all defect and evil; and for this reason, though not directly
willed by God, it may be permitted by Him.

(iv.) The distinction between physical and moral evil has by some been
subverted. This is pre-eminently the case with the Pantheistic school. With
them, indeed, moral evil as such is wholly ignored. According to Spinoza, " Good
is that which we certainly know to be useful; and evil that which we certainly
know to impede or hinder in any degree our attaining any good." We propose to
ourselves an idea of man, or an exemplar of human nature, and good is that which
we know to be the medium of more and more approaching to that; while evil is
what we know to hinder us from reaching that. 2 Thus, from our concept of good,
all notion of moral Tightness or conformity to ethical law, and from our concept
of evil all notion of moral turpitude or difformity from moral law, is excluded.
Good is simply what is useful, as tending to the more perfect development of our
nature; and evil is only what is noxious, as tending in some degree to impede
that development. There is thus neither moral good nor moral evil; all is purely
physical or natural. Nor is this other than a necessary consequence of the
Pantheistic concept of the universe. For if God be the immanent cause of all
quod facit peccatum est, quod patitur poena. Divina Providentia cuncta moderante
et gubernante ita homo male facit quod vult ut male patiatur quod non vult."
Contr. Adimant. 100:26. So also Grotius: " Est autem poena general! significatur
malum passionis quod infligitur ob malum actionis." De Jure, 1. ii. c. 20, 1.

1 "Mala physica interdum fiunt bona subsidiata tanquam medix ad majora bona."
Leibnitz, Causa Dei Assert., 35.

2 Spinoza, Ethices, Pars iv., prcpfatio. things, and if sill thought be simply
God thinking, simply the consciousness of the one infinite substance, there
cannot be any real or essential distinction between right and wrong, moral good
and moral evil, because that would argue essential distinction in the divine
substance, which is impossible.

Pantheism thus leads necessarily to the obliteration of moral distinctions as
such, and resolves good and evil into the merely accidentally useful or hurtful.
Less pronounced are the conclusions of the naturalistic or sensualistic school
on this head; but with them also there is no real place for moral evil or sin.
With them all is the outcome of nature; good is that which is in accordance with
nature and promotes human happiness; evil is only at the worst defect, a short
coming from the abstract ideal, incident in the process of development to a
being which is gradually, by purely physical agencies, working towards it the
realization of that ideal. As Principal Tulloch has well remarked, " The two
conceptions of sin and of development in this naturalistic sense cannot coexist.
I cannot be the mere outcome of natural law, and yet accountable for the fact
that I am no better than I am.

If I am only the child of nature, I must be entitled to the privileges of
nature. If I have come from matter alone, then I cannot dwell within the shadow
of a responsibility whose birthplace is elsewhere in a different region
altogether." 1 To be in accordance with their own fundamental principles, the
disciples of the sensualistic school must hold that pleasure is the only good,
and pain or suffering the only evil, of which we have any knowledge. To the
other extreme have gone those who would resolve all evil into that which is
immoral, regarding pain and all forms of physical evil as mere accidents which
the wise man will regard with indifference, or as necessarily involved in that
moral evil of which they are the punishment. But it is vain to deny that pain,
suffering, disorder, are real evils; and it is a mistake to include that which
is the consequence and penalty of sin as part of the sin itself. As the pleasure
which God has made to attend on goodness is not itself goodness, so the pain
which He has made to attend on sin is a real evil, which must ever be
discriminated from sin itself.

1 Christian Doctrine of Sin, p. 5.


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  CHAPTER 15: F 02 THE, ORIGIN OF EVIL
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2. The, Origin of Evil.

Passing on to the consideration of the origin of evil, we come to a question the
most perplexing of all connected with the subject of evil. Tlodev TO KCLKOV;
this is an inquiry which from the dawn of speculation has excited the curiosity
and exercised the ingenuity of philosophic thinkers. 1 The hypotheses which have
been advanced for the solution of this problem may be classed under two heads,
as the Dualistic and the Monoistic. The Pantheistic hypothesis does not come
into consideration here; for on it the distinction between good and evil
virtually disappears, both being viewed as only varied applications or
manifestations of the One original, infinite, and eternal substance. We may also
pass over the hypothesis of pre - existence a hypothesis which was favoured by
Plato, who thought that our present knowledge is but a reminiscence of what we
experienced in a previous state of being, and who imagined he was furnished by
this with an argument in favour of the immortality of the soul, inasmuch as the
soul having passed from a previous state into the body without suffering
dissolution, might be presumed capable of passing out of the body into a future
state without being thereby destroyed. 2 This notion of Plato, which he probably
derived from Pythagoras, 3 was adopted by some of the Christian Fathers,
especially by Origen, whilst by others it was sternly repudiated. 4 Some such
notion seems to have been in the mind of Wordsworth when he wrote his splendid
ode, entitled, " Intimations of Immortality from recollections of early
childhood." 5 Strange to say, this notion has been of late revived in theology
by some who imagine it helps to account for the fact

1 " Eaedem materioe apud hsercticos et pliilosophos volutantur, iidem
retractatus implicantur: Unde malum et quare? " Tertullian, De Prcescr. Hceret.,
C. 7. vripl TOU vi>}.tj6pvXXvirou VKpot, Romans 7:1-25$ etiptffiturons & TV
par as, rou Uofov xetxia.

Euseb. Hist. Eccl., v. 27. Comp. also Epiplian. Hcvr., xxiv. 6.

2 See Plato’s Phcedo, c. 18, p. 73 A; Meno, p. 81 B; PJwedrw, p.

2-19 C; cf. Cicero, Tu.sc. Qucest., i. 24.

3 Diog. Laert., 1. viii. c. 4; Tkeodoret, Epitom. Div. Decret., 1. 9, p. 272,
quoted by Suicer, Thes. Ecdes., s.v. -^v^x.

4 Epiphan., Hceres., Ixiv.; Photius, Epist., i. p. 11, etc.; Cyrill. Alex., In
Johan., \. i. c. 9; comp. Davis’s note to Cicero, Tusc. Qu., i. 24.

5 See ante, p. 176. of original sin. It is a hypothesis, however, wholly
imaginary; it rests upon no evidence of any kind; and as related to the question
of the origin of evil, it is wholly worthless; for even were we to admit it, it
merely "removes," as Stewart remarks, "the difficulty a little out of sight,
without affording any explanation of it." To the question, Whence is evil? it is
no answer to say, It came with man from a previous state of being; for this only
provokes the inquiry, How came it into that previous state of being?

(i.) The Dualistic hypothesis is the earliest of which we have any knowledge,
and it is that which, we may say, would most naturally occur to those who,
without the knowledge of the one living and true God, sought to follow up the
sequence of good and evil in the universe to a primal source.

1. The oldest form in which this hypothesis appears is that of Zoroastrianism,
of which the more recent Parseeism is a product. In the Zend-Avesta, which, if
not the production of Zoroaster himself, is the authentic record of his
teachings, and is of great antiquity, it is taught that infinite, boundless
Time, of the origin of which no wise man inquires, brought forth fire and water,
from the union of which came Ormuzd (the Oromasdes of the Greek writers), the
luminous, pure, fragrant, the lover of all good, and capable of all good. As he
looked into the abyss, he saw at a vast distance Ahriman (the Arimanes of the
Greeks), black, impure, of evil savour, and wicked. Ormuzd, startled by the
sight of this terrible foe, set himself to endeavour his removal, considered how
this might be accomplished, and gave himself to this work. Thus arose conflict
between the two, between the supremely good and the supremely evil principle,
between light and darkness, of which the universe is the theatre. This conflict,
the idea of which is the general formula of the universe, is symbolized in the
natural world by the succession of day and night, which dispute the empire of
Time, and alternately put each other to flight. Man also is the subject of this
conflict. From Ormuzd he has received a soul, understanding, judg ment, the
principle of sensation, and the five senses. 1 From Ahriman come to men lust,
want, envy, hatred, defilement, falsehood, and wrath. Thus it is that there is
evil in the 1 Anquetil du Perron-, Zend-Avesta, Paris, 1771. world, and that the
evil constantly strives against the good.

Whatever else may be said of this speculation, it must, as an attempt to explain
the origin of evil, be pronounced wholly inadequate. For whilst, on the one
hand, it starts from the assumption of a primal unity as the source of good, it,
on the other, leaves the origin of the evil principle immersed in obscurity. If
Ahura Mazda, the Eternal Time, produced Ormuzd, how or by whom was Ahriman
produced? As to this opinions differ among the Parsees. Some say that Time
produced Ahriman in order that Ormuzd might know that it is omnipotent; others
say Time produced both Ormuzd and Ahriman, that the bad might be mingled with
the good, and diversified things be produced; others, that Time did not produce
Ahriman, though able to do this had it so pleased; and others, that Ahriman is a
fallen angel, cursed because of disobedience. 1 These, it will be seen, are not
answers to the question, Whence is evil? but rather mere evasions of it. The
whole remains in darkness, unless it be said that the primal unity, Infinite
Time, produced the evil as well as the good.

2. Among the Greeks the Dualistic Hypothesis assumed a different form. Whilst
they held the existence of an eternal deity (TO Oeiov), they also taught that
there is an eternal matter (v\rj), the material cause of things. This Hyle they
"represented under various images as the darkness that exists along with the
light; as the void (rceva)fj,a, xevov) in opposition to the fulness of the
divine life; as the shadow that accom panies the light; as the chaos, the
stagnant, dead water." This Hyle is thus essentially evil; and as it has
acquired a sort of life and energy, there has arisen an active opposition to the
godlike, and hence, as products of the Hyle, all evil things and beings have
come into existence. This hypothesis may be regarded as in a way accounting for
the origin of evil; but it rests on a basis which is purely imaginary, the
existence of an eternal Hyle being assumed without a shadow of evi dence. It may
be therefore relegated to that limbo where rest so many idle fancies with which
speculative thinkers have 1 Vullers, Frar/mente ub. die Religion des Zoroasters,
p. 50.

2 Neander, Hint, of the Church, vol. ii. p. 13, Eng. Tr. amused or deceived
themselves when seeking to account for what lies beyond the bounds of human
knowledge. This Hyleistic hypothesis was revived among the Gnostics, by certain
of whom it was mixed up with and modified by opinions and notions borrowed from
Christian sources. Such was the doctrine taught by Basilides and Valentinus and
their followers. Others among the Gnostics adopted the Persian hypothesis, " a
doctrine," as Neander remarks, "which it would be natural, especially for those
Gnostic sects which originated in Syria, to appropriate to themselves." Of these
sects, that best known is that of the Maniclueaiis, so called from their
founder, Manes or Manis, a Persian sage, who, falling under the displeasure of
the Magi, was persecuted by them and obliged to flee, and who, alienated from
the tenets which they favoured, sought, by combining Christianity with the
unquali fied dualism of the ancient Parsee faith, to construct a religious
system that should satisfy human reason and account for the facts of the world.
Of this system the following account given by Gieseler:

" His system of religion rests on the assumption of two everlasting kingdoms
coexisting and bordering on each other, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of
darkness, the former under the dominion of God, the latter under the demon, or
Hyle. After the borders had been broken through by a war between the two
kingdoms, and the material of light had been mixed with the material of
darkness, God caused the world to be formed by the living spirit (&v irvev^a,
spiritus vivcns) out of this mixed material, in order that by degrees the
material of light here captured (anima and Jesus patibilis) might be again
separated, and the old boundaries restored. Two exalted natures of light, Christ
(whom Mani calls in preference dextm luminis, TOV aiSiov <a>T V o<?
ino?, etc.) and the Holy Spirit, the former dwelling in the sun and moon
(naves), the latter in the air, conduct this process of bringing back the
material of light, while the demon and the evil spirits, fettered to the stars,
endeavour to hinder them. In every man there dwells an evil soul besides the
soul of light; and it is his commission to secure to the latter the sway over
the former, to unite with it as many as possible of the elements of light which
are scattered in nature, especially in certain plants, and thus to free it from
the fetters of the evil principle, and prepare the way for its return to the
kingdom of light." 1 This curious compound of Oriental theosophy with Christian
ideas found many to accept it, though it was vehemently opposed by the Catholic
Church and the most eminent of the Christian Fathers. In the early part of his
career it was espoused by Augustine; but he soon after renounced it, and became
one of its most determined, as he was one of its ablest, opponents. After having
apparently died out, it suddenly sprang up again in the East in the 12th
century, in the sect of the Paulicians, and rapidly spread through many parts of
Europe. " It was soon discovered," says Gibbon, " that many thousand Catholics
of rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichaean heresy, and the flames
which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was the first act and signal of
persecution." 2 This was followed by many other such acts, directed chiefly
against the Albigenses in the south of France, who united with the Paulicians in
their opposition to Home, and in their attachment to a simpler polity and a
purer worship than that which Rome upheld, though to what extent they had
embraced the peculiar doctrine of Manichaeism does not clearly appear.

Strange to say, this doctrine found favour with a philosopher of our own age.
Writing of his father, Mr. John Stuart Mill says, " He found it impossible to
believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an author combining
infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness, and he was not dis
inclined to the Sabaean and Manichsean theory of a good and an evil principle
struggling against each other for the govern ment of the universe." " In this
system it is evident that the Christian elements are wholly subordinated to the
old Pagan hypothesis of an eternal good and an eternal evil principle; it is
simply a reproduction of the Zoroastrian doctrine, and is exposed to the same
censure

1 Compendium of Eccles. Hist. , translated "by Davidson, vol. 1. p. 224, Clark s
Series. A very fiill account of the Manichsean system is given by Meander, Gen.
Ch. Hist., vol. ii. p. 157 ff., Torrey’s translation. He describes it as a "
Buddhist-Zoroastrian-Christian system." See also Bayle, Dictionnaire, arts.

Manichee and Paulicien.

2 Decline and Fall, vol. x. p. 177, Milman’s edition.

3 Autobiography t by J. S. Mill. which the all but unanimous judgment of mankind
has pro nounced upon it.

(ii.) Turning now to the Monoistic hypothesis, we shall at once dismiss, as not
deserving consideration, the Pagan doctrine that the one infinite and eternal
God is the author of evil as well as good. 1 Such a doctrine not only
contradicts all the laws and facts of man’s moral consciousness, but is in fact
suicidal; for if God be the author of evil as well as of good, there must be a
duplicity in His essence, or He must be liable to change, and in either case He
ceases to be eternal and infinite. There can be no just conception of God which
does not regard Him in relation to evil as simply permitting it, not causing or
originating it. But assuming that God simply permits evil, the question remains,
Whence did it originate? and with this comes up another question, How is it that
evil has been permitted by God? To the first of these questions an answer has
been given which has come down from Plato, through St. Augustine, Leibnitz, 2
and others to our own time. This answer founds upon the position that evil is
not something positive, but something negative, and arises from a negative
cause, viz. the necessary limitation and imperfection of the creature.

" Where shall we find the source of evil? " says Leibnitz.

" The answer is, It must be sought in the ideal nature of the creature in as far
as that nature is shut up in the eternal verities which are in the understanding
of God, independent of His will. It must be considered that there is an original
imperfection in the creature previous to sin, because the creature is limited
essentially; whence it comes that it cannot know all, and that it can be
deceived and commit other faults." In later times one of the ablest expounders
and defenders of this theory was Dr. Edward Williams, theological professor in
liotherharn College. It is set forth by him in his Essay on Equity and
Sovereignty, and also in his notes to Edwards On

" Pagan i bona et mala, tetra et splendida, pcrpetua et caduca, mutabilia et
evta, corporalia et divina unum habere principium dogmati/aiit." Augustin,
Contr. Faunt. 1:20:100:3.

2 See Cudworth, Intell. Syxt., vol. 1. p. 448 ff., Harrison’s ed.; Augustin, De,
Civitate Dei; Leibnitz, Theodicee, 1:20, etc. the Will, in the edition of
Edwards Works edited by him and the Eev. Ed. Parsons. 1 From the latter source I
borrow a statement of his view as to the origin of evil. " The entrance of sin
into the world, or the true and precise origin of moral evil, may be found in
two causes united, the one positive, the other negative, but neither of which is
morally good or morally evil. If the cause were morally -good, the effect could
not be morally bad; and if morally evil, it would be contrary to the third axiom
[that the origin of moral evil cannot be moral evil, which would make a thing
the cause of itself] and to common sense. These two causes are, first, liberty a
cause naturally good; secondly, passive power a cause naturally evil. And these
two causes are as necessary for the production of moral evil as two parents for
the produc tion of a human being according to the laws of nature." On this it is
obvious to remark that one does not see how liberty, which is merely freedom to
act, can be properly regarded as a cause. Without liberty, it is true, there can
be no action and no effect; but the liberty merely furnishes the opportunity or
sphere of action: it is in no sense a cause from which the effect flows. The
sole cause, then, of moral evil is, according to this theory, what Dr. Williams
calls passive power; and this he defines to be " that natural defect which
exists in a created nature as a contrast to the natural (not the moral)
perfections of God " (p. 249). It thus appears that his theory is substantially
the same as that of Leibnitz.

Dr. Wardlaw has devoted one of his lectures to an examina tion of Dr. Williams
theory; 2 and to this I refer you for a full discussion of the question. I
content myself here with remarking on this hypothesis generally: 1. That it
seems utterly incongruous to suppose that a cause which is not itself moral
should produce a moral result. According to the hypothesis what Williams calls "
passive power," and Leibnitz " original imperfection in the creature," is a
purely natural power having no moral quality whatever. By what possi bility
then, we may ask, can it of necessity produce in a creature not already evil a
bad moral effect? As Dr. Wardlaw has observed, " If there be no unholiness and
no guilt but what is the result of choice, it is anything but self 1 Vol. 1. p.
398 ff. - Theoloyy, vol. ii. p. 93. evident tliat what is good (without any evil
tendency) should necessarily prefer evil; what is holy, sin; what is innocent,
guilt." 2. In this hypothesis it is assumed that defect in the creature
necessarily leads to evil. But if by defect is meant faultiness or vitiosity,
the proposition that there is evil in the universe because of defect in the
creature, becomes a purely identical one, tantamount to the assertion that there
is evil because there is evil. If, on the other hand, by defect is meant mere
limitation, then the assertion simply affirms that the creature is potentially
evil; it in no way explains how that potentiality becomes an actuality, which is
the real question at issue. The creature because of limited powers may be liable
to sin; but it by no means follows from this he must of necessity sin. 3. On
this hypothesis it seems impossible either to vindicate the divine equity or to
maintain the moral responsibility of the creature. For the creature, being
created by God, is as God has made him. But if God has made him so that he
cannot but fall into evil if left to himself, how can the creature be held
justly responsible for obeying this necessary tendency, or how can God be said
to deal equitably if He first make a creature with a rational and necessary
tendency to evil, and then treat him as guilty and punishable if he yield to
this tendency? Dr. Williams has struggled hard to get over this objection and
difficulty, but, as Wardlaw has, I think, conclusively shown, without success.

(iii.) In setting aside this hypothesis, we set aside the only one for which any
show of reason can be adduced. We are therefore reduced to the necessity of
admitting that the question, How came evil into the world? is by us insoluble.

All we can say is that evil exists, and that God, for purposes known to Himself,
permitted it somehow to enter His universe. That this conclusion is burdened
with serious difficulties it would be vain to deny. The question cannot but rise
up in the mind, Why has God permitted evil if He is not the Author of it? The
Epicureans of old propounded this dilemma :

"Aut non vult, aut non potest tollere malum." Evil is here either because God
does riot will to remove it or because He is impotent to remove it; and men may
say the same as to His permitting it to originate. In either case we lose the
true thought of God. If He has willed evil to exist, how can He be good and
holy? If He was unable to prevent it, how can He be omnipotent? This is a
difficulty which human reason is unable to remove; nor does the Bible help us
here by any of its revelations. The Bible, however, fully authorizes the only
positive con clusions to which we can come on this dark subject. It certifies us
that God is not the author of evil in any sense; that though able to prevent it,
He has nevertheless permitted it to exist; and that though He has permitted it
to exist, He neither directly wills it, nor regards it otherwise than with
abhorrence. It is true we meet in the Bible with such utterances as, " Shall
there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it? " (Amos 3:6). " I am
the Lord, and there is none else. I form light, and create darkness; I make
peace, and create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things " (Isaiah 45:7); and
there are some who lay hold on these, and are bold to affirm that " the older
prophets and prophetic historians had not hesitated to derive even evil, moral
evil not excepted, from Jahveh." l But in the Bible God is often said to do what
He only permits to be done, or what comes to pass through His providential
arrangements; and such statements as those above quoted are to be interpreted in
accordance with the general teaching of Scripture, which invariably sets forth
that though it is by God’s will that evil is permitted, the evil itself is ever
what is wholly unauthorized by Him, and wholly opposed to Him. He permits evil
to exist, and He makes use of the evil that exists to accomplish His own
purposes; but the evil does not originate with Him, and He ever regards it with
abhorrence. From the Bible also we learn that the evil permitted in the universe
is not only less than the good directly willed by God, but is characterized as
something intrusive and transitory, while the good is real, fundamental, and
permanent. Further, the Bible assures us that in permitting evil God has not
left it uncontrolled or at the disposal of any evil power, but ever holds it in
His own power, and will make it subservient to His purposes, so that ultimately
a larger amount of good will be evolved than if 1 Kucnen, Religion of Israel,
3:40, E. Tr. evil had not been permitted. In fine, we may rest assured that what
is perplexing to us in the existence of evil arises out of the limitation of our
faculties and imperfection of our knowledge; and that, as in the natural world
many phenomena which to the untutored mind appear anomalous and inexplicable are
by the philosophers seen to be in accordance with law and with the order of the
universe, so the phenomenon of evil, which to us is so full of difficulty, may
by higher intelligences must by the Highest be seen to be in full accordance
with the noblest order and the purest rectitude. " If it be asked," says Dr.
Eeid, 1 " Why does God permit so much sin in His creation? I confess I cannot
answer the question, but must lay my hand upon my mouth. He giveth no account of
His conduct to the children of men. It is our part to obey His commands, and not
to say unto Him, Why dost Thou thus? " " Great," says Lord Brougham, 2 " as have
been our achievements in physical astronomy, we are as yet wholly unable to
understand why a power pervades the system acting inversely as the square of the
distance from the point to which it attracts, rather than a power acting
according to any other law; arid why it has been the pleasure of the Almighty
Architect of that universe that the orbits of the planets should be nearly
circular instead of approaching to or being exactly the same with many other
trajectories of a nearly similar form, though of other properties; nay, instead
of being curves of a wholly different class and shape. Yet we never doubt that
there was a reason for this choice; nay, we fancy it possible that even on earth
we may hereafter understand it more clearly than we now do; and never question
that in another state of being we may be permitted to enjoy the con templation
of it. Why should we doubt that, at least in that higher state, we may also be
enabled to perceive such an arrangement as shall make evil wholly disappear from
our present system, by showing us that it was necessary and inevitable even in
the works of the Deity; or, which is the same thing, that its existence conduces
to such a degree of perfection and happiness upon the whole as could not even by
omnipotence be secured without it; or, which is also the same 1 Essays on the
Active Powers, Ess. iv. ch. xi. "Works by Hamilton, p. 634.

" Dissertations appended to Paley’s Natural Theology, vol. ii. p. 73. thing,
that the whole creation as it exists, taking both worlds together, is perfect,
and incapable of being in any particular changed without being made worse and
less perfect? "


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  CHAPTER 16: G 00 - CHAPTER VII THE NATURE
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CHAPTER VII THE NATURE OF SIN.

There is no subject on which it is of greater importance that we should have
just views than the subject of sin, its nature, its source, and its guilt. By
our views on this subject all our views of the Christian system will be
modified. According as we regard sin shall we regard deliverance from sin, and
the proper method by which that deliverance is to be effected.

If we err on the first of these points, we can hardly fail to err also on the
others. The mind does not willingly retain doctrines as parts of the same system
which do not fundamentally agree.

If an error be adopted and retained on one point, it will be almost sure to
insinuate its poison so as to corrupt all that surrounds ib. And especially if
we adopt an error on any point which comes first in order in a connected series
of opinions, there is hardly a possibility of escaping error on subsequent
points in the series. Hence, in point of fact, wrong conceptions of the nature
of sin will be found to lie at the basis both of infidel systems and of those
false forms of Christianity which affect the vital doctrines of religion;
whereas, on the other hand, a sound evangelical theology has always had its root
in a just and scriptural view of the nature of sin. Nor is this merely a
question of theoretical interest; it has also an intimate bearing on the
practical interests of Chris tianity. The religion of Jesus Christ is a scheme
for destroy ing sin, first in the individual, and then through him in the race.
To those who embrace it the great duty of their life comes to be to fight
against sin and seek its destruction in themselves and others. Sin is their
great antagonist, which they are by all means to resist and to overcome and to
keep under. But how shall they effectually do this if they do not understand
aright what sin is? What soldier can contend successfully if he know not the
kind of enemy he has to deal with? or what can be expected but disaster, and it
may be defeat, to the general who is misled by wrong, by partial, or by
unfounded intelligence respecting the resources, arrange ments, and designs of
his antagonist? If, then, the practical Christian would prove himself a good
soldier of Jesus Christ, he must begin by ascertaining aright what is the nature
and qualities of sin that great adversary from which Christ came to deliver man,
and against which he as a follower of Christ has to contend.


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  CHAPTER 17: G 01 GENERAL TESTIMONY SCRIPTURE CONCERNING
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1. Description of Sin in1 John 3:4.

Now to this question the Apostle John gives us a very brief but most explicit
answer: JZa? 6 TTOLWV rrjv a/j.apTiav, KOI T7)v avofiiav TTOLEL /cal rj dfiapria
ecrrlv r) avofJLia (1 John 3:4). Here we have both the subjective and the
objective presupposition of the possibility of sin. The subjective pre
supposition is that man can do that which is a^aprla, sin; that is, that man has
a capacity of distinguishing right from wrong, and that he can choose to do
wrong and will to do it in other words, that he is a moral agent endowed with
conscience and will, and so responsible for his conduct. The objective
presupposition is that there is a law under which man is placed, which he is
under obligation to obey, and which exists independently of his will and choice.
Of this law sin is pronounced to be the transgression, or rather sin
is.avo/jiia, lawlessness; a term which embraces not only positive violations of
the law, but also failures and omissions in respect of any of its precepts, in
short, all departures from it, whether by going athwart it or by falling short
of it. The law, then, conditions the possibility of sin. Were there no law there
would be no sin properly so called. As St. Paul says, " W r here no law is,
there is no transgression; " and again, " Sin is not imputed where there is no
law " (Romans 4:15, Romans 5:13). A free agent utterly without law might do what
was morally wrong, i.e. what is contrary to the divine nature, but for him it
would not be sin. Nor, on the other hand, even where there is a law does the
transgression of it become sin save on the supposition that the transgressor is
a free moral agent, knowing the law and willing to transgress it. With this
definition in view we have only, in the first place, correctly to understand all
that it implies, and, in the second place, to perceive its accordance with the
general testimony of Scripture and the facts of our own consciousness to realize
to ourselves a just and full and satisfactory answer to the question, What is
sin?

(i.) In proceeding to expound this definition, the first thing to which I ask
your attention is the recognition it makes of a distinction between the concept
of lawlessness and the concept of sin. The proposition " sin is lawlessness " is
not a mere identical or explicative proposition; it is ampliative and definitive
of the just idea of sin: in other words, it implies that sin may be conceived of
otherwise than as law lessness. Now, this is true. Sin may be viewed merely as
evil, as a thing which we cannot approve of, as an unlovely thing, or as a thing
which is attended with unpleasant conse quences. But under none of these aspects
does sin necessarily involve the idea of lawlessness, from which it follows that
when it is positively said to be lawlessness something more is told than already
lay in the idea of sin. We must understand St. John, then, as meaning to tell us
that sin is something more than merely evil or unlovely, that its essence lies
in its want of accordance with a law, that it always has reference to a law as
that by which its character is determined, and that though apart from a law
there may be evil, apart from a law there can be no sin.

(ii.) It enters into the idea of law that it should be some thing enacted and
rendered imperative on those who are under it. Law is something more than order:
it is authorita tive order. It not only enunciates something good; it also
commands and enjoins that good. It properly assumes the form of an imperative
direction, with a threatened penalty in case of transgression. It is only in a
secondary and derivative sense that this term is used to denote some general
fact or principle, as when we speak of the laws of nature, by which we mean the
great general principles according to which Nature carries on her operations;
though even here the idea of imperativeness is not altogether excluded, because
in con struing these general principles we tacitly assume that the power of the
Creator has been exercised in impressing upon matter that constant conformity to
these general principles which we speak of as obedience to the laws of Nature. "
By creating His materials endued with certain fixed qualities and forms, the
Divine Author of the universe has impressed them in their origin with the
spirit, not the letter, of His law, and made all their subsequent combinations
and relations inevitable consequences of this first impression." * Even in the
case of a law of nature, then, the idea of authority and imperativeness is
preserved; and this, which is a fundamental idea of law, comes forward into
primary importance in all laws which are designed to regulate the conduct of
intelligent and moral agents. A law for them is an enactment which they are
bound to obey. It is a positive injunction which they are authoritatively called
to follow. We cannot conceive of a law for such which does not essentially
involve and primarily set forth this idea. Abstract the notion of imperativeness
from the law, and of corresponding obligation on the part of the agent, and the
idea of law disappears altogether. The party may still act in the way the law
prescribes, but he does so not in virtue of the law, or from regard to it, but
for some other reason with which the law as law has nothing to do.

When, therefore, sin is spoken of as a transgression of the law, or as
lawlessness, it means not only that sin is an un lovely thing, but that it is
also of the nature of rebellion to a lawful authority that it is not only an act
of disorder, but also an act of disobedience.

(iii.) A law implies a lawgiver a superior authority from which the enactment
emanates, and by which it is upheld.

Now, in the case of Man and the law under which he has been placed, this
authority is God. Man’s condition as a creature implies that he is under law to
God. Just as he must use the material universe as he finds it subject to a fixed
ordinance imposed upon it by the fiat of the Creator, so must he himself, as a
part of God’s creation, regulate his 1 Herschell, Discourse on Nat. Phil., p.
37. conduct according to those laws under which the will of God has placed him.
It is true it is not the mere will of God the merum arbitrium Dei of the
schoolmen which constitutes the distinction between what is right and wrong in a
moral point of view: that distinction finds its ground in the Eternal Mind
itself in the unchangeable nature of Jehovah. But though the will of God is not
the basis of rectitude and good ness, it is that by which rectitude and goodness
are made known to us and made incumbent upon us. Man can never be, strictly
speaking, a law to himself. The law that binds him must be something out of
himself something above himself. Through whatever medium he may acquire a know
ledge of that law, whether from the constitution of his own moral nature, or
from perceiving the relations of things, or by direct revelation from God, the
law itself can be resolved only into the will of Him by whom the moral nature of
man has been made such as it is, by whom the relations of things have been
ordained, and from whom all revelations of moral and religious truth come. When
sin, then, is said to be a transgression of the law or a dereliction from it, we
must regard it as an act of disobedience against God, whose will the law
enunciates. Sin, therefore, is not merely evil, it is not merely disorder, it is
disobedience against God an act of virtual rebellion against Him as the great
Moral Governor of the universe.

(iv.) Sin as lawlessness includes not only positive violations of the law, but
all that comes short of con formity to it. In the definition of sin given in the
Shorter Catechism, it is described as " any want of conformity to or
transgression of the law of God; " and this twofold aspect of it is held by
almost all who have written on the subject. 1 For such an opinion there appears
the best grounds. If God impose upon His intelligent creature a law or a rule of
action, it seems to be equally a departure from that law whether the creature
does what the law forbids or omits to do what the law enjoins; and if the former
is to be treated as an act of dis

1 Gerhard: " Peccatum sen ava^/a est aberratio a lege, sive non congruentia cum
lege sive ea in ipsa natura hserat, sive in dictis, factis, ac concupiscentise
inotibus inveniatur." Calov.: " Illegalitas seu difformitas a lege." Reinhard:

"Absentia convenientise cum lege." Dog., p. 267. obedience and rebellion, the
latter surely should be treated as such likewise. To affirm otherwise would seem
to lead to the monstrous conclusion that if God enjoins anything as good, we can
sin only by doing something the opposite of that; there is no sin in wilfully
falling short of it: so that, e.g., if He command a creature to love Him with
his whole heart, that creature would sin only if he hated God, not if he failed
to love Him, or came short of loving Him supremely. A doctrine like this is not
only dangerous, but apparently utterly unreasonable. It has therefore been all
but univer sally repudiated by all theologians; nor would it be necessary to
dwell upon the subject were it not that a very serious use is sometimes made of
the doctrine, viz. that though a creature cannot reach such perfection as the
law embodies, he may yet live without sin if he only does not transgress the
law, and if he do his honest endeavour to come up to the law, a doctrine on
which the Papal scheme of works of merit and supererogation rests. In support of
this doctrine an ingenious objection to the view above contended for has
sometimes been propounded. It is this: If, it is said, this principle holds good
of man, it must hold good in reference to all God s intelligent and moral
creatures; it must hold good, therefore, of those who are sinless. Now, those
sinless creatures, being creatures, are not infinitely perfect, that belongs
only to God; they are therefore creatures who fall short of what is absolutely
good and holy. But if a shortcoming from what is good be sinful, it follows that
these are not sinless beings, and that there never can be sinless creatures, and
that all advances in goodness and holiness being in reality short of perfect
goodness and holiness, are nothing else than acts of sin. This reasoning has an
air of plausibility, but that it is fallacious every one must feel; and it is
not difficult to point out where the fallacy lies. The author of the objection
has tacitly assumed that God can never impose upon any of His creatures a law
which requires less than absolute perfection; for if it be posited that God may
impose a law which demands only relative perfection, i.e. perfection relative to
the conditions and capacities of the being on whom it is imposed, his objec tion
loses all force, seeing in this case there may be a full coming up to the
standard of the law and yet a coming short of absolute perfection. Now that this
is actually the case, and that what the objection has assumed is false, all
reason and experience conspire to show. Of all the laws which God has imposed
upon His intelligent creatures of which we have any knowledge, there is not one
which exacts anything more than a relative perfection. Take, e.g., the first
great law of love to God. In this man is not required to love God as He in the
infinitude of His being and perfections deserves to be loved, but only as far as
man’s capacity extends; he is to love God with all his heart, and strength, and
mind; and he who does this is sinless so far as this precept extends. If man had
a higher capacity, more of mind and more of might, then the degree in which it
is now his duty to love God would be too low for what would then be required of
him; but still it would only be relatively to his capacities that the law would
be binding on him. It is the same with all God’s laws: they are adapted to the
nature and the capacity of His creatures on whom they are imposed; and it is
reason able it should be so: for how can we conceive of God imposing upon man a
law which he never could fully obey, which came not nigh to him, within the
range of his ordinary capacities, but stood afar, at an infinite reach above
him?

It is possible, then, for a creature to be sinless and yet come short of
absolute perfection, even though the principle be held that a want of conformity
to the law is sin; inasmuch as sinlessness consists not in conformity to the
highest possible good, but in conformity to that degree of good which is in
culcated by the law under which he has been placed, and is within the range of
his capacities.

(v.) The law of God extends to the inner motive whence actions spring, as well
as to the actions themselves. It is,indeed, in a moral point of view impossible
to separate these two. The motive and the act constitute one moral whole; and
though man can only judge this motive from the act, God who sees the inner soul
of man, and searches his heart, judges the motive along with the act. Nay, even
when the mental feeling does not give birth to a positive act, it has a substan
tive existence in His sight, and is weighed in the balances of His unerring
judgment. It is impossible, therefore, for us to obey the law of God unless we
obey it from the heart. An act cannot be good whilst the motive from which it
springs is had. The commandment of God " is exceeding broad: " it reaches from
the circumference to the centre of our active being; it aims at the regulation
of all our thoughts and feelings as well as all our actions; and it may be
transgressed as well by a wrong state of mind as by wrong words or wrongdeeds.

2. The General Testimony of Scripture concerning Sin.

Having thus expounded the statement of the Apostle John, I now proceed to show
that the doctrine thus laid down is in full accordance with the general
testimony of Scripture. Here I notice,

(i.) The terms employed in Scripture to designate sin. Of these terms a few,
such as Trowrjpov, KCLKOV, ala^pov, and the Hebrew py, convey immediately the
idea of the moral turpi tude, the unloveliness and baseness of sin; but by far
the greater part, and those most frequently used, are such as convey the idea
that sin is the not doing on the part of man of something which by law and
prescription he is bound to do. Sometimes it is presented as the missing of a
mark which man ought to reach, or of the path he ought to keep, as in aftaprla
and ^9^> anc ^ their cognates; sometimes as a deflection from God’s way, or
recoil from God, as ""no, from TID, "to resile or draw back ;"?jy, from^JJ, "he
turned aside;" and sometimes as lawlessness or guiltiness, i,e. liability to a
legal penalty, as avo^ia and Trapafiaaw, with the Hebrew ytn, from 3JBH, which
in the Hiphil signifies " to declare guilty of a breach of law," " to condemn,"
as, e.g., Deuteronomy 25:1: " If there be a controversy between men, and they
come with judgment that they may judge them, then they shall justify the
righteous and condemn (WE*"|nV) the wicked." In all these terms we find the two
fundamental ideas of, first, some thing man ought to do or to be; and, secondly,
a failing on the part of man to perform that requirement. The idea of sin
consequently shadowed forth by these designations is essentially that of the
want of conformity to or transgression of a law. And the same is conveyed by
those passages of Scripture which represent sin as something done against God;
for as God is the author of the law under which man is placed, as well as its
administrator, every breach of the law must be an offence against Him, an act of
godlessness and impiety as well as of disobedience. Hence such expressions as
a<je/3eta, TrapaTrrco/jia, and W&, " rebellion " or " revolt," etc.

(ii.) The support this receives from other express state ments of the word of
God. Take, e.g., the declarations of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (iii.
20): "By the law is the knowledge of sin," i.e. it is by the enactment of the
law that what is sin is determined, and by its sentence that the transgressor
knows he has sinned. Still more explicitly does Paul in the same Epistle
reiterate the statement of St. John when he says (v. 13), " Sin is not imputed
where there is no law," a statement which plainly intimates that sin takes its
birth and being from the law of which it is a transgression, and that apart from
the law there would be no sin. To the same effect are such statements as these,
"Where there is no law there is no transgression." " Without the law sin was
dead." " The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law" (Romans
4:15; Romans 7:8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-58.

56). In all these passages the same great truth is set forth.

Man is not only a being susceptible of moral impressions and capable of moral
distinctions; he is directly and authorita tively under law to God, bound to
obey His will, and subject to obligation to do that which is right and to
abstain from that which is wrong. As God’s creature he is the subject of a
kingdom which has laws for the regulation of its affairs and penalties to be
inflicted on those who are rebellious. Now, these laws man does not keep as he
ought. Some things which God has commanded him to do he refuses or neglects to
do, and some things which God has forbidden he persists in doing. There is thus
a want of conformity on his part to God’s law, transgression and lawlessness;
and this the Bible stigmatizes as sin.

(iii.) The account which the Bible gives of the first great sin which man ever
committed places this truth in a clear light. That sin consisted, so far as the
act was concerned, in the eating of a particular fruit which our first parents
had been forbidden to eat. Now, wherein lay the sin here? Not in the mere act
surely: there was nothing immoral in that; the eating of one fruit was per se as
innocent as the eating of another. The sin lay in this act being contrary to
God’s ex press command; in its being, therefore, an act of disobedience against
God, and virtual rebellion against Him. Here then lay the essence of the first
sin, it was an act of lawless ness; and it stands out with this single character
of evil belonging to it at the head of all the long train of woes and evils
which it brought into the world, an awful and memorable comment on the
declaration that sin is the trans gression of law.

(iv.) It is on this ground that sin may be righteously punished. That God should
inflict suffering of any kind upon His intelligent creatures is a fact not to be
contemplated without anxious and solemn feeling. Every thoughtful man will feel
that there is a difficulty in the fact which there is a pressing urgency to have
removed. Is it righteous in God to make suffering consequent on any wrong act?
Is it consis tent with His goodness and beneficence to make physical calamity
consequent upon moral evil? These are difficult questions, and I apprehend we
can steer our way to a solution of them only by keeping fast hold of the
principle that it is not simply as moral evil that sin is punished, but because
being morally evil it is the transgression of the divine law.

It is of the essence of a law that it be enforced by penal sanctions; and it is
indispensable to the stability of a law that when the sanctioning penalty has
been incurred it shall be inflicted. The punishment of the sinner, therefore,
flows out of his position as under a law of which his sin is a trans gression;
it comes to pass by the necessity of the case; it could not be otherwise. Man as
a creature is conditioned by law; man as a moral creature is conditioned by
moral law; law to be law must be sanctioned by a threatened penalty to be
inflicted on the transgressor, and when the penalty is incurred it must be
inflicted, else the law will become of none effect. When man thus sins and is
punished for it, this is no arbitrary act of the divine administration; it is a
necessary and unavoidable consequence of his sin being a transgression of the
divine law. On this ground, there fore, may the punishment of sin by God be
vindicated, on this, but not on any other; and hence there comes back from that
suffering which is the penalty of sin a clear testimony of the truth that sin is
the transgression of the law.

(v.) The doctrine of redemption by atonement rests for its vindication on this
view of sin. For suppose man’s sin to be merely an offence of a personal kind
against God, the doing of something repugnant to His wishes, or merely a
departure from moral order, it will not be easy to see what inseparable barrier
lay in the way of his offences being for given without an atonement on his
repenting and entering on a better course. A mere personal offence might have
been forgiven on the representation of the offender; and as to sin being a
breach of moral order, it is difficult to see why atone ment should be made for
that, or, indeed, what sense we are to attach to the expression " atonement to
the moral order of the universe; " one might as well speak of making atonement
to the physical order of the universe. It is only when we distinctly realize and
represent to our minds the idea of government by law, and of sin as a violation
of that law, and an act of rebellion against that government, that the necessity
of an atonement for the pardon of sin becomes manifest. In that case it is at
once seen that where sin has been committed and the penalty consequently of the
law incurred, one of two things must happen if the law is to be sustained:
either the sinner must endure the penalty he has incurred, or an atonement must
be made for his sin which shall have the effect of making his forgiveness and
release compatible with the claims and honour of the law. It appears, then, that
unless we keep steadily before us the view of sin as a trans gression of the law
of God, we shall be unable to see clearly whence arose the necessity of an
atonement for sin ere it could be forgiven. And here I may observe how, in point
of fact, the theological systems of men are necessarily moulded according as
they take or refuse this view of sin. If men think of sin simply as an infirmity
or an error, deserving censure, it may be, but still more calling for pity and
compassion; or if they view it merely in the light of an immorality, a departure
from ethical propriety or the moral order of the world, a thing requiring to be
put right, but not entailing any punishment on the party who has gone astray, it
is easy to see that their views of redemption and of the relation of Christ to
the sinner will be exceedingly different from those of the man who views sin as
an act of transgression, a breach of the law which God, as the great Euler, has
given man to obey, an act of rebellion against God, entailing upon the party
commit ting it the charge of guilt in the sight of God, and exposing him to the
penalty attached to the breach of that law, as legally his due. To the former,
salvation means nothing more than rescue from evil; to the latter, it means also
and primarily deliverance from guilt. The one thinks merely of escape from the
discomforts and disadvantages of a weak moral nature; the other thinks primarily
of pardon for damnatory offences as introductory to reconciliation with God and
restoration to moral power and goodness. Into the mind of the one there enters
simply the idea of moral tightness as constituting salvation; in the mind of the
other there is pro minent, as antecedent to that, the idea of legal
righteousness or justification at the bar of God. Clearly, therefore, because
these two persons set out from different views of sin, they have arrived at
different views of salvation, different notions of what men are to seek in
Christ; and the logical result of this will be an entirely different scheme of
theology for the one than for the other, so different that if the latter be
right, the system of the former must not only be defective, but positively and
perilously wrong. A conviction of this was doubtless in the mind of the apostle
when he was writing his Epistle to the Eomans; and hence he labours so earnestly
to lay the basis of his whole system in a demonstration of sin, so as to shut
men up to a conviction of it, of its guilt, illegality, and penal effect
especially. He felt he could proceed on sure ground in showing the nature and
excellency of the gospel only as he could convince men of sin, so that every
mouth might be stopped, and all flesh become guilty (L>TTOCH/CO? = reus,
pcenis ubnoxius) before God. That accomplished, the way was clear for his
setting forth God’s way of justifying sinners and so saving them. It was only as
he could make it manifest that all had sinned and come short of the glory of
God, that he felt there was any use in telling men how they might be justified
freely by God’s grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. From all
this we may see the importance, both in our theology and in our preaching, of
right views of sin as a transgression of the divine law, entailing guilt,
condemnation, and punishment.


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  CHAPTER 18: H 00  CHAPTER VIII THE PRINCIPLE SIX
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CHAPTER VIII THE PRINCIPLE OF SIX. Our previous investigations have conducted us
to the con clusion that sin is, as the Shorter Catechism defines it, " any
transgression of or want of conformity to the law of God," and as such an act of
rebellion against God. In ascertaining this, however, we have not ascertained
all that it concerns us to investigate on this subject. There is a point beyond
this which requires to be reached. For 1. As all man’s volitions spring from
some predominant principle and tendency in his nature, the fact that in thought,
word, and deed he trans gresses the divine law must have its source in some pre
dominant principle within him. There must be some principium et fons whence
these impure streams flow, and to which they are to be traced. And having
ascertained the character of the stream, we are anxious to discover to what this
is to be traced; just as if, on analysing the waters of a river, we found them
marked by certain physical peculiarities, we should feel solicitous to discover
whence these peculiarities arose. By a sort of psychological necessity,
therefore, we are urged from investigating the nature and characteristic quality
of sin to inquire into its principle and source in man’s nature.

Then, 2. In observing man’s conduct, we perceive that the acts which constitute
his sins are not only multitudinous in point of number, but also extremely
diversified in point of character. We find them differing in various aspects in
respect of object, of character, of compass, and of kind; and yet all are
classed under the head of sins, and legitimately so.

There must therefore be something in common to them all, some principle which
pervades them all, something from which we can abstract everything also
belonging to the act, and yet leave that by which it is constituted a sin. The
mind is naturally urged to investigate this something; and we cannot say that
our induction is at all complete until we have found it. 3. When we have laid
down the position that "sin is the transgression of the law," we cannot long
regard it without the question arising, Is it the mere transgression of the law,
in and by itself, that constitutes the evil of sin? Assuming that it is as a
transgression of law that sin is dealt with, and that it is under this aspect
that we must contemplate it in relation to God’s dealings with sinners, both in
reference to the punishment of sin and in reference to the remedial provision of
the gospel; the question will still press upon us, What is it that makes this
transgression of the law an evil, and causes it to be so abhorred of God?

Evidently there must be something in the inner nature of man, something that
amounts to a severance of the bond between God and him, something that violates
the relations that ought to exist between them, involved in the act of
transgression which makes it so hateful to God. To Him in the infinitude of His
being the mere act must be a matter of small moment, a simple turning to the
right hand rather than the left on the part of one of His creatures, which in
itself would be infinitely beneath His notice. It must be some thing involved in
the act, some spiritual principle from which it springs, which, if we may so
speak, by disturbing the relations between the Father of spirits and the soul of
His creatures, grieves and offends Him. What that something is it obviously
concerns us to discover if we can. As illustrative of these statements, and in
part confirmatory of them, we may select the instance formerly cited, that,
namely, furnished by the case of our first parents. The act by which they fell
was the taking and eating of a particular fruit. This in itself was a purely
indifferent act; there is no moral principle involved in the eating of one kind
of fruit more than another, viewed simply in itself. This act became a sin,
because it was the transgression of God’s precise injunction forbidding them to
eat of the fruit of that tree. But that act on their part arose from, and was
the index of, a particular state of mind; it was but the outcome and result of
an internal working; and in this lay the real principle of their transgression
the spirit, of which the act was the form and utterance. Further, it is only in
this that we can see a point of community between their act as sin and the act
(say) of their son Cain when he slew his brother. Both acts were sins, and yet
in form and outward manifestation the two are wholly distinct. Wherein do they
resemble each other? At what point do the two lines cross so as to give a point
common to both, in virtue of which they are both in cluded under one head? To
investigate this we are naturally prompted, arid the answer to it can be found
only in our discovering the principle, common to all sin, from which the two
sinful acts, so differing in all outward characteristics, sprang. In fine,
Wherein lay the intrinsic evil of this act? What was there in it to make it so
hateful in the sight of God? Granting that the rebelliousness of the sin and its
enormity as a transgression of the law which God had enjoined demanded its
punishment, it remains to ask, Whence arose the odiousness of it so that God,
who cannot look on sin, abhorred and hated it with a perfect hatred? The proper
answer to this will be found if we can dis cover the real principle of sin the
inner operative cause of transgression. On this inquiry we now enter; and, as
preparatory to it, there are two questions of a preliminary kind on which it may
be desirable that we should bestow some attention, viz.

1. What is the psychological law of man’s acting? and 2. What is the vital
principle of moral goodness or personal holi ness, the opposite of sin?


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  CHAPTER 19: H 01  THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF MAN'S ACTING
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1. The Psychological Law of Man’s acting. In regard to this, I must content
myself with simply enunciating and briefly illustrating certain positions.

(i.) The actions of men are determined by their volitions. As we will so we act;
that is to say, when we are free to obey the impulses of the will, when no
extraneous force constrains our actions. This is sometimes called freedom of
will; but properly it is freedom of action liberty to act as we will.

(ii.) The will is determined by motives. We choose to do that which we are moved
by certain inducements to prefer.

(iii.) The general law is, that what appears to us the strongest motive
determines our choice, determines our volition. To this position it has been
objected that, in point of fact, men do not always obey the strongest motive;
that, for instance, men are seen obeying impulses which are positively weak,
foolish, and wicked, in the face of the strongest reasons for an opposite
course. But this objection is doubly fallacious. For 1. It confounds motives
with reasons. These two are not the same. A reason does not become a motive
until it is felt; and consequently, whilst there may be the most potent reasons
why a certain course of action should be preferred, these may never act as
motives on an individual, simply because they are not felt by him, or only
feebly felt. And 2. This objection is irrelevant; it involves an ignoratio
elenchi. It proceeds on the assumption that what is said to determine the will
is what is the strongest motive, whereas what we assert is that the will is
determined by what appears to be the strongest motive.

These two are not always the same. We all know that a man may resist the
strongest motive simply because another presents itself with greater power, i.e.
appears stronger to him. It is not by what things are, but by what they appear
to be, that our choice is determined. We may bring the strongest motives to bear
on a man, but if he meets us with the reply, " I cannot see it," we feel that it
is in vain to urge him further. As our proposition is, that it is what appears
the strongest motive that determines the will, it is irrelevant to object that
sometimes what is the strongest motive determines the will.

(iv.) The light in which motives appear to us is deter mined not only, perhaps
not so much, by what they are in themselves as by what is lent to them by the
mind itself. The mind of man, it is to be ever kept in view, is not a dead or
inert substance; it is vital and active, and each mind has its own personality.
In no case, therefore, do we see things exactly as they are nakedly and per se;
the mind always lends some tinge or hue from itself to them as they are
perceived by us; and what is lent by one man may differ very much from what is
lent by another. Hence differences of conception, of taste, of belief in regard
to the same objects among different men. This applies also to motives. No motive
acts pure and simple on the will; every one derives from the mind through which
it passes a peculiar tinge and character by which its effect on the will is
affected, it may be powerfully affected.

(v.) The hue which the mind lends to motives, and by which they are made to
appear strong or otherwise so as to move the will, is derived from various
sources. It may be due to natural constitution, or to acquired habit, or to
fixed opinion. Thus the child of a drunkard may have derived from his parent a
constitution which strongly predisposes him to intemperance, i.e. causes the
motive to indulgence in intoxicating drinks to appear much stronger to him than
it does to a man of another constitution; or a man may, from the habit of
sensual indulgence, have his mental eye so jaundiced that he gives a wrong
colour to objects of this class; or a man, from a strong and established
opinion, may lend to some motives a force which does not really belong to them,
or refuse to others that which is their due. Hence it is that men are found
putting sweet for bitter and bitter for sweet, good for evil and evil for good.
The bearing of these remarks on our present object must be obvious. We are in
search of the principle of sin; and these remarks show that, according to the
constitution arid laws of our nature, that principle must be something which
biasses the will in favour of transgression something in the mind which lends to
the motives to transgression an attrac tive hue, and makes them appear stronger
than the motives to obedience.


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  CHAPTER 20: H 02  THE PRINCIPLE OF MORAL GOODNESS
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2. The Principle of Moral Goodness. The other point on which it is desirable
that we have settled views respects the vital principle of moral goodness or
holiness. As this is the opposite of sin, it is obvious that if we can determine
it we shall he thereby guided directly to that of which we are in search.

(i.) Your studies in Moral Philosophy have already made you acquainted with the
varied answers that have been given to the question, What constitutes virtue or
goodness? To enter at any length into the examination of these answers would
lead me too far from my proper field; it will be sufficient for my present
object that I generally describe and classify them, and then advert particularly
to such as may seem more strictly theological in their character. The
differences of opinion on this subject are not so much differences as to the
nature of virtue or goodness viewed subjectively, as to the basis and essence of
goodness viewed objectively. Virtue in the subject in the moral agent of whom it
is predicated all will agree in regarding as the love and practice of goodness,
i.e. of objective goodness. The point awakening difference and dispute is
respecting this objective goodness, on what it rests, what it is that con
stitutes it. Now, discounting entirely at present the answers of the sceptical
school, who maintain that there is no real, qualitative distinction between
right and wrong, but that these are terms descriptive merely of certain
prejudices or accidental or convenient distinctions which men have made, just as
they have made certain conventional arrangements in matters of business
courtesy, the answers which have been given to this may be ranked in four
classes :

1. Those which place the basis of moral goodness in the moral nature of man;
whether they proceed from the school of Hutchison, who taught that we possess a
moral sense which is at once the organ and the criterion of moral truth; or from
the school of Brown, who taught that goodness is that which by the constitution
of the mind we immediately approve; or from the school of Smith, who taught that
goodness is that with which we perfectly sympathize, in other words, that which
by the constitution of the mind we fall in with when we see it exhibited by
others.

2. Those which place the foundation of goodness in the beneficial results of
actions; whether they confine these results to such as affect the temporal
interests and physical comforts of the race, or extend them so as to include all
that constitutes the true happiness of man.

3. Those which place the foundation of goodness in the mere will of God.

4. Those which place the foundation of goodness in the Divine Nature, and find
in the constitution of the human mind, the relations of society, and the
fitnesses of things so many revelations or unfoldings of that which in its
intrinsic majesty and glory no man hath seen or can see. Of these classes we may
dismiss the first two with a very few remarks. With regard to the first, I would
observe that its advocates appear to me to be involved in a vicious circle; for
they seem first to answer the question, Why is this good? by saying, Because the
human mind in virtue of its natural constitution approves it; and then to answer
the question, Why does the mind approve this? by saying, Because it is good. A
thing is thus made the reason of itself; and good ness is represented as at once
the cause and the effect of approval. With regard to the second, its great vice
appears to me to lie in this, that it confounds the basis of virtue with the
motives to virtue. If I wish to induce a man to be good and virtuous, I may very
effectively appeal to the benefits which will flow to him and to society from
his following such a course; but these benefits no more con stitute the
virtuousness of the course suggested than the good effects of a medicine
constitute the curative qualities of that medicine. These qualities reside in
the medicine itself, and are to be traced to the wisdom and benevolence of the
Creator who implanted them there; whilst the benefits accruing from the use of
the medicine are to be set down simply as effects resulting from its possessing
such qualities. In like manner the benefits resulting from virtuous conduct are
not the source or measure of its virtuousness, but merely the effect of
qualities belonging to the conduct, and which exist in it independent of any
effect it may produce. And just as I may labour to induce a person to take a
certain medicine by detailing its good effects and tendencies, so may I seek to
induce to virtue by a similar appeal. To place the virtuousness of the act,
therefore, in such beneficial tendencies is to confound the foundation of virtue
with what is only an excellent motive to virtue. The opinion which places the
foundation of goodness in the will of God is one which in a theological course
may be thought deserving of a somewhat fuller consideration; for to those who
have not carefully reflected on the subject it often appears as if this was an
opinion which as Christians we are bound to support, and it is one which the
statements of Scripture have sometimes been supposed to favour. I can only,
however, stay to offer on it a very few observations. In the outset it is
important to notice what the question before us really is. It is not as to
whether the revealed will of God be a perfect development of moral truth a
perfect representation of rectitude and goodness; for on this point both sides
are agreed. Nor is the question whether the revealed will of God should be made
by us the test and standard of rectitude and goodness; for here also both
parties are at one. The question before us is, Does the revealed will of God
constitute goodness and rectitude? in other words, Are actions and feelings in
themselves morally indifferent, and do they become right or wrong simply and
primarily because they are commanded or forbidden by the law of God?

Now, when this question is fairly presented to the mind, it cannot fail to
strike us that there are undoubtedly some things of which this is true, some
actions and feelings which take their moral character solely from their relation
to a law forbidding or enjoining them. But is this true of all the objects of
moral judgment? If so, what becomes of the dis tinction between positive duties
and moral duties? To the moral consciousness of man this distinction is most
palpable. No man ever made the mistake of confounding the two.

They are as distinct in the human mind as the ten tables of stone, graven by the
finger of God and containing the Decalogue, were in the Mosaic legislation
distinguished from the rest of the Law written by Moses. But what becomes of
this distinction if all morality be resolved into enactment and prescription? In
this case what we call a positive law stands on exactly the same footing as what
we call a moral law. Both are enacted, and if it is enactment which produces
moral rectitude, the one is not more moral than the other. All duties in this
case then are moral, and all are positive. To steal is wrong, for no other
reason than to oinit baptism is wrong; to rob and murder, for no other reason
than to neglect going to church ! Against such a conclusion as this the moral
judgment of all men would rebel; for all feel that the former are wrong
inherently, whilst the latter are wrong because contrary to prescription.

It is further to be observed that to resolve all morality into the will of God
is to deny the essential distinction between vice and virtue. If it be the will
of God which constitutes the one bad and the other good, then apart from this
will they were neither the one nor the other; and as it was a mere arbitrary
will which made them differ, what we now call virtue might have been made vice,
and what we now call vice might have been made virtue. According to the
supposition, here are two acts equally destitute per se of moral character; but
God, for no reason but in pure arbitrariness, enacts that the one shall be done
and the other avoided; and out of this alone, it is alleged, arises the good
ness of the one and the badness of the other: who does not see that the case of
the two might have been reversed, and that the same arbitrary will which made
the one good might have made it bad, and vice versa? I have heard it said, in
reply to this, that God could not do this, for He can never command anything but
what is good. True, but irrelevant; for the question is not whether God can
enjoin anything but what is good, but whether it is His injunction alone which
produces the goodness belonging to that which He enjoins. The objector, in fact,
concedes what he pretends to deny; for in asserting that God can enjoin only
what is good, he im plicitly admits that there is a source of moral distinction
apart from the divine will, and antecedent to any utterance of it. If I say God
enjoins what is right because it is right, nothing can be more manifest than
that I admit that rectitude exists antecedent to any injunction of God’s will
concerning it; otherwise I should make rectitude at once the cause and the
effect of the divine command.

Once more, it may be observed that to regard rectitude as produced by the mere
will of God is to affirm that God wills


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  CHAPTER 21: H 03  THE PRINCIPLE OF SIN
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3. The Principle of Sin.

Having thus ascertained with some degree of certainty what is the vital
principle of moral goodness or holiness, we are in circumstances to answer the
question for the sake of which this inquiry was entered upon, viz. what is the
prin ciple of sin in the heart of man? The answer to this must be, that as sin
is the antithesis of holiness, and as the principle of holiness is love to God,
the principle of sin must be the negation of this the absence of love to God, or
estrangement of heart from Him. It is not necessary that this should amount to
positive hatred of God; it is enough that the heart be destitute of supreme love
to God, having no complacency in His holy character, no delight in His favour,
and no desire for His glory. With this accords the lesson which the apostle
teaches in Romans 1:21-23, where he traces all the degeneracy of the heathen
world, all its idolatry and deep moral degradation, to an alienation of heart
from God. They began their course of evil by being irreverent and unthankful,
not glorifying God as God, withholding from Him that admiration, adoration, and
love which the infinite perfection of His character demands, and refusing that
grateful acknowledgment of His mercies which the multitude and graciousness of
these mercies justly claim. And having this alienation of heart from God, they
naturally did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and hence, says the
apostle, it is that they were given up to a reprobate mind, and fell under the
sway of all those unhallowed influences which gradually immersed them ever
deeper and deeper in the foul abyss of sin and uncleanness. It was not that they
had not the knowledge of God, it was not that they could not retain that
knowledge, it was simply and solely because they did not like to retain it, that
they lost it, and so were led to change the glory of the incorruptible God into
an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and
creeping things, and were left to become the prey of all lawless lusts and
passions and desires. Like a ship which had lost its rudder, they were driven
helplessly whithersoever the winds and waves of passion or evil example carried
them.

I prefer regarding the principle of sin as simply alienation from God, or want
of holy love to God, to attempting the determination of any positive tendency or
feeling in which it may be supposed to consist. It is true that we thus rather
lay down a negative than establish a positive principle of action; but this,
instead of being regarded as an objection, is rather perhaps to be looked upon
in the light of a recom mendation, inasmuch as sin being in itself rather a
negative than a positive state, just as darkness is the mere negation of light,
and cold the mere negation of heat, the principle appropriate to it is rather a
negative than a positive one.

Those who have sought to fix a positive principle of sin have either concluded
on selfishness, i.e. The undue love of self, or on creature-love, i.e. The undue
estimation of any created objects, ourselves included, so as to prefer them to
God, or to withhold from God that which belongs to Him. Now, that both
selfishness and undue attachment to the creature are sinful is at once conceded,
but whether either can be pro perly regarded as constituting the positive
principle of sin may be more than doubted.

If we were required to choose between these two views, the latter certainly
appears the preferable, not so much because it includes the former, as because
it avoids an objection to which the former is exposed. For if all sin be
resolved into selfishness, we must either conclude that every act of man is a
selfish act, or hold that there are some acts which man in his fallen state can
perform that are without the stain of sin. Of this alternative the advocates of
the selfish school would accept the former side; for by them it is maintained
that all the acts of man are either directly or indirectly, either grossly or by
a more refined process, the results of selfishness; and in this conclusion some
who do not professedly belong to the selfish school in ethics seem inclined to
concur. But against such a doctrine the moral consciousness of man revolts, and
it is one which will not abide the test of facts. It is no doubt true that
pleasure attends the performance of that which we desire to perform, and that
sometimes we act purely for the pleasure resulting from the act. But is it not
pre posterous to affirm that we ahcays so act, that the child, for instance, who
for the first time in its existence comes in contact with sorrow, and desires to
relieve it, does so not from a natural sympathy, but from a refined calcula tion
as to the selfish pleasure to be derived from the relief of the suffering, that
the mother who sacrifices ease, health, perhaps life itself, for her babe, is
all the while only seeking a refined self-gratification, that the man who at the
call of friendship imperils his liberty, his property, his reputation, his life,
rather than desert the cause of one to whom he is attached, is not moved by any
generous principle, but is all the while only offering incense at the shrine of
self-love? To maintain such a position would be to read human nature backward,
and to contradict some of the strongest convic tions of the human heart. We all
know and are sure that there are other principles of action by which we are
swayed than selfishness. We know that we often desire the happi ness of others,
without the slightest thought of any reaction from the gratification of that
desire of a pleasurable kind upon ourselves. Indeed, the very fact that we
desire pleasure from the gratification of the desire, shows that the desire must
have existed as a generous and unselfish emotion ante cedent to the performance
of the act. For suppose I relieve the wants of one in poverty or suffering,
either the generous desire to do that person a kindness prompted me, or I was,
as the selfish school teach, induced thereto solely by a desire to enjoy a
personal gratification. Let us suppose the latter. In this case it follows that
I had no generous desire to relieve another previous to the act. Whence then, I
ask, the grati fication derived from the act? Who does not see that if there be
any gratification derived from the act it must be because that act gratified a
desire to relieve the distressed, and that this and not any calculation of
selfish gratification was the motive prompting to the act? This selfish system,
then, contains in itself its own confutation: on its own showing the antagonist
doctrine is correct. As a matter of psychological science, then, we cannot
resolve all our actions into selfishness. It follows from this that if
selfishness be the essential principle of sin, and if, conse quently, no act can
be regarded as sinful which cannot be traced directly to selfishness, many of
the acts of man even in his fallen state, and whilst at enmity with God, must he
regarded as sinless; nay, it would follow that whatever love and reverence man
withheld from God, if he only did not expend that upon himself, but bestowed it
generously on his fellow-creatures, he would nevertheless be innocent of sin in
this. With such a conclusion our Lord’s doctrine, that we are to love God with
our wliole heart and strength and mind, is, as we have seen, clearly
incompatible. It must therefore be at once rejected, and with it the doctrine
that selfishness is the essential principle of sin. The more general principle
that the essence of sin, or moral evil, lies in the undue love of the creature
in general, is not exposed to any such objection as this. It has consequently
been that principally embraced by theologians. 1 I am never theless inclined to
think that this may, with greater propriety,

1 "Hoc enim peccabam quod non in ipso, sed in creaturis ejus, me atque ceteris,
voluptates, sublimitates, veritates quoerebam.; atque ita irruebam in dolores,
confusiones, errores." Augustin, Confess., lib. 1:31.

"Propter universa haic et hujusmodi peccatum admittitur, dum immoderata in ista
inclinatione cum extrema bona sint, meliora et summa deseruntur, tu Domine Dens
noster, et veritas tua, et lex tua." Ibid., lib. 2:10.

" Animum enim peccati arguimus cum eum convincimus, superioribus desertis, ad
fruendum inferiora prsepoiiere." Augustin, De lib. arbit., 1:3; 100:1. be
regarded as a primary result or manifestation of this prin ciple rather than the
principle itself. Man must love some thing; he is destitute of the supreme and
all-embracing love of God; he therefore turns from the summum lonum to the minus
lonum; he gives to the creature what is due only to the Creator. This
perversity, however, is not itself a primary principle of action; it has a cause
in the antecedent alienation of heart from God; and in this therefore would we
place the principle and vital source of sin. This estrangement from God will
come into conscious manifestation as soon as the will of God comes into
collision with any of the lusts and passions of our nature. As love to God will
show itself most evidently in the ready and joyful submission of the human will
to all that God enjoins or appoints, so the absence of this will display itself
most naturally in resistance and repugnance to the divine will. The first and
most immediate effect of it is in producing a state of untruthfulness, of error,
and darkness, and wrong judging in the mind. Men alienated from the centre of
truth and light become immediately darkened in their minds and given up to vain
imaginations, so that they put good for evil, and evil for good. A further step
in this downward course is to put the creature in the place of the Creator, and
at the head of all creatures to place self as the supreme object of devotion.
Hence, though to resolve all men’s actions into selfishness be false philosophy,
it remains an undoubted fact that of the positive sins which men commit nearly
all may be resolved into some form or other of selfishness. The dominant
principle in man becomes his emotional nature, and that in itself alone,
unregulated by sound judgment and reason. As the apostle describes it, " Lust,
when it hath conceived, bringeth forth sin " (James 1:15). This is the true
genesis and history of evil in our world. This serving of self and of the
creature may exist to a large extent without any conscious aversion of the mind
from God. But this arises not from any real love lurking in the heart to the
source of all good; but simply because the mind has the power of abstracting
from all thoughts that are un pleasant to it, and hence, not liking to retain
God in its knowledge, simply ejects the thought of God altogether from the
circle of its ideas and feelings. Hence the Bible represents men in their
natural state as not so much haters of God as simply without God aOeoi, not
avrideoi as those that forget God in all whose thoughts God is not. But though
there may not be a conscious repugnance of mind to God, all the while a process
is going on which is increasing the native alienation of the heart from God,
arid which needs only some occasion of collision between the man’s lusts and
God’s expressed will to bring it forth in all the odiousness of full-grown
hatred and hostility to the Most High. And as the principle of sin is thus
ungodliness, so the great end which Christianity aims at accomplishing in man is
the restoration to man’s heart of that great regulative prin ciple of his moral
nature, that great fontal source of all real goodness in man, love to God. The
consummation of Christianity in a man is when in life he lives unto the Lord,
and in death dies unto the Lord, that whether living or dyinghe is the Lord s,
so that through eternity he shall be wholly and for ever with the Lord.


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  CHAPTER 22: I 00  CHAPTER IX KINDS OF SIN
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CHAPTER IX KINDS OF SIN.

Though all sin has essentially the same nature, and proceeds from the same evil
principle, there are different forms under which it presents itself to
observation. Hence theologians have been led to classify sins according to
certain differential ([ualities as follows :

1. In respect of their immediate object that against which they are immediately
committed we have (i.) Sins against God; also sins against the first table of
the law, pcccata primce tabula? Decalogi.

(ii.) Sins against our neighbours.) Pcccata secundcc tabulcc (iii.) Sins against
ourselves. ( Decalogi.


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  CHAPTER 23: I 01  IN RESPECT LAW WHICH TRANSGRESSION
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2. In respect of the law of which they are a transgression (i.) Sins of
commission Peccata positiva quce committuntur adversus legem vetantem.

(ii.) Sins of omission Peccata ncgativa, quce committuntur adversus legem
jubentem. Comp. Matthew 25:42-45, " Inasmuch as ye did it not; " James 4:17,"
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

There is here perhaps a want of sufficient precision.

Every positive act of sin is a breach of a law which forbids that sin, but it is
also a breach of a corresponding law which enjoins the opposite good. On the
other hand, every omission of good which the law enjoins is not necessarily a
breach of the law which forbids the opposite evil. We cannot commit evil without
omitting the antagonist good; but we may omit good without necessarily
committing the antagonist evil, e.g. one cannot tell a lie, which is a breach of
the law forbidding falsehood, without at the same time breaking the law which
commands and speaks the truth; but one may omit to obey the law which commands
to show kindness to all men, without directly breaking the law which forbids us
to do injury to any man. We must distinguish these here, and say that all sins
of commission are also sins of omission, but all sins of omission are not also
sins of commission. And we must distinguish, further, between a law of primary
obligation and a law of secondary obligation. By the former, we mean one which
directly arises out of our relation to God, and which is always binding; by the
latter, we mean a law arising out of our relations to our fellow-men, and which
is binding only under certain conditions. Now, in reference to the former, there
is no distinction between a sin of omission and one of commis sion; every
omission of the commanded good is a commission of the prohibited opposite evil,
and vice versa. In reference to the latter, there is a distinction between sins
of omission and sins of commission, to the extent that though the com mission of
a forbidden evil is also of necessity the omission of the opposite good, the
omission of a commanded good is not necessarily the commission of the opposite
evil.


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  CHAPTER 24: I 02  IN RESPECT COMPASS ACT ITSELF
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2. In respect of the law of which they are a transgression (i.) Sins of
commission Peccata positiva quce committuntur adversus legem vetantem.

(ii.) Sins of omission Peccata ncgativa, quce committuntur adversus legem
jubentem. Comp. Matthew 25:42-45, " Inasmuch as ye did it not; " James 4:17,"
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

There is here perhaps a want of sufficient precision.

Every positive act of sin is a breach of a law which forbids that sin, but it is
also a breach of a corresponding law which enjoins the opposite good. On the
other hand, every omission of good which the law enjoins is not necessarily a
breach of the law which forbids the opposite evil. We cannot commit evil without
omitting the antagonist good; but we may omit good without necessarily
committing the antagonist evil, e.g. one cannot tell a lie, which is a breach of
the law forbidding falsehood, without at the same time breaking the law which
commands and speaks the truth; but one may omit to obey the law which commands
to show kindness to all men, without directly breaking the law which forbids us
to do injury to any man. We must distinguish these here, and say that all sins
of commission are also sins of omission, but all sins of omission are not also
sins of commission. And we must distinguish, further, between a law of primary
obligation and a law of secondary obligation. By the former, we mean one which
directly arises out of our relation to God, and which is always binding; by the
latter, we mean a law arising out of our relations to our fellow-men, and which
is binding only under certain conditions. Now, in reference to the former, there
is no distinction between a sin of omission and one of commis sion; every
omission of the commanded good is a commission of the prohibited opposite evil,
and vice versa. In reference to the latter, there is a distinction between sins
of omission and sins of commission, to the extent that though the com mission of
a forbidden evil is also of necessity the omission of the opposite good, the
omission of a commanded good is not necessarily the commission of the opposite
evil.


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  CHAPTER 25: I 03  IN RESPECT  PARTY CHARGED
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3. In respect of the compass of the act itself, there are

(i.) Inward sins, peccata interna, sive cordis, eTriOvpla: all such tendencies
and emotions as oppose, or are inconsistent with, the law of God evil thoughts,
lusts, and passions.

(ii.) Outward sins, peccata externa, sermonis ct qperis all words and deeds
which transgress the law.


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  CHAPTER 26: J 00  CHAPTER X THE SOURCE SIN
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CHAPTER X THE SOURCE OF SIN.

Having considered the fact of man’s sinfulness, and the nature, principle, and
modifications of sin, it now comes in course that we should ask, Whence this
fact? To what are we to trace the universal sinfulness of the race?


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  CHAPTER 27: J 01   GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
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1. General Considerations.

Now, as sin is the same thing in all men, its essential principle and
manifestations being the same in all, it must be regarded as something adhering
to our nature in our present state of being. Were it not so, we should either
find some men who are not sinners, or some whose sins spring from a different
principle from that which lies at the source of those of others.

Further, the fact that all sin, both in act and in principle, is the same as
that sin by which our first parents fell, viz. in act, a transgression of the
law of God; and in principle, alienation from God, is a fact which, if it does
not suggest, certainly falls in with the conclusion that the first sin has had
something to do with the production of all that have followed.

Once more, if sin be the same thing in all men, and therefore something adhering
to our nature as at present existing, it must be something which is either added
to that nature in each individual man immediately by God, or it must be
something which accrues to each man in consequence of the connection of all men
with the common source of the race. Besides these two, there is no way in which
we can suppose that a quality belonging to the nature of all men could have come
to be attached to that nature; nothing but community of derivation, either
directly by God or by connection with a common head, being adequate to account
for a quality belonging to all men. The former supposi tion, however, is
altogether incredible, and must therefore be rejected, inasmuch as it would make
God directly and immediately the author of sin. We are therefore shut up to the
latter, and must trace the universal sin of men to their connection with the
first man, Adam. We do not at present express any opinion as to the nature of
that connection; that will be subsequently investigated; we simply indicate the
conclusion, that to a connection of some sort with the original man the
sinfuluess of the human family must be traced.


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  CHAPTER 28: J 02  TLIE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE
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2. Tlie Testimony of Scripture.

What these general considerations thus render probable is placed beyond doubt by
the testimony of Scripture.

(i.) The sacred historian of man’s origin and early experience, after telling us
that man was made in the image and likeness of God, tells us that his son Seth
was begotten by him " in his own image and likeness." It would not be competent
for us to lay much stress upon this expression by itself, but when it is
considered that this expression only occurs here, that it occurs on the first
occasion that seems suitable after the narrative of Adam’s fall, that it
enunciates a marked contrast with what the historian has previously described as
the original state of man, and that there seems no reason for its being
introduced here, except to mark that man no longer comes into being in the image
and likeness of God, but now bears the image of his sinful and fallen parents,
there seems strong ground for concluding from this passage that an intima tion
of no very doubtful kind is conveyed in it of a connection between Adam’s sin
and fall and the sinful and corrupt nature of his posterity. This is confirmed
when we find the apostle describing the natural condition of men as a bearing of
the image of the earthly (1 Corinthians 15:49). The most natural and
satisfactory explanation of this is, that an allusion is made in it to man’s
natural condition, as a result of the descendants of Adam being born in his
image and likeness, and no longer in the image and likeness of God.

(ii.) There are many passages which distinctly assert that sin is connatural to
man: Genesis 6:5; Genesis 8:21; Job 15:14; Job 15:1; Job 15:5, Job 7:20; Psalms
51:5; John 3:6; Bom. 7:14, etc. 1 None of these passages, it is true, asserts
any connection between man s sin and that of Adam; but they all more or less
clearly intimate that sin is not an accident that befalls this man or the other,
not something which is conveyed to man from external sources and grows upon him
wholly from without, but something which operates from within, something which
is in man as man, something which, if not of the nature of a vitium originis, is
at least the result of a privation of which all men are the subjects; and as
this can belong to all men only in virtue of their being descended from a common
stock, these passages implicitly support the position now before us. To the same
effect is that remarkable expression of the apostle, " by nature the children of
wrath, even as others " (Ephesians 2:3). Here the being by nature the children
of wrath is described as the common condition of the race; the Ephesians were
so, " even as others," not by any peculiarity of their state or character, but
because all men are so. As regards the phrase rercva 0/377}?, it is best
explained by refer ence to the Hebrew idiom, according to which a person was
said to be son of any object or quality, when the object or quality exercised a
dominant influence on his condition or state; comp. nrnsrpijzi (Psalms 102:21),
i.e. persons delivered over to death, exposed to its attack; ol viol rov
<&>Romans 9:1-33 (Luke 16:8), i.e. persons under the illuminating
influence of divine teaching; Kardpas re/cva (2 Peter 2:14), i.e. persons under
the curse of God. Thus taken, the phrase TZKVCL opyfjs is much the same as if
the phrase vir opyrjv had been used, i.e. persons under wrath the wrath of God.
Now this, says the apostle, all men are fyvo-ei, by nature, i.e. they become so,
not by any external influence, ordinance, or power, but by an internal tendency
which develops itself in them from their birth. It is impossible to attach to
this any clear or consistent meaning but by understanding it of the native
sinfulness of the human race, exposing them universally to the divine
displeasure and consequent condemnation.

1 On these passages see, on the one side, Taylor On Original Sin, and, on the
other, the replies of Edwards and Payne in their respective treatises on this
subject.

(iii.) The fact of a connection between Adam’s sin and that of mankind is
expressly asserted in several passages of Scrip ture. Isaiah 43:27: "Thy first
father hath sinned." This language plainly fixes our regards upon some
individual as here referred to; and amongst individuals, our choice lies between
Abraham, the progenitor of the Jewish people, and Adam, the progenitor of all
men. But the reference to Abraham seems excluded by the thing predicated of the,
party here spoken of, viz. that he sinned. This must be looked on as emphatic,
as constituting in some way a marked and peculiar fact in his history which
distinguished him from others. Now this could not be said of Abraham. He doubt
less was a sinner, but only just as other men are. He committed no special and
peculiar sin which stands out in contradistinc tion to others as the sin of
Abraham. His peculiar distinction among men is rather the eminent piety to which
he attained than any eminent sin of which he was guilty. It was other wise with
Adam. The great event in his history is the sin he committed. This stands out
from all other events recorded concerning him as the peculiar event of his
history; and as it has acquired this character not so much from anything in
itself as from its momentous bearing on the race, so it is most natural to
understand such an expression as that of the prophet in the passage cited as
referring to this. In this interpreta tion Hitzig, Umbreit, Knobel, and several
others, whose conclusions are guided solely by hermeneutical reasons, and are
not in the least swayed by doctrinal bias, concur. In the Xew Testament there
are two classical passages on this head, Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians
15:45-47. In the former of these, the fact of a connection between the sin of
Adam and the sinfulness of mankind is set forth in the most explicit terms: " By
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon
all men, because all have sinned. By the offence of one many are dead; by the
offence of one [there came] on all men [something which tended] to condemnation.
By one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners." In the context Paul also
affirms that Adam was the type of Christ, i.e. The official position or relative
character of the one bore an analogy to that of the other; and this the apostle
still further illustrates by showing that, as the conduct of the one has had
results which extend beyond himself to others connected with him, so had the
conduct of the other; and that as the results flowing from Christ’s work are for
the acquittal and redemption of His people, so those flowing from Adam are for
the condemnation and destruction of those connected with him. With this stands
closely connected Paul’s allusion to the subject in the other passage referred
to. In this passage Paul styles Adam and Christ the first and second man. Now,
as he cannot intend by this that Christ was second to Adam either in order of
time or dignity, he must intend to convey the idea that Adam and Christ sustain
a character peculiar to these two, in which they appeared successively, Adam
first and Christ second, and in which they alone appeared. Now the character
peculiar to Christ, as we know from the whole of the New Testament, was the
character of a public head or representative, in virtue of whose obedience those
connected with Him are constituted righteous. It follows that if the position of
Adam was the same, mutatis mutandis, with that of Christ, he must have occupied
the place of one through whose sin all connected with him were constituted
guilty or under condemnation. On these grounds we may set it down as an
ascertained truth of Scripture, that the sin of Adam is somehow connected
causally with the sin of men universally. We have yet to inquire of wliat kind
this connection is; in other words, how it is that Adam’s sin has become the
source of sin to the race.


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  CHAPTER 29: J 03  TLIC CONNECTION  ADAMS  RACE
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3. Tlic Connection of Adams Sin with that of the Race. To this inquiry different
answers have been returned, the chief of which I shall endeavour to classify and
state. They fall into two great classes, according as the effects of Adam s sin
on his posterity are viewed as Natural or Penal.

(i.) Of the first there is

1. The Pelagian Hypothesis. This, though bearing the name of Pelagius (Morgan?),
a British monk of the fifth century, found its most logical expounder and
defender in Coelestius, a pupil and friend of Pelagius. According to this
hypothesis, no evil result flows to Adam’s posterity from his sin, except that
which is inseparable from their being born into a world in which sin and misery
already are; there is no penalty to which they are exposed, no vitium oriyinis
under which they suffer. 1

2. The Arminian or Remonstrant Hypothesis. According to this, Adam is only the
remote source of that natural propensity to sin which all men exhibit, the
immediate source being each man’s parents; so that sinfulness is pro pagated,
from Adam just as any other disease, defect, or morbid quality might be, the
connection of mankind with him being simply that of natural descent. Death also
comes on all men from Adam, not as a penal infliction, but simply as a natural
inheritance.

It is, however, hardly just to Arminius to connect this opinion with his name;
for, so far as he gave utterance to his views on the subject, he seems to have
held that the conse quences of Adam’s sin to his posterity were penal. "
Original sin." says he, " is not that actual sin by which Adam trans gressed the
law concerning the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and on account of which
we have all been constituted sinners, and rendered (ret) obnoxious or liable to
death and condemnation." 2 But his followers of the Remonstrant party are very
distinct in their announcement of the doctrine above imputed to them. Thus
Limborch: " Mors ha>c non habet rationem pcenoe proprie dicta? in posteris;
sed est naturalis tantum moriendi necessitas, ab Adamo, mortis pcena punito in
ipsos derivata." " Effectum peccati Adami in posteris est impuritas qiuedam
naturalis, qua? tamen non est peccatum

1 In the list of tenets for which Pelagius was condemned by the Council at
Cartilage in 412, there are the following bearing on the subject before us. He
taught, "Adanium mortalem factum, qui, sive peccaret sive non peccaret, fuisset
moriturus; " that " peccatum Adse ipstmi solum Iresit, et non humanum genus ;"
that "Infantes, qui nascuntur, in eo statu sunt in quo Adanius fuit ante
prevaricatioiiem." It would appear that Pelagius himself thought his disciple
went too far when he asserted that no harm had come to the race from Adam’s sin:
" Ipse dicit non tantum prinio homini, sed etiam human o generi primum illud
obfuisse peccatum, non propagine sed exemplo" (Augustine, DC Pecc. Orig. c. xv.
). He held, however, strenuously "ut sine virtute ita et sine vitio procrearnur,
atque ante action em proprire voluntatis id solum in hominc est quod Deus
condidit " (ibid. c. xiii.). See Boris’s Histor. Pelaf/iana, etc.; Wiggers,
Versuch ein. Prarjmat. Darstelluny des Auyustinwmus und Pelagianismus; Neander’s
Church History, 4:313-322, Eng. transl.

2 Works, by Nicholls, ii. 375, 717 proprie dictum; " and again, " fateraur
infantes nasci minus puros quam Adamus fuit creatus, et cum quadam propensione
ad peccandum: illam autem habent non tarn ab Adamo quam a proximis parentibus."
! Adam is thus only the remote source of man’s natural propensity to sin: to
each man his parents are the immediate source, just as some remote ancestor may
have introduced a disease into his family, but which afflicts each man only
through his parents.

(ii.) The second class of answers which have been given to the question as to
how Adam’s sin has become the source of sin to the race, embrace those who hold
that the effects of his sin upon men are penal. These fall into two sub-classes,
according as they retain or reject the doctrine of imputation.

1. We begin with the latter, under which we include the

(1.) View of some Socinians. For the most part, the Socinians hold the view of
Pelagius on this subject; but some, and among them F. Socinus himself, hold that
in consequence of Adam’s sin men are penally liable to death, not from any
mortal effect in the sin itself, nor that man was created at first naturally
immortal, but that in consequence of Adam’s sin his posterity have come penally
under the actual power of death, to which naturally they are liable, but from
which they would otherwise have been protected. 2

(2.) Identification Hypothesis. According to this, Adam s descendants are held
to have been so identified with him that they sinned his sin, are guilty of his
guilt, and fell in his fall. By some who use this language nothing more seems to
be intended than that, as the apostle says, Levi paid tithes in Abraham, for he
was in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him; so the race sinned with
Adam in the sense that they are involved in the consequences of his sin; and it
may be doubted whether any of those who have spoken as if they meant to identify
the race with Adam in

1 TheoL Christ., Bk. iii. c. iii. sec. 1, 4. See also Whitby, De. Imputations
Peccati, and Comment, on Rom. v.; Adam Clarke, Comment, on Rom. v.

2 " Concludimus . ex peccato illo primi parentis nullam labem aut gravitatem
universo generis human! necessario ingenitum esse, nee aliud malum exprimo illo
delicto ad posteros omnes necessario manasse quam moriendi omnimodum
necessitatem, non quidem ex ipsius delicti vi, sed quia cum jam homo natura
mortalis est." F. Socinus, Prcelect. c. iv. Comp. Taylor, Doct. of Orig. Sin,
Part I. pp. 51-55; Par. on Romans 5:12. his act of sinning, really intend their
words to be taken for what they express. Their language, however, is such that
we feel constrained to assign the opinion it utters a place in this scheme, and
for want of a better name we have called it the Identification hypothesis.

" Manifestum est alia esse propria cuique peccata . aliud hoc unum in quo omnes
peccaverunt, quando omnes ille unus homo fuerunt." 1 " Quia [Adam] . per liberum
arbitrium Deum deseruit justinn judicium Dei expertus est, ut cum tota sua
stirpe quo} in illo ad hue posita tota cum illo peccaverunt, damnaretur." 2 " Ut
cum omnes posteri ex primo parente ceu ex radice ortum suum trahunt generis
humani imiversitas cum stirpe non aliter quain unicum aliquod totum, sive unica
massa considerari potest, ut non sit aliquid a stirpe diversum, et non aliter ab
ea differunt posteri ac rami ab arbore. Exquibus facile patet quo modo stirpe
peccante omne illud quod ab ea descendit et cum ea aliquod totum efficit, etiam
peccasse judicari possit, cum a stirpe non differat sed cum ea unum sit." 3

(3.) Hypothesis of a Vitium Originis. In the opinion of many the effect of
Adam’s sin on his posterity as a penalty was to poison, pollute, vitiate their
moral nature, or so to injure it that the lower propensities became strengthened
against the higher powers, and thus man enters the world not only a fallen, but
a positively depraved being.

" Ille in quo omnes moriuritur proeter quod eis qui prseceptum Domini voluntate
transgrediuntur imitationis exemplum est, occulta etiam tabe carnalis
concupiscentise siue tabificavit in se omnes cle sua stirpe venientes." 4

Some, whilst they repudiate this notion, that a positively vitiated nature has
been entailed on men by Adam’s sin, yet think that an increased susceptibility
to evil has thence resulted in the race, or that his descendants have received
such dispositions and affections as greatly incline them to yield to those
inducements to sin in the world in which they are placed. ^ Some have gone the
length of supposing the 1 Augustin, De Pecc. Mer. et Remiss., i. 11.

2 De Corrept. et Gratia, c. x.

3 Stapfer, TheoL Polem., i. p. 236.

4 De Pecc. Mer. et Remiss. , i. 9.

6 See Moses Stuart, Comment, on Romans 5:19 forbidden fruit possessed a
lethiferous arid morally vitiating power, which has been transfused into the
race by natural descent, and so has brought all under the power of depravity and
death. 1

Having stated the various opinions on the connection between Adam’s sin and the
race which has sprung from him, held by those who believe that the effects of
that sin to men are natural, and by those who, though holding them to be penal,
yet reject the doctrine of imputation, we now come to consider the views of
imputation held by those who accept that doctrine.

2. The term Imputation, though of frequent use in sys tematic theology, like
many other terms similarly employed, does not occur in Scripture. The cognate
verb, however, is frequently used; and it is possible that the ideas intended to
be conveyed by the term may be taught in Scripture, though the word itself is
not to be found there. I propose therefore, in the first instance, to examine
the usage of the verb in those passages in which it occurs, so as to obtain a
just view of the ideas it is employed by the sacred writers to express; I shall
then state the doctrine of imputation as held by systematic divines of different
schools; and, in fine, I shall attempt to determine how far this doctrine is, in
its various modifications, sanctioned and sustained by the word of God, the only
sure criterion by which theological opinion can be tested, the Lapis Lydius by
which alone any dogma can be proved genuine and precious.

(1.) The English verb "impute," in our version, is repre sented in the original
texts principally by the Hebrew verb strn i n the O. T., and by the Greek verb
Xoyi^o^ai in the LXX. and the N. T. In one passage (1 Samuel 22:15) where our
version gives "impute," we have in the Hebrew a part of the verb Dib , " to put,
place, or lay; " and with this verb, which frequently occurs elsewhere in
similar connections where it is variously rendered in our version, we shall com
mence our examination. Take the following instances :

Joshua 9:24, "their blood shall be laid upon Abimelech;"

Deuteronomy 22:8, " that thou bring not blood upon thine house; " ver. 17, "and
he hath given occasion against her;" Job 4:18, 1 See Knapp’s Christian Theology,
p. 239 if.

"and His angels He charged with folly." In all these passages, the meaning of
the word, though it is differently translated, is substantially the same. Blood
is laid upon a man when he is made to bear the blame of shedding it, and is
dealt with accordingly; so blood is brought on a house when a fatal accident,
occasioned by its being insufficiently built, is held to be equivalent to an
intentional offence on the part of the proprietor, and he is consequently made
to bear the blame and pay the penalty of such offence; occasion is given against
a person when some thing is laid to his charge which involves blame and exposes
to suffering as a penal consequence; and beings are charged with any defect or
crime when they are held blameworthy, or unworthy of commendation on account of
it, and are treated accordingly. These usages of the verb cib> in such
connections all involve the same idea, that of holding a person to the penal or,
at least, painful consequences of a certain act or state for which he is held to
be blameworthy.

We may infer, therefore, that in the passage where the verb, with an exactly
analogous construction in the original, is rendered in our version " impute,"
this term has probably the same signification. And so we find it to be. It is
Abimelech who, addressing Saul in that passage, says in reference to David’s
having been sheltered and aided by him, " Let not the king impute anything to
his servant." The meaning plainly is, " Do not blame me and expose me to
punishment for what has happened; " and the reason he assigns is, partly that he
did not do what was laid to his charge, and partly that what he did for David
was done in ignorance of his being in arms against Saul. To " impute," then, in
this case is to adjudge blame to a man, and decree punishment on him for
offences of which he is held to have been guilty; and not to impute is to exempt
him from blame and punishment on the ground that he has either not committed the
offence, or done it in such a way as to be morally blameless.

Let us now consider the usage of the verb 2K; n, which is commonly rendered in
our version by " impute."

According to Ftirst, whose etymological renderings are usually very trustworthy,
this word means primarily " to bind; " hence as all thought is a putting of two
or more notions together so as to arrive at a judgment, it came to signify " to
think," and so it is frequently used in Scripture.

Further, as all thought is a judgment, it came to denote the thinking,
accounting, or declaring one thing to be another, a man to be so arid so, or to
have such and such qualities or characteristics. Hence, by a natural transition,
it came to express the attributing or imputing such to a man; then, attributing
to a man that by which such qualities are caused or produced; and finally, by
the treating of a man, to whom anything is imputed, accordingly. As illustrative
of this class of usages we adduce the following instances: (1) Where it simply
denotes the ascribing to a person of a certain quality or condition; 2 Samuel
19:19: "Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me," where Shimei, confessing what
he had done against David, asks him not to ascribe to -him the iniquity of that
conduct, but to pass him by and treat him as if his conduct had not been
iniquitous. So also Psalms 32:2: " Blessed is the man to whom the Lord irnputeth
not iniquity (ity & nirp ab ir &6)," i.e. to whom Jehovah does not ascribe
iniquity for what he has done, so as to hold him guilty and liable to
punishment. (2) Where it denotes the ascribing to a person of something that
produces a certain quality, though that quality does not actually belong to him.
Leviticus 17:4: " Blood shall be imputed unto that man; " i.e. The guilt which
the shedding of blood causes shall be ascribed to that man; he shall be held
guilty of murder, and treated accordingly, that man shall be cut off from among
his people. Numbers 18:27: "And this your heave-offering shall be reckoned
(imputed, ^ro) unto you as though it were the corn of the thrashing-floor, and
as the fulness of the winepress," where the quality that would result from the
presenting of the whole of the Israelites produce to God is held to belong to
him, though he presents only a tithe of it as a heaveofYering; as it is
afterwards expressed, " they shall bear no sin by reason of it, when they have
heaved from it the best of it; " by offering this they were dealt with as if
they had consecrated the whole. Under this head fall such passages as Genesis
15:6: "And he believed in God; and He counted it to him (imputed it to him, v
njtt JT) for (or as) righteousness; " and Psalms 106:31 : " And that was counted
unto him (Phinehas) for righteousness," etc. p npn ^{Tfh 6). These passages are
best understood in connection with such a passage as Deuteronomy 6:25: "And it
shall be our righteousness, if we observe to clo all these commandments before
the Lord our God as He hath commanded us." Here is laid down a principle of the
divine administration. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness, and will reward
it. Now this righteousness is obtained normally by the keeping of His
commandments. But in the case of Abraham his simple trust in God, and in the
case of Phinehas his prompt and vigorous vindication of the divine authority,
were held as tantamount to a meritorious obedience, and were consequently
followed by the reward which God bestows on this. The Greek equivalent to 2^ n
j’s \oyigo/j,ai, and by this term is the former rendered by the LXX. in all the
passages I have quoted. In the 1ST. T. it occurs repeatedly in the writings of
Paul. In Romans 4:3 we have a quotation of Genesis 15:6, and in the 8th verse of
that chapter a quotation of Psalms 32:2. In the intermediate verses Paul
repeatedly uses the verb \oyi^o^ai } and in our version it is sometimes
translated " count," sometimes " reckon/ and sometimes " impute." The meaning,
however, is in every case substan tially the same. The apostle is showing that
justification is not of works but of grace, and he argues from the case of
Abraham that it is so. Abraham had found righteousness with God. How? By works?
No; for then would he have ground for boasting before God, inasmuch as there
would then have been ascribed to him merit, and the reward would have been of
right or debt, and not of favour. Abraham obtained righteousness, i.e. a legal,
meritorious claim to bless ing, solely by favour; and how was this accomplished?
By God’s taking an act of Abraham’s which had no legal merit in it whatever, and
holding it as if it had, i.e. He gave Abraham blessing on the ground of what in
itself gave him no title or claim to blessing. This Paul calls imputing
righteousness to him; and in the same sense he explains David’s expression. His
doctrine seems to be: Eighteousness entitles a man to blessing; but God, in
order to deal graciously with man, who is destitute of righteousness, takes that
which is not in itself righteousness, and holds it as equivalent in legal claim
to righteousness, and on that ground gives blessing. So, on the other hand, when
he speaks of God as not imputing sin, he plainly means that God does not ascribe
to a man the quality or character which sin gives to a man, in other words,
regards and treats him as if that quality did riot belong to him. Imputa tion is
thus in Paul’s sense the ascribing to a man of a position, quality, or title to
which he has no real claim; and nonimputation is the ignoring or non-recognition
of a quality, liability, or character that does belong to him. The grounds of
imputation and the effects of imputation may differ in different cases; but the
fundamental idea of the thing itself is the same in all, and is such as I have
just expressed.

Except for illustration, it is unnecessary to adduce such a usage of the verb as
we have in 1 Corinthians 13:5, when the apostle says of Agape, " ov \oyl^eraL TO
KCLKOV" The sense here is not as our verson gives it, " thinketh no evil," but "
impute th no evil," i.e. does not ascribe to a man the quality of evil when that
does not really belong to him as an evil doer; or does not treat an evil-doer as
he actually deserves, does not hold his evil against him, but forgives it. This
latter meaning seems the preferable one. It is that given by Chrysostom and
Theodoret, and followed by Beza, Eiickert, Meyer, and others. It is undeniably
in this sense that the apostle uses the verb in 1 Timothy 4:16, when, speaking
of the conduct of some who had treated him unworthily, he says, " pi) avrols
\oyia6eit)" " may it not be imputed to them," i.e. as our version gives it, "may
this [their misconduct to me] not be laid to their charge; " may it not be held
as attaching to them a quality such as shall bring penalty upon them. The only
other word used in the N". T. besides \o^i^o^ai in the sense of " imputing " is
e\\oyeco. This word, rarely used in the classics, occurs only twice in the
apostolic writings, Romans 5:13 arid Philemon, verse 18. In the former, where
Paul says, " Sin is not imputed when there is no law," we have the word used
plainly in the same sense as that in which he uses Xoyl^o/jiai, in the 4th
chapter: Whatever be a man’s conduct, the quality of guilt and consequent
liability to penal consequences cannot be ascribed to him save where his conduct
is a violation of law. In the latter passage the usage is somewhat different,
and hence the passage is an important one for our present purpose. In writing to
Philemon, Paul says (ver. 18), concerning Onesimus, "If he hath wronged thee, or
oweth thee ought, put that on mine account (TOVTO e/uol eXXoiyet)." Here the
meaning plainly is, " Let something belonging to him be ascribed to me, and
exact of me the corresponding result, so that he may go free."

Xo stress can be laid on the fact that the verb here is a part of e\\o<ya),
not of Xo^/foyatu, for the two are perfectly synony mous; or, if there be any
difference, it can only be expressed thus, that while \oyL%o/jiai is used much
more frequently than eXXo^e to, and used under different shades of meaning,
eXXcyyeco is used only in the sense of imputing. That Paul regarded them as
synonymous, the passage just cited from Romans 5:13 clearly shows.

Having collated and sifted our instances, we are now in circumstances to declare
the sense in which the sacred writers speak of imputation or imputing. In the
general, it means the ascribing to an individual of a certain quality, either
involving exposure to a penalty or entitling to a privilege, as the case may be.
More specifically, and in view of the grounds on which the ascription is made,
it signifies one of three acts: (1) The act of ascribing to a man a quality
which really belongs to him, on the ground that he is or has done something from
which that quality accrues; or (2) The act of ascribing to a man a quality which
does not belong to him, on the ground that be is or has done something which is
held as equivalent to what would have conferred on him that quality; or (3) (in
the singular case in the Epistle to Philemon) The act of ascribing to a man a
quality which does not belong to him, on the ground that it belongs to another,
and is transferred to the former from the latter for the advantage of the
latter. These have been technically distinguished in various ways. The first has
been called imputatio moralis, sive facti, because in it the actual doer of a
deed is held to have done it sua spontc, and consequently to have merited the
penalty or reward attached to it; whilst the second and third have been
denominated in contradistinc tion from this imputatio regalis, sive juris,
because in them a privilege is conferred or a penalty adjudged by a simple act
of regal or rectoral administration. In the former case, also, it is said that
the word imputation is taken improperly, i.e. out of its just meaning, whilst in
the latter it is said to be used properly. On these distinctions of appellation,
however, it does not seem necessary to dwell.

(2.) I pass on now, therefore, to the second branch of my inquiry, under which
it was proposed to state the doctrine of imputation as held by systematic
divines. This will be best elicited by viewing it in connection with those
special cases to which they have applied the term " imputation." a. Theologians
speak of the imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, the race of mankind as
such. Thus, to begin with the divines of the Lutheran Church, Hollaz says: " The
first sin of Adam . is imputed for blame and penalty to all his posterity truly,
and by the just judgment of God." 1

Quenstedt says: " The fall of Adam, meaning thereby precisely his transgression
in the matter of the forbidden tree, becomes ours by imputation alone." "
Reinhard sums up the doctrine of the older Lutheran Church as follows :

" The imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity is that judgment of God by which
Adam’s first sin is turned to the faultiness of all men." 3 By most later
divines of the Lutheran Church the dogma is repudiated. So Doderlein, Reinhard,
Hahn, Bretschn eider, Wegscheider, Arnmon, etc. In the Reformed Church the
doctrine has found almost universal acceptance. Calvin, both in his Institutes
and in his Commentaries, repeatedly asserts it: " All can become guilty by the
sin of one," says he, " only by the imputation of that sin. M Beza says on
Romans 5:12: "The apostle is treating in this passage of the propagation of
guilt, in contrast with which the imputation of the obedience of Christ is set
forth. Hence it follows that that guilt which precedes corruption is by the
imputation of Adam’s disobedience; as the remission of sins and the abolition of
guilt is by the imputation of the obedience of Christ." Zanchius: " We 1 Exam.
Theol., etc.

2 Theol. Didact. ii. 53.

3 Dogmatik, 81. Instit., ii. 1. say that that disobedience of Adam which was not
ours in act yet as to the fault and guilt, became ours by imputation." J
Turretine: " The question is whether the actual sin of Adam is so imputed in
reality to all that on account of it they are held guilty, or at least are
deemed deserving of punishment." Marckius: " The cause of this corruption is the
fault of Adam imputed to his posterity, as it is said in one all have sinned,
and by the disobedience of one have many been constituted sinners." The
following passage from Dr. Payne sets forth very clearly the doctrine on this
subject held by many modern divines: " The imputation of Adam’s sin to the race
is not otherwise to be regarded than as the legal visitation upon the race of
the consequences of that sin." 4 b. Theologians speak of the imputation of our
sins to Christ, and of His righteousness to us. By the former, they mean that
Christ, though Himself sinless, was regarded and treated as if He had committed
the sins of the human race; and by the latter, they mean that we are regarded as
having ourselves fulfilled the law and endured the penalty of sin, in
consequence of Christ having done so. I shall quote here only the statement of
Turretine: " Paul says that Christ was made sin for us, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in Him, i.e. as the sins whereby we have violated the
law are imputed to Christ, so the actions of righteousness by which He fulfilled
it for us are imputed to us." 5 This latter part of the subject he more fully
states elsewhere thus :

" When, then, we say that the righteousness of Christ is im puted to us for
justification, and that we, by that imputed righteousness, are just before God,
. we mean nothing else than that the obedience of Christ, rendered to God the
Father in our name, is so put to our account by God that it is really deemed
ours, and that it is the one and sole righteousness on account of which, and by
the merit of which, we are absolved from the guilt of our sins and obtain right
to life." G These passages may suffice to show in what sense the term imputation
is used by theologians. With them it means the 1 De Redemption e, i.

2 Loc. ix. qu. 9, 9.

3 Medulla, xv. 31.

4 On Original Sin, p. 126.

5 Loc. xiv. qu. 13, 21. 6 Ibid. xvi. <iu. 3, 9. ascribing to a person of a
quality, with its attendant con sequences, beneficial or penal, which does not
properly belongto him, and which he has done nothing directly to acquire, but
which has been acquired by another and transferred to him.

It will be seen at once that there is a material difference between the sense
thus attached to imputation and that in which it is commonly used in Scripture.
In seeking to determine precisely this difference, it is necessary to keep in
view the distinction between the ad of imputation and the (/round of imputation.
In respect of the former, the imputa tion of theology does not essentially
differ from that of Scrip ture; in both cases (save where the imputation is an
imputatio fact I and as such impropriety it is an ascribing to a party of a
quality which does not actually belong to him. But in respect of the hitter, the
only instance in Scripture which bears analogy to the imputation of theology is
that of Paul when he asks the debt of Onesimus to be imputed to him; and even
this case is not wholly analogous, for the ground of imputation here is Paul’s
voluntary susception on himself of the indebtedness of Onesimus, whereas in the
cases sup posed by theologians, the ground of imputation is found in some
extraneous arrangement or constitution existing indepen dent of the spontaneous
volition of the parties. The imputa tion of man’s sins to the Saviour may seem
an exception to this, inasmuch as He undertook that burden voluntarily; but it
is only in appearance that this is an exception, for our Lord’s voluntariness,
in this respect, is never represented in Scripture as siwntaneous, but always as
a cheerful and rejoicing submission to the will, the scheme, the constituted
plan of the Father.

(3.) We have now to inquire how far this theological doctrine of imputation is
sanctioned in its doctrine by Scrip ture. We have seen that in form it has
little or no sanction; but this does not prove that it is not really taught
there, for a theological dogma may be substantially in Scripture, though the
terms used to express it may not be found there at all, or found expressing
something different. We have to ask now, then, not whether the word imputation,
as used by theologians, is legitimately used by them, but whether the thing that
word is used to express is in accordance with Scripture. And here I shall
confine myself to the one point of the imputation to mankind of Adam’s sin, as
that is the subject for the sake of which I have entered on this disquisition.

Theologians say that the first sin of the first man has been imputed to all his
posterity: What do they intend this phraseology to convey? The answer to this
question brings before us the existence of a diversity of doctrine among
theologians on this head. By all who hold the doctrine of imputation in any
sense, it is maintained that men universally are involved in the con sequences
of Adam’s sin; but there is difference of opinion, both as to the nature of
these consequences, and as to the ground on which the imputation of them to the
race rests. As respects the consequences, some hold that it is merely the
temporal consequences of Adam’s sin that have descended to his posterity; while
others maintain that men are involved also and primarily in the spiritual
consequences; and within the latter class opinions range from the holding that
all men actually sinned in Adam, in the sense of being guilty of his sin and
personally liable to all the penal consequences thereof, to the holding that
only certain privative results have ensued to the race from Adam’s guilt, such
as the want of positive righteousness, and of the advantages Adam enjoyed in
Paradise for pursuing a holy and happy course. There are differences of opinion
also as to whether the consequences to mankind of Adam’s sin are purely legal or
purely moral, or a union of both; some contending that it is merely certain
chartered blessings that we have lost, certain legal disadvantages under which
we have been brought by the sin of Adam; others, that it is a moral vitiosity of
nature that has been thereby entailed on us; and others, that through the sin of
Adam all men have become both legally proscribed and morally corrupt.

Then, as to the ground of imputation, some find that in a federal constitution
established by God, in which Adam represented and acted for the race, so that
nil his posterity are involved in the consequences of his act on the juridical
principle " quod cdiquis facit per alium facit per sc ;" whilst others resolve
the ground of imputation into the natural con nection of Adam as the progenitor
of mankind with his posterity, to whom he has transmitted character and
condition by a natural and unavoidable process. In the above digest I have taken
no notice of the doctrine of those who teach that God’s imputation to mankind of
Adam’s sin is simply His determination to deal with all men who sin as He dealt
with the author of the first sin; for this, though dignified by theologians with
the title of Imputatio metaphysical, is in reality no imputation at all, but a
mere evasion of the whole subject under a specious name. a. Disregarding minor
and unessential differences, the theory of imputation as applied to the
existence of sin in our race, emerges in two principal forms that of Imputatio
ad rcatum, and that of Imputatio ad poznam.

(a.) Imputatio ad reatum. By this is intended that men, the descendants of Adam,
are regarded by God as lying under guilt and blame because of Adam’s sin. This
opinion does not necessarily involve what we may call the identification
hypothesis, according to which all men are held to have been so identified with
Adam that they sinned his sin, are guilty of his guilt, and fell in his fall. It
may be doubted, indeed, whether any man ever really held this opinion as
literally construed, for it seems impossible to attach to it any intelligible
meaning. At the same time some very able writers have expressed themselves as if
they not only held this view, but deemed the holding of it essential to a just
appre hension of the whole scheme of evangelical truth. Augustine, for instance,
fluctuates between this and the opinion that Adam’s sin reaches us not by
imputation, but by the com munication of an " occult infection (or poison) of
carnal con cupiscence," which leads all to sin; or rather, perhaps, I should
say, Augustine held both opinions, regarding Adam’s sin as having not only
vitiated our nature, but also entailed on us guilt. It is his doctrine on the
latter of these alone that we are now concerned with, and here such statements
as the following meet us in his writings: " Because he [Adam] in the exercise of
his free will deserted God, he experienced the just judgment of God to be
condemned with his whole race, which as yet lying wholly in him sinned with
him." * What follows enunciates this view still more explicitly: " In whom 1 De
Correptione et Gratia, 100:10.

[Adam] all have sinned, since all were that one man (omnes illc unus homo
fuerunt*)." 3 The following is Stapfer’s statement of what he regarded as the
orthodox doctrine on this head :

" The root having sinned, all that descends from it and with it constitutes one
whole may also be judged to have sinned, since it is not different from the
root, but one with it." 2 But by no one, perhaps, has this view been more
strongly stated than by Mr. Haldane: " The sin of Adam," says he, " was ours, as
really and truly so as it was the sin of Adam himself; so that every believer is
bound to acknowledge and confess that he is guilty of Adam’s sin." 3

Under such extreme views the idea of imputation in its proper theologic sense
disappears. It is no longer Adam s sin that is imputed to us but our own sin, in
some mysterious way committed not by us but by our first parent, which is held
against us. Of such a doctrine taken thus literally, it may suffice at present
to say that such an identification of the race with the first man is in the
nature of things impossible, that to affirm that Adam’s sin was ours in the same
sense as it was his is simply absurd, and that to confess ourselves guilty of a
sin which we know we did not commit, is alike contrary to reason and conscience,
to truth and good morals.

Among the more reasonable upholders of the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s
guilt to his posterity this language is used to convey the idea that God, on
account of Adam’s sin, holds all men as if they had themselves committed that
sin, i.e. holds them guilty and deserving of punishment. Along with this it is
also generally held that men, through this con nection with Adam, are
universally partakers of a vitiated moral nature. This opinion is expressed thus
in the Con fession of the Westminster Assembly: " Our first parents being the
root of all mankind, the guilt of their sin was im puted, and the same death in
sin and corrupted nature con veyed to their posterity, descending from them by
ordinary generation." This may be regarded as the prevailing opinion of modern
Calvinists. This is what has been called Immediate Imputation, There is,
however, a mediate imputation held by many excellent 1 DePeccat. Mer. et
Remiss., i. 10.

2 Theol. Pokm., i. p. 236, 3 Comment, on Romans, vol. i. p, 440. writers,
according to which man, inheriting from Adam a fallen and corrupt nature,
commences his moral existence by appropriating to himself as it were, Adam’s
sin, in other words, actually sinning in the same way as he sinned, by rebellion
against God, and that all men thus incur the same guilt as he, and the same
penalty as was pronounced on him. This opinion is advocated by Venema in his
valuable Institutes of Theology (pp. 519-526). Dwight also favours it (Theology,
Serm. 32).

Dr. "Wardlaw, who advocates the doctrine of immediate im putation, also
advocates this as not incompatible with the other (Systematic Theology, ii. p.
267). The only remark which I would offer at present on this doctrine is, that
whether it expresses a truth or not, it is improperly offered as being a form of
the doctrine of imputation. Mediate imputa tion, as above explained, is no
imputation at all in the sense in which that term is used by theologians. The
whole amount of guilt and blame which it supposes to attach to any indi vidual
is derived from his own sin, and his connection with Adam is adduced simply as
accounting for the fact of his possessing a nature that leads him to sin. This
is not in any sense the imputation to him of Adam’s guilt it is simply the
accounting for his individual depravity, and ascribing that to his connection
with the first man. The imputation of guilt necessarily involves the holding of
the party in some sense as legally involved in the blame and punishment of the
act, the guilt of which is imputed to him.

(&) Imputatio ad poenam. According to this view, God does not impute guilt to
men on account of their first parents transgression, nor does He send men into
the world with a positively vitiated nature, but He treats them penally in
consequence of Adam’s sin, as if they had committed it, by withholding from them
all those supernatural gifts and chartered blessings which Adam enjoyed, the
consequence of which is that they, through the native operation of their own
lusts and passions, fall under the power of sin, and so become personally guilty
before God. This is the view advocated by Dr. Payne in his able work on Original
Sin. According to him, Adam’s transgression " rendered us liable to the loss of
that sovereign and efficacious influence without which life in either sense of
the term has never been known to exist" (p. 108). In another place lie thus
explains the phrase " chartered blessings," by which he describes the benefits
which Adam lost by his sin: They are " blessings which God was not bound in
equity to bestow and to continue, blessings which had their exclusive source in
Divine Sovereignty, which might, of course, be withdrawn at any time, and in any
way that should seem meet to God Himself, of which the continued and permanent
enjoyment might be suspended on any conditions He should see fit to appoint "

(pp. 48, 49). This is substantially the view of Edwards, so tar at least as
imputation is concerned; though he differs from Dr. Payne in holding with
Augustine, that a positive vitiosity of nature has been derived from Adam to his
posterity. It is somewhat singular (and the fact has not been noticed, so far as
I am aware) that the opinion advocated by Dr. Payne is almost identical with
that advanced by Bellarmine as the doctrine of the liomish Church: " The
penalty, which properly corresponds as its counterpart to the first sin, was the
loss of original righteousness, and of the supernatural gifts with which God had
endowed our nature.

. Corruption of nature flowed not from the want of any gift, nor from the
accession of any evil quality, but solely from the loss of supernatural gifts,
on account of the sin of Adam." The " supernatural gifts " of the Romish divine
answer to the " chartered blessings " of Dr. Payne. Among the schoolmen, the
views of Anselm and the Scotists approximated to that expressed by Bellarmine,
whilst Aquinas sustained the doctrine of Augustine.

I. In proceeding to test these views by the teaching of Scripture, there are two
remarks of a preliminary nature which I would offer. The first is, that as by
the supposition it was through Adam’s sin that evil came upon his posterity, the
nature and degree of that evil as affecting them cannot essentially differ from
the evil he brought on himself by his sin; it must be evil of the same kind as
came on him, and not greater in degree than that. This seems to flow neces
sarily out of the very idea of it, as evil resulting from his fall. The second
remark I would make is, that as what was purely personal to Adam could not in
any judicial way descend to his posterity, we must look to something public and
legal in his relation to them as the source of the trans mission from him to
them of legal disabilities.

These remarks seem to indicate the course of inquiry which it behoves us to
pursue in order to obtain satisfaction on the point now before us. We have,
first, to ascertain what penalty Adam brought on himself by his sin; we have
then to consider in what capacity he acted when this penalty was incurred by
him; and we have, in fine, to determine how and to what extent his posterity
suffer in consequence of their relation to him. To facilitate our investigation,
I shall propose a series of questions to which I shall endeavour to find the
just Biblical answer.

(a.) What was Adam’s position in Paradise as respects its bearing on the
question now before us? Now, in answer to this, I think the one point that we
are concerned with is his being subjected to a positive test of obedience, on
his meeting and satisfying which depended his continuance in that state in which
he had been created. Much is often said in inquiries such as that in which we
are engaged about the supernatural gifts and endowments with which Adam was
invested in Paradise; and of late it has become customary in certain quarters to
speak of these as chartered blessings. That Adam enjoyed in Paradise certain
privileges and blessings of a peculiar kind cannot be denied; he had immunity
from suffering, from the sight of moral evil, from the corrupting influence of
evil example, and such like, and he enjoyed the favour of God and free
intercourse with Him; and if it is these that are intended when chartered
blessings ore spoken of, there need be no dispute about the matter, though a
phrase less liable to be misunderstood might with advantage have been used. But
it is evident that the phrase is meant to convey the existence of privileges
beyond these privileges not arising out of man’s condition and his natural
relation to his Creator, but privileges conveyed by God’s sovereign bounty to
man, and of a supernatural kind.

Now, in reference to this I feel constrained to ask, On what statement of
Scripture is the assertion founded that Adam possessed any supernatural gifts or
chartered blessings in Paradise? I confess I can find none. It is true that Adam
was made in the image and likeness of God, and I freely admit that that
expression includes moral as well as intellec tual resemblance to God purity as
well as intelligence; nor can we suppose, even apart from this, that from the
good and holy aught but a good and holy being could immediately proceed. But
moral strength is a matter of degree, and we cannot, I think, suppose that it
was possessed in any very high degree by our first parents. If we apply to them
the best test of moral strength with which we are acquainted, viz. The power to
resist temptation, we must pronounce their moral strength very small not much
beyond that of a child; for the temptation under which they fell was about the
smallest to which an intelligent agent could be exposed.

I cannot, therefore, regard them as having very extraordinary or supernatural
gifts. Had they possessed the moral strength of even any of us, they surely
would have stood a longer siege, and some severer assaults would have been
necessary before they capitulated to the foe. They were good and holy simply
because they had been made so, and knew nothing else; but they could not have
possessed this quality in any high not to say supernatural degree, or they would
have successfully resisted the slight trial to which they were exposed.

I may here glance, in passing, at Dr. Payne’s statement as to the special or
chief of those blessings to which he has applied the term " chartered." He
signalizes as one the presence in Adam of the Divine Spirit, and the influence
of that Divine Agent on Adam’s mind, whereby he was raised to a high degree of
holiness and purity. Now, it seems to me strange that it did not occur to so
acute a thinker to ask, If this boon was possessed by Adam, how came Adam to
fall? According to Dr. Payne’s theory, it was the loss of this which constituted
the principal effect of Adam’s fall, and the consequent absence of this which is
the cause of sin to Adam’s posterity. We sin, he tells us, because we want,
through Adam’s fault, this union of the soul with God, with out which man cannot
live so as to please God. But if the want of this causes us to sin, the presence
of this would keep us from sin; for nothing can be more evident than that if the
want of anything causes a particular result, the removal of that want would
prevent that result. But Adam had this blessing, according to Dr. Payne, for
this constituted, in his view, the supreme boon of Paradise. How, then, came
Adam to sin at all? If he possessed that, the want of which is the sole cause of
sin, how came he to be a sinner? The conclusion is, I think, inevitable that
Adam did not possess this so-called chartered blessing. To this conclusion the
circumstance already noticed, viz. The ease with which our first parents were
seduced into sin, adds strength. A soul in union with the Divine Spirit, and
naturally holy, could not have yielded at so slight an attack of the tempter.
Who of us would not stand in doubt of any man’s having the Spirit of God in
union with his soul, if he sank as readily under temptation as Adam did? And if
we judge thus of men encompassed with infirmity and accustomed to sin, how much
more must we judge so of one who thus fell when ignorant of sin, and surrounded
by all the hallowed influences of a sinless world?

I am forced to conclude, then, that the common notion that Adam enjoyed in
Paradise a supernatural degree of holiness and moral power, is a notion without
solid founda tion. I would further remark, however, that supposing this notion
better founded than it is, it seems incompetent to bring such endowments into
consideration in the question now before us. For whatever were the moral and
spiritual excellences conferred on Adam, these were purely personal, arid could
have no bearing on his position as under trial, excepting as they may have
increased his individual personal responsibility. The special feature of Adam’s
position, which it behoves us to keep in view, is his being placed under a
positive prohibitory enactment, on his obedience to which his continuance in
happiness depended. He was, of course, bound to keep every part of God’s law,
and any transgression of that law would have been followed by consequences of a
penal kind to himself. So far as the history goes, however, it was only to the
transgression of this law that the threatened penalty was attached, and we have
no right to conclude that the same consequences which flowed from this would
have flowed from any other breach of the divine law.

It seems important to a just view of this whole subject that this should be kept
distinctly in view, that it was not merely because Adam sinned, but because he
sinned in this particular case, by breaking this one prohibition, the appointed
test of his obedience, that he fell and brought on his race so many evils.

(ft.) Let us now ask, What was the consequence to Adam of his transgression? The
history makes it very plain that a great, an immediate, and most calamitous
change passed upon Adam after he had sinned. Without travelling beyond the
record, or indulging in any speculative inferences, we may unhesitatingly assert
that the following evils were incurred by Adam in consequence of his sin: First,
he fell under the divine displeasure, and incurred the penalty which had been
denounced against disobedience, viz. death. Secondly, he came under the
influence of distrust of God and want of reverence and love for God; as is
evident from his hiding himself from God’s presence, and from his sullen and
almost insolent answers to God’s questioning of him. Thirdly, he became subject
to the power of the tempter the serpent, the prince of darkness, who, having
once acquired a victory over him, would ever after seek to use him as his
thrall. This is evident from the nature of the promise of deliverance, which was
in reality a promise that the serpent’s persistent and persevering tyranny over
man should ultimately be destroyed; the bruising of the serpent’s head being not
the destruction of Satan’s person, but the destruction of his power over man.

Now of these evils that came on Adam, the only one that came on him directly,
immediately, and exclusively, in con sequence of his eating the forbidden fruit,
was the first viz. the penalty of death. This was the predicted and denounced
penalty of transgression: " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die." His incurring death, therefore, was the direct and the only direct legal
consequence of his sin. Other evils came upon him incidentally, and were the
natural rather than the statutory effects of his transgression. They were
therefore personal evils, not public disabilities, and cannot come into question
as forming any part of what he entailed on his posterity. But what are we to
understand by the " death " which came upon Adam by his sin? In reply to this
some have contended that it was only temporal death the death of the body;
whilst others with equal eagerness have contended that it was death in the most
comprehensive sense death temporal, spiritual, and eternal. I cannot help
thinking that a great deal of ingenuity, and not a little temper, has been
improfitably expended on this discussion. If, instead of diverging into general
speculation and debate, we keep close by the Mosaic narrative, I feel assured
that we shall reach satisfac tion by a shorter and surer process. From this
narrative I gather, in the outset, and as a certain fact, that the penalty of
death denounced against sin was one which our first parents immediately
incurred. The words of the threatening are most precise: " In the day thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." According to the law, then, immediate
death Avas the penalty to be inflicted 011 Adam if he ate the forbidden fruit.
The law does not say, "In that day thou shalt become mortal, and so at some
future period die; " nor does it say, " Thou shalt then enter upon a state of
progres sive degradation, which shall ultimately culminate in eternal death; "
it says simply, " In that day thou shalt die." We must believe, therefore, that
Adam, having committed the forbidden deed, incurred the penalty actually
threatened, and in that day did die unless we would impute to God a trifling
with His own edict which is incompatible with justice, or a carelessness of
expression in the framing of His edict which is incompatible with the idea of a
perfect law.

I am well aware of the attempts which have been made to show that the words " In
the day thou eatest thereof " do not mean " in that very day," but may receive
an interpretation compatible with the supposition that a long interval might
elapse between the commision of the sin and the suffering of the penalty; but
these attempts are for the most part of such a kind that it is impossible for
any one who has been at all accustomed to a just method of interpreting
Scriptures to treat them with respect. The only attempt to place this on an
exegetical basis is that of those who affirm that had it been intended that Adam
was to die on the very day that he broke the command, the words used would have
been, not simply DV3, but nrn ova or sinn DV3. This argument is advanced by Mr.
Holden and adopted by Dr. Payne. It is founded, however, on a gross mistake a
double mistake; for, in the first place, it is not true that in order to express
the idea of an event happening on that very day in which something else happened
or might happen, the Hebrews never used the simple DV3; instances to the
contrary are Leviticus 7:35; Isaiah 11:16; Lamentations 3:57; and, in the second
place, it has been overlooked that in Genesis 2:17, where we have the words of
threatening, DV1 is in construction with the verb butt, the expression being
IJOK D ^?, which is definite, and does not admit of the insertion of either run
or Ninn.

Besides, this argument is virtually given up by Dr. Payne in the very context in
which he adduces it, for he goes on to say that the words of the threatening
mean "instant and necessary exposure to the infliction of death." According to
this the words " in the day " are equivalent to " in the instant," so that all
the criticism expended on them to show that they cannot mean this is virtually
rendered superfluous.

What would have been more to the point would be to have shown that the words "
thou shalt surely die " mean not "instant and certain death," as they seem to
do, but "instant and necessary exposure, to the infliction of death," as Dr.
Payne says they mean. This neither he nor any one, so far as I am aware, has
attempted.

Taking the narrative then as it stands, I feel constrained to believe that as
God threatened Adam with instant and certain death in case of transgression,
Adam did instantly die when he transgressed. And this may enable us to say with
some degree of confidence what it was that under this penalty Adam incurred. The
word " death " is used in Scripture in a variety of meanings; but instead of
diverging into general speculation or inquiry on this head, if we are sure that
the death Adam incurred was something that actually befell him, we have only to
ask what did befall him to get an answer to our question. Now, on this point the
history leaves us in no great uncertainty. Adam lost by his transgression
(immedi ately and directly) all the privileges of Paradise, including immediate
intercourse with God and the enjoyment of His favour and image; he was sent into
a world covered with briars and thorns, and he was doomed to a life of pains and
sorrows to be terminated by death. This was for one whoso true life consisted in
being like God and enjoying His favour really to die. Here a real penalty was
incurred, a real evil endured. The mere cessation of animal life is not
necessarily an evil, any more than mere existence is necessarily a good.

All depends on the state morally and physically in which the being exists; and
as for man the only real good is to be at one with God, to have fellowship with
Him, and to enjoy His favour and the happiness which that brings, to be deprived
of these is for man to endure the sorest privation, is to be deprived of his
true life, is, in the saddest sense, to die.

Death in Scripture is used emphatically to designate a state the opposite of
felicity, dignity, and purity, of which state the dissolution of the union of
soul and body, and the return of the latter to the ruin and gloom of the grave,
is the visible type. In the Epistle to the Romans the apostle puts the death
which came as the consequence of Adam’s sin in con trast with the grace or
favour of God (v. 15), and with the gift of righteousness or acceptance with God
(v. 17), and he represents it as the opposite of eternal life (vi. 23) obtained
through Jesus Christ our Lord. In such a connection it would be absurd to
restrict the term to mere natural decease. That is not death as opposed to
righteousness, to the enjoy ment of God’s favour, and to eternal life through
Christ. The death of which the apostle writes is that state of moral and
physical dishonour, suffering, and decay which is the opposite of that state of
holiness, dignity, and blessedness which Adam enjoyed whilst he lived in God’s
favour and obeyed His will. Into this state of death Adam entered when he
sinned; on the very day on which he ate the for bidden fruit he died; he lost
the divine favour; he became subject to evil, physical and moral; and he
received into his frame the seeds of mortality, decay, and dissolution. This is
the penalty of guilt; and this penalty Adam incurred by his transgression.

(c.) In what relation to his posterity did Adam stand whilst sustaining this
probation and enduring this penalty? The reply to this is, That of federal head
and representative, who appeared and acted not for himself alone, but for his
posterity.

It is true he was also their natural progenitor, and as such naturally
transmitted to them certain qualities and conditions of a natural kind. Beyond
such natural effects, however, his relation to them as progenitor could not
extend. Effects reaching them in consequence of his conduct as under a positive
constitution, under a dispensation, could reach them only if in this condition
he acted as their representative or covenant or dispensational head.

We may illustrate this by supposing the case of two men standing at the head of
a family; both of whom have certain marked natural peculiarities, but one of
whom has advantages which are personal though capable of being transferred,
such, for instance, as wealth; while the other has advantages which he owes
solely to his living under a certain constitution, such, for instance, as rank,
titles, aristocratic privileges, which come to him solely in virtue of his being
the subject of some specific arrangement or political system under which he
lives. On comparing these two cases you will see at a glance that whilst both
may and probably will transmit to their children their natural peculiarities,
the former is at liberty to transmit any or all of his personal advantages as he
pleases, or to alienate them from his children altogether; whilst the latter can
transmit his advantages only if his position has been a representative one, only
if he has held them in trust for his race, and in this case he cannot hinder
them from descending to his family. A wealthy merchant may or may not make his
children the heirs of his wealth; a titled nobleman cannot but transmit his
dignities and privileges to his descendants, or if he should have forfeited
these by misconduct he cannot but transmit to his posterity, however personally
innocent, the degradation and forfeiture of privilege he has incurred. This
difference arises solely from the one set of advantages being personal, whilst
the other set is constitutional, and the party receiving or sustaining them
bears a representative or federal character.

Applying this to the matter before us, it is easy to see that Adam could entail
on his posterity his dispensational advantages or penalties (as the case came to
be through his sin) only on the supposition that he sustained, whilst enjoying
these advantages or receiving these penalties, a representative character. It
comes, therefore, to be necessary to inquire whether there be any sufficient
reason for believ ing that Adam bore such a character; and this can be answered
only by an examination of the statements of Scripture bearing on the subject.

There is one consideration, however, of a general kind which, before proceeding
to examine passages, it is worth while to ponder. It cannot be denied that as
the children of Adam we suffer disadvantages on account of his sin.

However low we reduce the estimate of the evil which has come on us through his
conduct, it cannot be denied that evil of some sort has come on us thereby. Even
if we allow no more than, with Pelagius and Socinus, that the native mortality
of man has thereby been suffered to come into operation, still, as this is an
evil from which Adam was exempt in Paradise, it is thereby admitted that we are
sufferers through his act. But if we suffer, whether it be in the way of
privation or in the way of infliction in consequence of Adam’s sin, this can be
reconciled with equitable administration only on the supposition that Adam
appeared and acted as our representative. If he did so, then, as all jurists
allow, our suffering through his sin is perfectly equitable; it is a thing
which, under a legal constitution, could not be avoided; the principle qiiocl
facit per alium facit per se covers it and justifies it. But it is otherwise if
he was not our representative. We are, in that case, in no way involved in his
doings, and have a right to be exempt from the penal consequences of them. It
will not do to say, These come upon us naturally, as the diseased constitution
of the drunkard descends to his child. The two cases are not parallel. The
disease of the drunkard descends to his child because it is disease, not because
his drunkenness is a sin. Had the position been that Adam’s sin produced in him
a diseased state of body which was found also in his descendants, it might be
contended on physiological grounds that in their sufferings there was nothing
beyond a natural effect. But this is not the position. The position is that
Adam’s sin, as sin, entailed on his posterity a penalty under which they suffer,
and this we maintain is reconcilable with equity of administration only on the
supposition that he appeared and acted in a representative capacity. This at the
outset renders it extremely probable that Adam sustained in Paradise a
representative character, and that the penalty he in that character incurred has
necessarily descended to all his posterity. Of the passages of Scripture which
support and establish this conclusion, the most weighty are found in Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans. The concluding half of the fifth chapter of that Epistle
bears especially on this subject. There we find the apostle first expressly
stating, not only that by one man sin entered the world and so death by sin, but
that this has taken place because in that one man’s sin all have sinned.

It is not necessary in order to substantiate this reasoning that we should
resort to the exegesis of Augustine and others who render the concluding clause
of ver. 12, " in whom [i.e. The one man, Adam] all have sinned; " at best this
is of doubtful legitimacy, both linguistically and as a matter of construction;
and it is unnecessary for the purpose of bringing out the meaning of the
apostle’s words as above given. Adhering to the render ing in the A. V. as that
best supported, viz. " for that [or be cause] all have sinned," we ask, To what
does this refer? to the actual sins of the individuals of our race, or to their
sin in Adam? That it cannot refer to the former we are constrained to conclude,
from the fact that the apostle makes the inci dence of the sin here spoken of
coextensive with the incidence of death. " Death," saith he, " hath passed upon
all, because all have sinned; " the latter fact is the cause of the former.
Wherever the effect, then, is found there must be the operation of the cause;
wherever there is death there must be this sin of which Paul speaks. But we find
death where there is no actual sin, as in the case of infants; from all which it
clearly follows that it cannot be of actual sin that Paul here speaks. But if
not of actual sin, then it must be of representative sin of sin committed
virtually in Adam by his posterity that he speaks. And with this tallies his
whole statement in this verse. How jejune and empty his words if we understand
this last clause of actual sin com mitted personally by men ! " By one man sin
entered the world, and death by sin; and so death hath passed upon all men,
because all have committed sin." One does not see the force of the " so " here;
nor, indeed, the need of the latter part of the verse at all; for if death and
sin are inseparable, of course, if all commit sin all must die. It is to be
noted, moreover, that the sentence in ver. 1 2 is incomplete; we have a
comparison where nothing is expressly compared.

"As by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death hath passed
on all men, because all have sinned," here the sentence stops, and the question
naturally arises, As wliat? The apostle does not say, but leaves us, I
apprehend, to supply the apodosis of his sentence from what goes before.

Some, indeed, propose to find the close of the sentence and the completion of
the comparison in ver. 18: " Therefore, 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 to justification of life." But not only is this a violent
expedient, it is withal an unsatisfactory one; for still the sentence in ver. 12
remains unfinished, and cannot possibly be completed grammatically from ver. 18,
which is no more than complete in itself, and has nothing to spare for the
completion of any other sentence. The " there fore " with which ver. 1 8
commences plainly connects it, not with ver. 12, but with the verses immediately
preceding, the loth to 17 tli; and, indeed, the whole train of the apostle s
reasoning is dislocated and disturb


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  CHAPTER 30: K 00  CHAPTER XI CONSEQUENCES  SIN
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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.


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  CHAPTER 31: K 01   THE CONSEQUENCES  SIN  MAN
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1. The Consequences of Sin to Man himself. As respects man himself the
consequences of sin are these :

(i.) The whole race is subject to suffering, disease, afflic tion, sorrow, and
ultimately to physical death. That there 1 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, vol. iv.
p. 130. is misery of various kinds in our world, and that no being of our race
wholly escapes suffering of some kind is patent to all, and cannot have escaped
the notice of the most cursory observer. Few also can fail to see that the
physical evils under which men suffer stand connected with that moral evil which
affects man, with that guilt of which he is conscious, and must be viewed as the
penal consequences of this. It may not be possible in every case to trace the
connection between the suffering and the offence, and it behoves us to be very
cautious how we connect any calamity into which we ourselves or others may have
fallen with any particular sin, or class of sins, we or they may have committed,
so as to pro nounce that the special infliction is a divine judgment because of
the special offence; for we command so very limited a range of vision, and are
such imperfect judges in many things pertaining to such matters, that it becomes
us to beware of hasty and rash conclusions on points of this sort, especially in
reference to others. Still, as a general rule, we can have no hesitation in
saying that temporal evils are the consequence of sin; and we can in so many
cases trace the connection between the offence and the suffering, we see the
latter so following the former in course by a natural process, that the
induction becomes legitimate by which we conclude this to be a principle of the
divine administration here, and that as a general fact man is a sufferer because
he is a sinner. What natural analogy thus leads us to consider probable,
Scripture seems clearly to teach. There it is not only emphatically affirmed
that death, under which term all physical evils are included, entered by sin,
but it is expressly said that men as sinners shall eat of the fruit of their own
way, and be h lled with their own devices (Proverbs 1:31). There sinners are
assured that their iniquity will find them out an assertion which has reference
to the certainty with which punishment in the shape of suffering follows upon
the commission of sin, even though it be hid from the knowledge, and so exempted
from the judicial recognition of men. To the same effect is the statement, " His
own iniquities shall take the wicked man, and he shall be holden with the cords
of his sins"

(Proverbs 5:22). So the prophet was commissioned to proclaim, " Woe unto the
wicked ! it shall be ill with him; for the reward of his hands shall be given
him" (Isaiah 3:11). To the same effect Zophar the Naamathite, after a lengthened
enumeration of evils, concludes, " This is the portion of a wicked man from God,
and the heritage appointed him by God "

(Job 20:29). 1 Of the sufferings that come upon men as the direct conse quence
of sin, not the least are those which arise from remorse and self-condemnation.
The apostle speaks (Romans 2:15) of men’s consciences bearing witness to the
law, and their thoughts accusing them, or else excusing them. By this he intends
that men sit in judgment upon themselves, and according as they see their
conduct to be in accordance with the divine law, or a violation of it, they
commend them selves or condemn themselves. In the latter case a feeling of
remorse invades them; they bitterly censure themselves, and a painful sense of
guilt, as it were, bites into their soul.

God has made us thus to judge ourselves and thus to feel when we see that we
have done wrong; and fallen as man is, he retains his capacity of moral
judgment, is able to distin guish right from wrong, has the law written on his
heart so that even in the absence of a direct revelation from heaven he can
determine the course he ought to pursue, and is thus in a condition to judge
himself, and to decide whether he is to be approved or condemned. This judgment
he can hardly avoid making of himself, and when he finds that he stands
condemned at the bar of his own judgment, he cannot but feel pained, nor can he
avoid the dreadful anticipation that the condemnation he pronounces on himself
is the prelude to the still severer condemnation of the Almighty Judge. Long
indulgence in sin may blunt the edge of this judgment arid feeling, and a habit
may be acquired of stifling the convictions of conscience; but this cannot
continue for ever; the internal monitor will ere long assert its right to speak,
and the attempt that has been made to silence it will only make the remorse more
poignant when at length conscience utters its judgment. " The conviction," says
Philo Judseus, " which dwells in and is connate with every soul as an accuser,
blames, accuses, upbraids, and again, as a judge, instructs, admonishes, exhorts
to repentance." 2 So also the Eabbins called the 1 See Butler’s Analogy, Ft. I.
ch. ii.

2 DC DecaL, p. 756. conscience ^.PP:*?, "the accuser." A heathen poet 1 could
only say, " Hie murus aheneus esto :

Nil eonscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa." Of the agony arising from conscious
guilt the Scripture presents us with a striking instance in the case of Judas,
who, when he saw the result of his covetousness and treachery, and felt that he
had betrayed his Master to death, brought back the price of his treason to the
chief priest, saying, " I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood,"
cast down the money in their presence, and went out and hanged himself. Many
instances of a similar kind history records; and those who have had to deal with
men under conviction of sin know how often the accusations of conscience so
oppress men that they are crushed and overwhelmed thereby, and refuse to receive
any comfort or relief. There is every reason to believe that from this the chief
agony of the state of iinal retribution will arise.

(ii.) In consequence of sin men are brought into condemna tion, and consequently
under liability to punishment in a future state of being. As the present is
evidently a prepara tory state, and as we see in the present state that present
sin is followed by consequent suffering and punishment, reason teaches us to
anticipate that the sins and vices men commit or indulge in now will render the
state that is to follow one to them of penal endurance and suffering. As sin is
the transgression of a law, and as every law attaches to that which it
prescribes the announcement of certain penalties to be incurred by those who
transgress it, we are bound to expect that so it will be with the divine law.
Now on this head Scripture leaves no room for doubt. The fixed, unalter able
principle of the divine administration which it announces is, " The soul that
sinneth it shall die." " The wages of sin is death" (Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 6:23).
And lest this death should be understood of some mere temporal calamity, our
Lord has been careful to assure us that He, " the Son of Man, shall send forth
His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and
them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there 1
Horace, Epist., i. 1. 60. shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew
13:41-42). And again in His parable of the talents, He represents the king as
saying, concerning the unprofitable servant, " Cast him into outer darkness:
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 25:36). In the account
also which He gives of the transactions of the last judgment, He says of the
wicked, " These shall go away into everlasting punishment "

(Matthew 25:40). In perfect accordance with this are the statements of the
apostles. Take, for instance, the detailed statement of the apostle in Eom.
2:516, the more con densed but not less clear and emphatic statement in 2
Thessalonians 1:6-10, or the declaration in Hebrews 10:30-31. Comp. also Matthew
3:12; Luke 3:17; Romans 1:18, Romans 1:32; 2 Thessalonians 2:12; 2 Peter 2:9; 2
Peter 3:7, etc. In consequence of sin all men are thus under legal con
demnation, and there lies before them the prospect of legal penalty to be
endured by them. In view of this some have contended that it is altogether
improper to speak of man s condition here as one of probation. Where, it has
been asked, is there place for probation if men are already, because of sin,
under condemnation? Now, it is undoubtedly true that if by a state of probation
be meant that man is here on his trial whether he shall become guilty or not,
the expres sion is incorrect, and one the use of which may grievously mislead.
Man is not on his probation in this respect. The issue in this case is already
decided; the Scripture hath concluded all men under sin; the sentence has gone
forth from the Judge of all; and condemnation already rests upon every
individual of our race. It is not a question whether man in his natural state
shall be acquitted or condemned when he stands before God at last; this question
is already decided; judgment has already gone forth against the workers of
iniquity; it is written, " Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things
written in the book of the law to do them" (Galatians 3:10). But whilst we
cannot in this sense speak of man as in a state of probation, I am not prepared
to go the length of saying there is no sense in which this may be affirmed of
man. It appears to me that we may use this expression both in reference to man
as under the religion of nature, and of man as under the offers of the gospel.
In a state of nature man is a moral agent, and he is there so far under
probation that the character of his condition hereafter will be materially
affected by his conduct here. As the punishment will bear a just proportion to
the offence, and as all sins are not of the same enormity, it is obviously a man
s interest to keep down the amount of his guilt, both as respects the number and
as respects the aggravation of his sins, to the lowest possible degree; and of
every man it may be said that he is in this respect on his trial here. He has to
take care of himself in this respect. He is the subject of a great moral
experiment by which his future condition is very seriously to be affected; and
the conduct of this experiment is in his own hands. "In the present state," as
Butler remarks, "all which we enjoy, and a great part of what we suffer, is put
in our own power." We are thus under God’s moral government in a state of
probation, even as respects this life; and as our present life has issues in
that which is to come, we are here also under probation in reference to the
future. Still more distinctly is man in a state of probation for the future when
he lives under the offers of the gospel. These come to him as under condemnation
with proposals of deliverance; and it is for the man to accept or refuse the
offered boon. If he accept, he is pardoned, justified, saved, and blessed; if he
reject, his guilt becomes deeper, his condemnation more severe, his doom more
awful. Is not this, then, a state of probation? Is not every one who is thus
circumstanced one who has, as Butler expresses it, his happiness or misery put
very much in his own power? and what is this but to be formally and truly under
probation for eternity?

(iii.) In consequence of sin, disorder and pollution have invaded man’s soul.
While we object to the assertion that man is born and begins his career with a
morally vitiated and poisoned nature, we must hold that sin depraves and
pollutes and disorders the inner nature of every one who commits it, and that,
as the habit of sinning becomes formed, so the power of depravity increases
until it acquires all the force of a second nature. It cannot be otherwise. As
the little rift in the instrument mars and ultimately destroys the music, so
sin, as a violent infraction of the due order of our nature, cannot but spoil
and disarrange and ultimately impair our whole moral constitution. " Given the
fact of sin," says Dr. Bushnell, " the fact of a fatal breach in the normal
state or constitutional order of the soul follows of necessity. And exactly this
we shall see," he continues, " if we look in upon its secret chambers and watch
the motions of sin in the confused ferment they raise the perceptions
discoloured, the judgments unable to hold their scales steadily because of the
fierce gusts of passion, the thoughts huddling by in crowds of wild suggestion,
the imagination haunted by ugly and dis gustful shapes, the appetites contesting
with reason, the senses victorious over faith, anger blowing the overheated
fires of malice, low jealousies sulking in dark angles of the soul, and envies,
baser still, hiding under the scum of its green mantled pools, all the powers
that should be strung in harmony loosened from each other and brewing in
hopeless and helpless confusion; the conscience, meantime, thundering wrathfully
above and shooting down hot bolts of judgment, and the pallid fears hurrying
wildly about with their brim stone torches, these are the motions of sins, the
Tartarean landscape of the soul and its disorders when self-government is gone
and the constituent integrity is dissolved." J That in its main lines the
picture here given is not over drawn, man’s own consciousness and the experience
of the race universally will attest. The testimony of Scripture also is clear
and full on this point. In the most emphatic terms it announces the fact of
man’s depravity. See Genesis 6:5; Psalms 14:1-2; Isaiah 53:6; Jeremiah 17:9;
Matthew 15:19; Ephesians 2:1, Ephesians 2:3; Titus 3:3; Romans 7:18; James
1:14-15.

What is represented in the last passage quoted daily obser vation and experience
amply confirm. Every person must see how a man, left to himself, goes on in an
ever-deepening course of evil; how the sinner, exempted from restraint, becomes
ever more completely drenched in sin; how he abandons himself ever more and more
to the dominion of iniquity; how he loses the sense of shame and debasement
which the consciousness of guilt first produced upon him; and how he rushes with
ever increasing eagerness to enjoy the banquet of sin, until all considerations
of decency may be set at naught, and being past feeling, the man gives himself 1
Nature and the Supernatural.

" over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greedi ness." Self being
predominant, the natural desire is for that which pleases self, that which
gratifies the lusts and passions that domineer over the soul; and this desire,
once gratified, becomes impatient of restraint, and demands gratification with
ever-increasing impetuosity. Sin once indulged in reacts on the desire which led
to it, and this being thereby rendered more imperious and intense, provokes to
further and deeper indulgence.

" Crescit indulgens sibi dims hydrops, Nee sitini pellit, nisi causa niorbi
Fugerit venis." 1 It is customary to speak of this depravity of man as total.
The phraseology is correct, provided it be justly understood.

It is, however, liable to misconception, and not rarely it is wrongly conceived.
We shall certainly err if in maintaining man’s total depravity we intend thereby
to deny to him the possession of anything that is good. His physical nature, be
it remembered, remains essentially what it was before the Fall, when God
pronounced it " good; " and though it may be injured and degraded by sinful
indulgence, its original faculties and susceptibilities may be preserved entire.
So also with man’s intellectual nature; in no case is it so bright and powerful
as it would be in a sinless state, and in many cases it becomes enfeebled and
marred by sin; but in itself it remains as it was originally, so far as its
constitutive qualities and powers are concerned. We must admit also that man is
the subject of many affections that are good and lovely, and that he does many
things which are not only not morally evil, but are praiseworthy as morally
excellent. To deny that there is anything good in man, or, what is equiva lent,
to affirm that his nature is wholly corrupted and depraved, would be to exempt
him from responsibility. An eye wholly diseased would be incapable of seeing,
and no blame could attach to the man whose eye was so diseased if he failed to
see what he ought to see. In like mariner, if our whole nature were wholly
diseased and corrupted, it would be impossible for us to do what we are required
as intelligent and moral agents to do; and thus we should cease to be 1 Horace,
Carm., ii. 2. 14. blameworthy for not doing it. If sin could thus destroy our
moral responsibility, it would at the same time destroy itself, for where there
is no responsibility there can be no sin. The triumph of sin over man would thus
be the ending of sin in our race. What, then, is meant by saying that men are
totally depraved? All that can be properly intended by this is, that the ruling
principle of man’s mind and heart and life is ungodly. The mainspring of his
active being is desire, what the apostle calls eVifliyAta, and this has either
no moral character at all, or it is positively wrong; or, if right in itself, it
is allowed to dominate to the exclusion of purer and nobler affections, and so
becomes evil. Man’s will thus comes to be under an ungodly bias. He is like a
machine, the parts of which remain unimpaired, but in which the motive power is
disordered, so that the whole action of the machine is depraved.

If I say, " My watch is out of order and spoilt," I do not neces sarily mean
that every wheel is broken, and that it is utterly incapable of right action; I
may intend to intimate merely that the mainspring is under a wrong pressure,
which makes the watch work irregularly, so that it does not fulfil the purpose
for which watches are made. So is it with man. The mechanism of his nature
remains entire, and its working is not wholly for evil; but as in losing love to
God he has lost the proper motive power of his soul, man totally fails to fulfil
the end for which he was made, and spends his energies on that which is not
godly, or is partial, h tful, and irregular in his moral activity. "Man’s chief
end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever;" 1 but this end he, from an
ungodly bias, either wholly ignores and rejects, or he determinedly sets himself
to oppose and frustrate it. He is thus wholly perverted from the right way; as
respects the great end of his being, he is wholly depraved.

(iv.) In consequence of sin, man is in a state of spiritual helplessness. He is
so both as respects power to deliver himself from guilt and as respects power to
deliver from depravity. That man is unable to deliver- himself from guilt must
be admitted by all who form any just estimate of what guilt really is. Even
where men are so sunk in ignorance as to 1 Shorter Catechism, quest. 1. imagine
that by gifts and sacrifices, by penances and mortifi cations, they can procure
the favour of God, it is still on the ground that man needs something beyond
himself, something that shall relieve his helplessness, something that shall
effect what he cannot himself effect, that he expects to obtain deliverance from
guilt. He feels that his guilt has to be expiated before it can be forgiven. He
feels that he cannot simply go to God and say, " I am guilty; be pleased to
forgive me." He feels that something outside of himself must come between him
and God ere he can obtain pardon; and the question which ever presses on him is
that of old, " Where withal shall I appear before God? " (Micah 6:6). Without
something that shall be valid as an expiation, he feels that he cannot stand in
the presence of God or expect the cancelling of his guilt so as to escape the
penal consequences of sin.

Some, indeed, have thought and taught that man may, by a mental state, so place
himself in relation with God that God will, as a matter of course, pardon his
sin and receive him into favour. Man, it is said, may sincerely and truly repent
of his siri, wholly turn from it, unfeignedly renounce, abhor, and forsake it,
and thus be in a state of mind which is right, and which will secure for him
pardon and acceptance with God. With many this notion obtains, and it exercises
a powerful influence for evil over not a few. As presented in its most plausible
form, this doctrine may be stated thus: Man can sincerely repent of his sin, can
turn from it, and in the future be good and holy; and as God is omniscient, and
can consequently with certainty know when repentance is really genuine and
sincere, He can safely, that is, without any risk to His own government and
authority, freely forgive the sins of those whom He sees to be truly repentant
and reformed.

Now, in the outset, I must remark that I do not see what the element of the
divine omniscience has to do here, or how the introduction of it at all affects
the question, because the difficulty is not one of fact, such as the divine
omniscience can remove, but one of principle, such as is equally grave under an
omniscient as under an imperfect government.

1. It is assumed by those who hold the doctrine we are considering, that man may
sincerely and perfectly repent, and turn from sin to goodness. Let this in the
meantime be conceded: the question we have to decide is, Can perfect repentance
and reformation cancel past guilt so as to entitle the penitent to pardon and
favour with God? Now, without entering at large into this matter at present, I
would remark,

(1.) As God is the perfect moral Governor, and as moral government rests not on
force but on perfect rectitude, it is necessary that all His acts should be in
righteousness and truth, so as to commend themselves to the moral sense of His
intelligent creatures. Now, He has said in His law, under which He administers
His government, that sin entitles the transgressor to punishment. His solemn
declaration is, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die; " " The wages [the just
and adequate reward] of sin is death." This is God’s law; this is His public
declaration to the universe of His intelligent creatures. If, therefore, sin is
committed, the right and proper thing is that the penalty shall follow; and this
sequence can be righteously suspended or set aside only on some ground that
shall preserve the rectitude of the Governor unimpeached, in other words, that
shall accord with the moral nature He has given to His intelligent creatures.
The question then comes to be, Does repentance, presumed to be sincere, appear
to the moral sense of man to be a sufficient ground for God, as Governor,
setting aside the claims of law and failing to keep His own word by preserving a
sequence which He has declared to be certain? To this, I think, the moral sense
of the race would reply in the negative. Where guilt, i.e. legal liability to
punishment, has been contracted, the fitting sequence is that the penalty
incurred should be inflicted on the trans gressor; and where a governor has
declared that such is the law under which his subjects live, it would be a
departure from rectitude were he to accept repentance on the part of the
transgressor as a reason for exempting him from the penalty he has incurred.
Mere repentance can never cancel guilt; good conduct in the future can never
compensate for violations of law in the past. No judge in any court would for a
moment admit such a plea in bar of the sentence which the law required him to
pronounce on a criminal. He might be satisfied that the man’s repentance was
sincere; he might be convinced that the man so utterly abhorred the crime he had
committed that there was every moral certainty that he would never commit it
again. But the offence, nevertheless, would remain, and with that the law’s
demand that the penalty incurred should be endured; and no judge could ignore or
repudiate this without incurring censure and doing injury to the government
whose law he was set to administer.

(2.) This consideration is enhanced when what is proposed is not merely the
forgiveness of guilt, but along with this the bestowment on the pardoned
transgressor of immense benefits, such as even his best efforts, supposing him
never to have sinned, could not have secured. If our sense of rectitude revolts
from the proposal that God should set aside the claims of His own law and
forgive the transgressor, simply because he has turned from his evil ways and
resolves henceforth to be a good and obedient subject of the Almighty, surely
much more does it revolt from the proposal of such a transgressor being on such
grounds introduced to all the privileges of the kingdom of heaven.

(3.) It is to be borne in mind that though we speak of future sinlessness, it is
really only the act of repentance or turning from sin in the past that comes
into consideration as a ground of forgiveness. The subsequent sinlessness is
only what the man is bound to; there is no merit in it that can give it a
regressive or retrospective effect. It begins when the pardon is pronounced, and
can have no effect in procuring that. For all that has gone before it is dead
and inoperative. The question therefore, be it remembered, is restricted to
this, Can mere repentance or ceasing to do evil be accepted under a righteous
moral government as an adequate reason for the governor departing from his own
law and exempting the transgressor from the penalty which, by breaking that law,
he has incurred? To this the only answer which the moral sense of man can render
is in the negative.

(4.) Those who think repentance a sufficient ground for the pardoning of the
sinner must be prepared to maintain that by this the sinner becomes legally and
morally entitled to pardon and blessing. The question is one of law and
government, and in such a case we can proceed only on the ground of right and
title; we ask, not what may be by some possibility, or through some act of
sovereignty, but what ought to be and what must be as determined by legal
obligation? Now, no one can maintain that mere repentance, however sincere, can
entitle a sinner to pardon, so that he can demand of the judge in equity that he
shall be acquitted and restored to the enjoy ment of privilege. And yet, if this
be not maintained, it is simply foolish to assert that repentance furnishes a
sufficient ground on which pardon and acquittal can be granted to the man who
has transgressed the divine law and come under condemnation.

2. Even assuming, then, that the sinner can of himself truly repent and turn
from sin, it is evident that this alone can never avail to secure for him
salvation. But can the sinner of himself repent? That physically he is able to
do this we must admit, for were this physically impossible no man could be
justly blamed for not repenting. But morally and practically it is impossible.
Where the disease of sin has once taken hold of a man there is no recuperative
energy by which he can throw it off so as to deliver himself from it. Where sin
has become a habit it acquires the strength and tenacity of a second nature, and
only some power beyond and above nature can free man from its tyranny. As well
might you expect a stream of its own accord to reverse its course and return to
the fountain whence it sprung. " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the
leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil"
(Jeremiah 13:23).

More than this: Does not the very position that repent ance may secure the
pardon of sin involve the impossibility of the sinner’s actually repenting? The
repentance, it is assumed, is real and genuine. But genuine repentance is
prompted by hatred of the sin, not by the prospect of forgive ness and favour as
the reward of repentance. If, therefore, God were to demand repentance as the
means or price of forgiveness, He would necessarily prevent its being the result
of hatred of sin. Genuine repentance would thus be pre cluded; and so in the
very act of offering to the sinner pardon on the ground of his repentance God
would subvert the ground on which He asked the sinner to stand so as to obtain
pardon.

Thus pardon would be offered on conditions which the very offer would render
impossible.

I have referred to man’s inability to deliver himself from sin, as well as his
inability to clear himself from guilt and from condemnation. This has also to be
distinctly recognised in the consideration of man’s spiritual helplessness. Man
is unable to regenerate and renew himself; he is unable to turn from evil to
good, from wrong to right, from unholiness to God. He is unable to follow that
course of perfect obedience by which alone he can fulfil his obligations as
God’s creature and subject; he cannot discern as he ought the things of God; he
cannot walk so as in all things to please God. This inability, however, is of a
different kind from the other. The inability of man to deliver himself from
guilt and condemnation arises from want of power to do what is requisite for the
attaining of the object; the inability of man to be good and holy arises from a
want of will or inclination to do what he has the power physically to do.
Strictly speak ing, the inability in this latter case is simply confirmed
indisposition to do what is right, arising from spiritual blind ness and
depravity. Man has not lost the capacity to be holy; he has not ceased to be a
free agent, choosing what he prefers, and determining his own acts; he is under
no external force preventing him from being holy. The spiritual inability under
which he lies is that of a mind set against God, desti tute of the principle of
spiritual vitality and activity, through carnality and worldliness and sinful
indulgence incapable of discerning the beauty of holiness, and so environed and
per meated by selfishness that all true love to God is excluded from it. This is
a real inability, inasmuch as it hinders and prevents man from being holy,
though it does not destroy his capacity for being holy. 1


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  CHAPTER 32: K 02  CONSEQUENCES  SIN  WORLD
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2. Consequences of Sin to the World.

These are the principal results and effects of sin as it affects man. Its
baneful influence, however, extends beyond man to the world of which he forms a
part. Because of man’s transgression and apostasy a curse has come upon the

1 On this subject see Edwards On the Will, especially Part I. sec. 4; Truman s
Essay on Natural and Moral Inability, edited by Henry Rogers; Fuller s Gospel
Worthy of all Acceptation, Part III.; Works, vol. ii. p. 68; Hodge s Theology,
vol. ii. p. 257. world, and the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together in consequence. The world was made for man, and is inseparably linked
with the destinies of him who has been placed over it as its proprietor and
lord. In his fall it fell; in his sorrow and disorder it shares. Through him it
has become subject to vanity; and it waits and cries for that deliverance which
can come to it only as it comes to him in the glorious manifestation of the sons
of God. That it is so the Bible forcibly declares; and observation and
experience amply confirm and illustrate the declaration. " We see at a glance,"
says Dr. Bushnell, " that, given the fact of sin, what we call nature can be no
mere embodiment of God’s beauty and the eternal order of His mind, but must be
to some wide extent a realm of deformity and abortion, groaning with the
discords of sin and keeping company with it in the guilty pains of its
apostasy." Men speak of the " order of nature," but in that part of nature with
which man is connected perfect order is not to be found; rather does disorder
everywhere prevail to a greater or less extent. " Fogs and storms blur the glory
of the sky, and foul days, rightly so called, interspace the bright and fair.
The earth itself displays vast deserts swept by the horrid simoom; muddy rivers
with their fenny shores, tenanted by hideous alligators; swamps and morasses,
spreading out in provinces of quagmire, and reeking in the steam of death." l
Unexpected events disturb the course of things, falsify the calculations and
disappoint the hopes of men. Storms and tempests sweep over the earth, altering
the atmospheric con ditions and producing in many cases widespread ruin and
desolation. Inclement seasons retard or hinder the growth of herbs; famines and
pestilences and epidemics desolate nations; decay lays its wasteful hand, not
only on man and his works, but on the solid globe itself. A curse rests on the
ground for man’s sake, and only briars and thorns, useless weeds or noxious
plants spring spontaneously from it. No where is perfect beauty or symmetry to
be found; rather does deformity and vitiosity more or less mar all visible
objects. " The world is not as truly a realm of beauty as of beauty flecked by
injury. The growths are carbuncled and diseased; and the children have it for a
play to fetch a perfect 1 Bublmell, Mature and the Supernatural, p. 192. leaf.
Even more significant still is the fact, because it is a fact that concerns the
honour of our personal organism, that no living man or woman is ever found to be
a faultless model of beauty and proportion." There are things, indeed, in the
world around us which strike us as beautiful, and the perfections of which poets
delight to celebrate; but they will not bear the test of minute examination.
Though " Some flow rets of Eden men still may inherit, The trail of the serpent
is over them all." The glory and loveliness, the serenity and cairn of Paradise
have for ever passed from our earth; and so has man’s sin disordered and injured
the world, that before it can be restored to its original excellence and beauty
it must pass through the purgation of the last fire.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/alexander-w-l-system-biblical-theology-v1-1888/
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