II. In the meantime they will still urge, that "Adam's posterity (then unborn) could not justly partake of the consequences of his transgressions." But shall cavils overthrow matter of fact? Do not we see in every unrenewed person, the unbelief, pride, sinful curiosity, sensuality, and alienation from God, to which our first parents were subjected at their fall? Do not women bear children with sorrow as well as Eve? Is the ground less cursed for us than for Adam? And do not we toil, suffer, and die as he did? If this order of things were unjust, would the righteous God have permitted its continuance to the present time? Beside, Adam contained in himself, as in miniature, all his posterity. The various nations of men are nothing but different branches growing from that original root. They are Adam, or man, existing at large; as the branches of a spreading oak, with all the acorns that have grown upon, and dropped from them, during a long succession of summers, are nothing but the original acorn, unfolding and multiplying itself with all its essential properties. It is then as ridiculous to wonder that the sons of depraved Adam should naturally be depraved, as that an acorn should naturally produce an oak; and a poisonous root a malignant plant. Again: Adam was the general head, representative, and father of mankind; and we suffer for his rebellion legally; as the children of those who have sold themselves for slaves are born in a state of wretched slavery; and as the descendants of a noble traitor lose the title by their ancestor's crime: naturally, as the sons of a bankrupt suffer poverty for their father's extravagance, or as "Gehazi's leprosy clave to him and his seed for ever :" and unavoidably, as an unborn child shares the fate of his unhappy mother, when she inadvertently poisons, or desperately stabs herself. III. "But," say the same objectors, "supposing it be granted that we are naturally depraved; yet if our depravity is natural, it is necessary ; and we are no more blamable for it, than lions for their fierceness, or Ethiopians for their black complexion." (1.) Our objectors would not, I presume, be understood to insinuate by "blamable," that our depravity does not render us detestable in the eyes of a holy God, or that it is not in itself blameworthy. Do they less dislike the complexion of the Ethiopians, or less detest the destructive rage of lions, because it is natural to them? If moral dispositions ceased to be worthy of praise or dispraise, as soon as they are rooted, morally necessary, and in that sense natural; what absurd consequences would follow! Sinners would become guiltless by arriving at complete impeni. tency; and God could not be praised for his holiness, nor Satan dispraised for his sinfulness, holiness being as essential to God, by the absolute perfection of his nature, as sin is morally necessary to the devil, by the unconquerable habit which he has wilfully contracted, and in which he obstinately remains. (2.) Should they mean that "we are not answerable or accountable for our depravity," I reply, Though I should grant (which I am very far from doing)* that we are no way accountable for our moral infection, * Milton introduces Adam speaking thus: Ah, why should all mankind, For one man's fault, thus guiltless be condemn'd, yet it cannot be denied that we are answerable for our obstinate refusal of relief, and for the wilful neglect of the means found out by Divine mercy for our cure. Can we justly charge God with either our mis. fortune or our guilt? Do not parents, by the law of nature, represent their unborn posterity? If Adam ruined us by a common transgression, bhas not Christ, the second Adam, provided for us a common salvation? Jude 3; Heb. ii, 3. If by "the offence of one, [Adam,] judgment came upon all men to condemnation; by the righteousness of one, [Christ,] is" not "the free gift come upon all men to justification of life?" Rom. v, 18. And since God has declared that "the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father" beyond the short period of this transitory life; if any suffer after death, is it not entirely for their own unbelief, and peculiar sins?* Compare John iii, 18, 19, and Mark xvi, 16. But what follows completely vindicates our Creator's goodness. (3.) Do sin and misery abound by our fall in Adam? Grace and glory" abound much more" by our "redemption" in Jesus Christ, Rom. v, 20. And "it must be owing to our own perverseness, or our own negligence," says the ingenious Hervey, with great truth, "if we do not levy a tax upon our loss, and rise even by our fall." This leaves us not the least shadow of reason to complain of the Divine proceedings respecting us. We may then conclude that a moral depravity, which comes upon us by the wilful choice of a parent, in whom we seminally and federally existed, a depravity which cleaves to us by an obstinate neglect of the infinitely precious means provided to remove it,-a depravity which works now by our own personal choice, and to which we daily give our But all corrupt, both mind and will depraved, Not to do only, but to will the same With me? How can they then acquitted stand In sight of God? Him after all disputes Forced I absolve. •Milton introduces God speaking thus to the Messiah :- Yet not of will in him, but grace in me Freely vouchsafed: once more I will renew On even ground against his mortal foe, By me upheld. Be thou in Adam's room The head of all mankind, though Adam's son. As in him perish all men, so in thee, As from a second root, shall be restored As many as are restored; without thee, none. His crimes make guilty all his sons; thy merit Imputed shall absolve them, who renounce + Creation's great superior, man, is thine; VOL. III. Thine is redemption. How should this great truth YOUNG. assent by the free commission of sins that are avoidable, leaves us not only accountable, but inexcusable before God. IV. However, the advocates for the natural purity of the human race (endeavouring to clog with difficulties what they cannot disprove to be matter of fact) still assert, "As we have souls immediately from God, if we are born sinful, he must either create sinful souls, which cannot be supposed without impiety, or send sinless souls into sinful bodies, to be defiled by the unhappy union, which is as inconsistent with his goodness as his justice. Add to this," say the objectors," that nothing can be more unphilosophical than to suppose that a body, a mere lump of organized matter, is able to communicate to a pure spirit that moral pollution, of which itself is as incapable as the murderer's sword is incapable of cruelty." This specious objection, which Dr. Watts acknowledges to be "the very chief point of difficulty in all the controversies about original sin,” is wholly founded upon the vulgar notion that we have our souls immediately from God by infusion. It will therefore entirely fall to the ground, if we can prove, that we receive them, as well as our bodies, by traduction from Adam. And that this is fact, appears, if I am not mistaken, by the following arguments: (1.) We have no ground, from Scripture or reason, to think that adulterers can, when they please, put God upon creating new souls to animate the spurious fruit of their crime. On the contrary, it is said that God "rested on the seventh day from all his work" of creation. (2.) Eve herself was not created but in Adam. God breathed no breath of life into her, as he did into her husband, to make him "a living soul." Therefore, when Adam saw her, he said, "She shall be called woman, because she [her whole self, not her body only] was taken out of man.' If then the soul of the first woman sprang from Adam's soul, as her body from his body, what reason have we to believe that the souls of her pos terity are immediately infused, as Adam's was when God created him? (3.) All agree that, under God, we receive life from our parents; and if life, then certainly our soul, which is the principle of life. (4.) Other animals have power to propagate their own species "after its kind;" they can generate animated bodies. Why should man be but half a father? When did God stint him to propagate the mere shell of his person, the body without the soul? Was it when "he blessed him, and said, Be fruitful, and multiply?" When he spoke thus did he not address himself to the soul, as well as to the body? Can the body alone either understand or execute a command? Is it not, on the contrary, highly reasonable to conclude that, by virtue of the Divine appointment and blessing, the whole man can "be fruitful and multiply ;" and the soul, under proper circumstances, can generate a soul, as a thought begets a thought; and can kindle the flame of life, as one taper lights another; without weakening its immortal substance, any more than God the Father (if I may be allowed the comparison) impairs the Divine essence by the eternal generation of his "only begotten Son?" (5.) Does not matter of fact corroborate the preceding argument? A sprightly race horse generally begets a mettlesome colt; while a heavy cart horse begets a colt that bears the stamp of its sire's dulness. And is it not so with mankind in general? The children of the Hottentots and Esquimaux are commonly as stupid, while those of the English and French are usually as sharp as their parents. You seldom see a wit springing from two half-witted people, or a fool descended from very sensible parents. The children of men of genius are frequently as remarkable for some branch of hereditary genius, as those of blockheads for their native stupidity. Nothing is more common than to see very passionate and flighty parents have very passionate and flighty children. And I have a hundred times discovered, not only the features, look, and complexion of a father or a mother in a child's face, but have seen a congenial soul, looking out (if I may so speak) at those windows of the body which we call the eyes. Hence I conclude, that the advice frequently given to those who are about to choose a companion for life, "Take care of the breed," is not absolutely without foundation; although some lay too much stress upon it, forgetting that a thousand unknown accidents may form exceptions to the general rule; and not considering that the peculiarity of the father's breed may be happily corrected by that of the mother, (and vice versa,) and that as the grace of God, yielded to, may sweeten the worst temper; so sin, persisted in, may sour the best. (6.) Again: Moses informs us, that fallen " Adam begat a son in his own likeness, and after his image." But had he generated a body without a soul, he would not have "begotten a son in his own likeness," since he was not a mere mortal body, but a fallen, disembodied spirit. Compare Gen. v, 3, with xlvi, 26. "But upon this scheme," will objectors say, "if Adam was converted when he begat a son, he begat a converted soul.". This does by no means follow; for if he was born of God after his fall, it was "by grace through faith," and not by nature through generation. He could not, therefore, communicate his spiritual regeneration by natural generation, any more than a great scholar can propagate his learning together with his species. Should it be again objected, that "the soul is not generated, because the Scriptures declare, the Lord is the Father of the spirits of all flesh,' and the spirit returns to God who gave it :' " I answer, It is also written, that Job and David were "fearfully made and fashioned by the hands of God in the womb;" that he "formed Jeremiah in the belly ;" and that "we are the offspring of Him who made of one blood all nations of men." Now, if the latter scriptures do not exclude the interposition of parents in the formation of their children's bodies, by what rule of criticism or divinity can we prove, that the former exclude that interposition in the production of their souls? Nor can materialists, who have no ideas of generation but such as are gross and carnal like their own system, with any shadow of reason infer that "if the soul is generated with the body, it will also perish with it." For dissolution is so far from being a necessary consequence of the spiritual generation of souls, that it would not so much as have followed the generation of our bodies, if Adam had not brought "sin into the world, and death by sin." Again: if wheat, a material seed, which grows out of the same earthly clod with the chaff that encloses it, can subsist unimpaired when that mean cover is destroyed; how much more can the soul, (that spiritual, vital, heavenly power, which is of a nature so vastly superior to the body in which it is confined,) continue to exist, when flesh and blood are returned to their native dust! Should some persons reject what I say of the traduction of souls, in order to illustrate the derivation of original sin; and should they say that they have no more idea of the generation than honest Nicodemus had of the regeneration of a spirit, I beg leave to observe two things: First. If such objectors are converted, they will not deny the regeneration of souls by the Spirit of God, since they experience it, and our Lord speaks of it as a blessed reality, even while he represents it as a mystery unknown as to the manner of it, John iii, 8-13. Now, if pious souls have been regenerated from the beginning of the world, without exactly knowing how; is it reasonable to deny that souls are generated, merely because we cannot exactly account for the manner in which that wonder takes place? Secondly. Should my objectors be versed in natural philosophy, they need not be told that even the kind of generation which they allow is as much a mystery to man as the movement of a watch is to a child that just sees the case and the glass. If they will not believe me, let them believe him who "gave his heart to search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven," and who, touching upon our question, says, "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all," Eccles. xi, 5. For my part, I do not see why the same almighty Preserver of men, who (as St. Paul tells us) made of ONE BLOOD the bodies of all nations of men, might not, of one ACTIVE THOUGHT, and ARDENT DESIRE, have made the souls of all nations of men also. Have not thought and desire as great affinity to the nature of the soul, as blood has to that of the body? And, consequently, are not our ideas of the traduction of the soul as clear as those which we can form of the generation of the body? Having dwelt so long upon the manner in which mankind naturally propagate original corruption, together with their whole species, I hope I may reasonably resume the conclusion of my argument, and affirm, that if Adam corrupted the fountain of human nature in himself, we, the streams, cannot but be naturally corrupted. THIRTY-SECOND ARGUMENT. God being a Spirit, reason and revelation jointly inform us, that his law is spiritual, and extends to our thoughts and tempers, as well as to our words and actions. At all times, and in all places, it forbids every thing that is sinful, or has the least tendency to sin; it commands all that is excellent, and enjoins it to be done with the utmost perfection of our dispensation. Therefore, if we have not always trusted and delighted in God, more than in all things and persons; if for one instant we have loved or feared "the creature more than the Creator," we "have" had "another god beside the Lord," Col. iii, 5; Phil. iii, 19. Have we once omitted to adore him "in spirit and in truth" inwardly, or at any time worshipped him without becoming veneration outwardly? we have transgressed as if we had "bowed to a graven image," John iv, 24. Though perjury and imprecations should never have defiled our lips; yet, if ever we |