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considered here in a double capacity; both as an ani- | and therefore its meaning must be such as will best mal, whose organs the devil employed in the seduction agree with the circumstances of the transaction. Now of the woman; and as the devil himself, lying hid and the transaction was thus.Adam, tempted by his concealed under the figure of the serpent: for the sen- wife, and she by the serpent, had fallen from their obedtence, we may observe, is plainly directed to an intelli-ience, and were now in the presence of God expecting gent being and free agent, who had committed a crime judgment. They knew full well, at that juncture, which a brute could not be capable of. that their fall was the victory of the serpent, whom by Now if we consider what a glorious creature the ser- experience, they found to be an enemy to God and pent was before the fall, we cannot but suppose that man: to man, whom he had ruined by seducing him to God intended this debasement of it, 1 not so much to ex-sin; and to God the noble work of whose creation he press his indignation against it, (for it had no bad in- had defaced. It could not therefore but be some comtention, neither was it conscious of what the devil did fort to them, to hear the serpent first condemned, and with its body,) as to make it a monument of man's apos- to see that, however he had prevailed against them, he tasy, a testimony of his displeasure against sin, and an had gained no victory over their Maker, who was able instructive emblem to deter all future ages from the to assert his own honour, and to punish this great author commission of that which brought such vengeance along of iniquity. Nor was it less a consolation to them to with it. In the Levitical law we find, that if a man hear from the mouth of God likewise, that the serpent's committed any abomination with a beast, the beast was victory was not a complete victory over even themselves; to be slain as well as the man; and, by parity of reason, that they and their posterity should be able to contest the serpent is here punished, if not to humble the pride, his empire; and though they were to suffer much in the and allay the triumph of the devil, by seeing the instrument struggle, yet finally they should prevail, bruise the serof his success so shamefully degraded, at least to remind pent's head, and deliver themselves from his power and the delinquents themselves of the foulness of their crime, dominion over them. and the necessity of their repentance, whenever they chanced to behold so noble a creature as the serpent was, reduced to so vile and abject a condition, merely for being the means of their transgression.

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But God might have a farther design in this degradation of the serpent: he foresaw, that in future ages, Satan would take pride in abusing this very creature to the like pernicious purposes, and, under the semblance of serpents of all kinds, would endeavour to establish the vilest idolatry, even the idolatry of his own hellish worship. That therefore the beauty of the creature might be no provocation to such idolatry, it was a kind and beneficent act in God to deface the excellence of the serpent's shape, and, at the same time, inspire mankind with the strongest horror and aversion to it. Nor can it be denied, but that, if we suppose the devil possessed the serpent, and was, as it were, incarnate in it, the power of God could unite them as closely as our souls and bodies are united, and thereby cause the punishment inflicted on the literal serpent to affect Satan as sensibly as the injuries done our bodies do reach our souls; at least, while that very serpent was in being.

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To consider Satan then under the form of a serpent, we shall see the propriety of the other part of the sentence denounced against him, and what comfort and consolation our criminal parents might reasonably collect from thence. That this part of the sentence, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,' a is not to be understood in a literal sense, (because such sense is absurd and ridiculous,) every reader of competent understanding must own:

'Patrick's Commentary; and Mede's Discourses. Lev. xx. 15. 3 Bishop King's Sermon on the Fall. a Gen. iii. 15. 'It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' The following traditions of the promised Messiah are remarkable for their coincidence with the first promise; and must have had a higher origin than unassisted human invention. In the Gothic mythology, Thor is represented as the first-born of the supreme God, and is styled in the Edda, the eldest of sons; he was esteemed a "middle divinity, a mediator between God and man. With regard to his actions, he is said to have

This certainly is the lowest sense wherein our first parents could have understood this part of the sentence

Bishop Sherlock's Use and Intent of Prophecy. wrestled with death, and, in the struggle, to have been brought upon one knee, to have bruised the head' of the great serpent with his mace; and in his final engagement with that monster to have beat him to the earth, and slain him. This victory, however, is not obtained but at the expense of his own life: "Receding back nine steps, he falls dead upon the spot, suffocated him." (Edda, Fab. 11. 25. 27. 32.) Much the same notion, with the floods of venom, which the serpent vomits forth upon we are informed, is prevalent in the mythology of the Hindoos. Two sculptured figures are yet extant in one of their oldest pagodas, the former of which represents Chreeshna, an incarnation of their mediatorial god Vishnu, trampling on the crushed head of the serpent: while in the latter it is seen encircling the deity in its folds, and biting his heel. (Mannie's History of Hindostan, vol. ii. p. 290.) It is said that Zeradusht, or Zoroaster, predicted in the Zendavesta, that in the latter days would appear a man called Oshanderbeghâ, who was destined to bless the earth by the introduction of justice and religion; that, in his time, would likewise appear a malignant demon, who would oppose his plans, and trouble his empire, for the space of twenty years; that afterwards, Osiderbegha would revive the practice of justice, put an end to injuries, and re-establish such customs as are immutable in their nature: that kings should be obedient to him, and advance his affairs; that the cause of true religion should flourish; that peace and tranquillity should prevail, and discord and trouble cease. (Hyde on the Religion of the Ancient Persians, c. 31.) According to Abulpharagius, the Persian legislator wrote of the advent of the Messiah in terms even more express than those contained in the foregoing prediction. 'Zeradusht," says he, "the preceptor of the Magi, taught the Persians concerning the manifestation of Christ, and ordered them to bring gifts to him, in token of their reverence and submission. He declared, that in the latter days a pure virgin would conceive; and that as soon as the child was born, a star would appear, blazing even at noonday with undiminished lustre. "You, my sons," exclaims the venerable seer, "will perceive its rising, before any other nation. As soon, therefore, as you shall behold the star, follow it whithersoever it shall lead you, and adore that mysterious child, offering your gifts to him with the profoundest humility. He is the almighty Word, which created the heavens." (Cited by Hyde on the Religion of the Ancient Persians, c. 31.)

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On the subject of the antipathy between serpents and the human race, see Mede's Works, b. i. disc. 39, p. 295. Franz History of Animals, part iv. c. 1. Topsel's History of Serpents, p. 604.

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denounced against the serpent; and yet this very sense was enough to revive in them comfortable hopes of a speedy restoration. For when Adam heard that the seed of the woman was to destroy the evil spirit, he undoubtedly understood Eve to be that woman, and some issue of his by her to be that seed; and accordingly we may observe, that when Eve was delivered of Cain, the form of her exultation is, I have gotten a man from the Lord,' that is, I have gotten a man through the signal favour and mercy of God. Now this extraordinary exultation cannot be supposed to arise from the bare privilege of bearing issue, for that privilege (as she could not but know before this time) she had in common with the meanest brutes; and therefore her transport must arise from the prospect of some extraordinary advantage from this issue, and that could be no other than the destruction of her enemy.

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Cain indeed proved a wicked man; but when she had conceived better expectations from Abel, and Cain had slain him, she, nevertheless, recovered her hopes upon the birth of Seth; because God, saith she, hath appointed me another seed,' or one who will destroy the power of Satan, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. Thus we see, that the obscurity in which it pleased God to foretell the destruction of the evil spirit, gave rise to a succession of happy hopes in the breast of Adam and Eve; who (if they had known that this happiness was to be postponed for four thousand years) would, in all probability, have inevitably fallen into an extremity of despair.

But how necessary soever God might think it, to give our first parents, some general hopes and expectations of a restoration; yet, being now fallen into a state of sin and corruption, which must of course infect their latest posterity, he found it expedient to deprive them of that privilege of immortality, wherewith he had inrested them, and (as an act of justice and mercy both) to turn them out of paradise, and debar them from the tree of life of justice, in that they had forfeited their right to immortality, by transgressing a command, which nothing but a vain, criminal curiosity could make them disobey; and of mercy, in that, when sin had entailed all kinds of calamity upon human nature, in such circumstances, to have perpetuated life, would have been to perpetuate misery.

This, I think, can hardly be accounted the effect of passion or peevishness: and, in like manner, God's cursing the ground, or (what is all one) his depriving it of its original fruitfulness, by a different turn given to the air, elements, and seasons, was not the effect of anger, or any hasty passion, (which God is not capable of,) but of calm and equitable justice; since it was man (who had done enough to incur the divine displeasure) that was to suffer by the curse, and not the ground itself: for the ground felt no harm by bringing forth thorns and thistles,' but Adam, who for some time had experienced the spontaneous fertility of paradise, was a sufficient sufferer by the change, when he found himself reduced to hard labour, and forced to eat his bread by the sweat of his brows.'

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good reason, why the penalty of the first transgression should be greater than any subsequent one; because it was designed to deter posterity, and to let them see, by this example, that whatever commination God denounces against guilt will most infallibly be executed. We mistake, however, the nature of God's laws, and do in effect renounce his authority, when we suppose, that good and evil are in the nature of things only, and not 5 Whatin the commandments and prohibitions of God. ever God is pleased to command or forbid, how indifferent soever it be in itself, is for that very reason, so far as it is commanded or forbidden by him, as truly good or evil, as if it were absolutely and morally so, being enacted by the same divine authority, which makes all moral precepts obligatory. God, in short, is our lawgiver, and whatever he commands, whether it be a moral precept or positive injunction, so far as he enacts it, is of the same necessary and indispensable obligation. Upon this it follows, that all sin is a transgression of the law, and a contempt of God's authority: but then the aggravations of a sin do arise from the measure of its guilt, and the parties' advantages to have avoided it; under which consideration, nothing can be more It was not heinous than the sin of our first parents. only a bare disobedience to God's command, by a perfect infidelity to his promises and threats; it was a sort of idolatry in believing the devil, and putting a greater trust in him, than in God. It was an horrible pride in them to desire to be like God, and such a diabolical pride, as made the evil angels fall from heaven. Covetousness, and a greedy theft it was, to desire and purloin, what was none of his own; and one of the most cruel and unparalleled murders that ever was committed, to kill and destroy so many thousands of their offspring. 6 Add to this, that it was a disobedience against God, an infinite being, and of infinite dignity; a God, who had given them existence, and that so very lately, that the impresses of it could not be worn out of their memory; that had bestowed so much happiness upon them, more than on all the creation besides; that had made them lords over all, and restrained nothing from them, Add again, that they but only the fruit of this one tree. committed this sin, against the clearest conviction of conscience, with minds fully illuminated by the divine Spirit, with all possible assistance of grace to keep them from it, and no untoward bent of nature, or unruly passion to provoke them to it: and, putting all this together, it will appear, that this was a sin of the deepest dye, and that no man, now-a-days, can possibly commit a crime of such a complicated nature, and attended with such horrid aggravations.

It is the opinion of some, 'that the fruit of the forbidden tree might be impregnated with some fermenting juice, which put the blood and spirits into a great disorder, and thereby divested the soul of that power and dominion it had before over the body; which, by its operation, clouded the intellect, and depraved the will, and reduced every faculty of the mind to a miserable depravity, which, along with human nature, has been propagated down to posterity: as some poisons (we

Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. 2. "Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1. Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. 2.

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know) will strangely affect the nerves and spirits, with- but that of a plain historian, and pretends to relate out causing immediate death; and as the Indians (we matters just as they happened, without any disguise or are told) are acquainted with a juice which will immed-embellishment of art; since he orders his books (which iately turn the person who drinks it into an idiot, and he endeavours to suit to the vulgar capacity) to be yet leave him, at the same time, the enjoyment of his read in the ears of all the people,' and commands health and all the powers and faculties of his body.' parents to teach them to their children; it cannot be But whatever the effect of the fruit might be, and whe- supposed, but that the history of the fall as well as the ther the corruption of our nature and death, (with all rest of the book of Genesis, is to be taken in a literal the train of evils, which have descended to us,) lay in sense. All the rest of the book is allowed to be literal, the tree, or in the will of God, there is no question to and why should this part of it only be a piece of Egypbe made, but that our wise Creator might very justly tian hieroglyphic? Fable and allegory, we know, are decree, that human nature in general should be affected directly opposite to history: the one pretends to deliver with it, and our happiness or unhappiness depend upon truth, undisguised, the other to deliver truth indeed, but the obedience or disobedience of our first parents, We under the veil and cover of fiction; so that, if this book of daily see, that children very often inherit the diseases Moses be allowed to be historical, we may as well say, that of their parents, and that a vicious and extravagant what Thucydides relates of the plague of Athens, or Livy father leaves commonly his son heir to nothing else but of the battle of Cannæ, is to be understood allegorically, the name and shadow of a great family, with an infirm as that what Moses tells us of the prohibition of the fruit and sickly constitution. And if men generally now of the tree of knowledge, or of Adam and Eve's expulpartake of the bad habits and dispositions of their im- sion from the garden of paradise for breaking it, is to be mediate parents, why might not the corruption of hu- interpreted in a mystical sense. man nature, in the first, have equally descended upon all the rest of mankind? The rebellion of a parent, in all civil governments, reduces his children to poverty and disgrace, who had a title before to riches and honours; and for the same reason, why might not Adam forfeit for himself, and all his descendants, the gift of immortality, and the promise of eternal life? God might certainly bestow his own favours upon his own terms: and therefore, since the condition was obedience, he might justly inflict death, that is, withhold immortality from us; and he might justly deny us heaven (for the promise of heaven was an act of his free bounty) upon the transgression and disobedience of our first parents. We were in their loins, and from thence our infection came: they were our representatives, and in them we fell: but then, amidst all this scene of calamity, we have one comfortable, one saving prospect to revive us, namely, that 3 Adam was the figure of him that was to come; and therefore, as by the offence of one, judg-men, supposing it had ever been known to Adam's posment came upon all mankind to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.'

This is the account we have of the fall: and though we pretend not to deny, that in some places there are figurative expressions in it, as best comporting with the nature of ancient prophecy, and the oriental manner of writing; yet this can be no argument, why we should immediately run to an allegorical interpretation of the whole.

That not only the poets, but some of the greatest philosophers likewise, had a strange affectation for such figurative documents, in order to conceal their true notions from the vulgar, and to keep their learning within the bounds of their own schools, we pretend not to deny and yet, since it is apparent, that Moses could have no such design; since he had no reason to fear any other philosophers setting up against him, or, running away with his notions; since he affects no other character,

• Revelation Examined, vol. 1.
"Jenkins's Reasonableness, vol. 2.
3 Rom. v. 14, 18.

• Nicholls's Conference, vol. 1.

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Nay, we will put the case, that it were consistent with the character of Moses to have amused the people with fables and allegories; yet we can hardly believe, but that the people retained some tradition among them concerning the formation of our first parents, and the manner of their defection. This they might easily have had from their illustrious ancestor Abraham, who might have deduced it from Noah, and thence, in a few successions, from Adam himself; and if there was any such tradition preserved among them, Moses must necessarily have lost all his credit and authority, had he pretended to foist in a tale of his own invention, instead of a true narration. For the short question is, children of Israel know the historical truth of the fall, or did they not? If they did know it, why should Moses disguise it under an allegory, rather than any of the rest of the book of Genesis? If they did not know it, how came it to be forgotten in so few generations of

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terity? If Adam's posterity never rightly knew it, but had the relation thereof always conveyed down in metaphor and allegory, then must Adam, in the first place, impose upon his sons, and they upon succeeding generations; but for what reason we cannot conceive, unless that the most remarkable event that ever befell mankind (except the redemption of the world by Christ) so came to pass, that it was impossible to tell it to posterity any other way than in allegory.

It can scarce be imagined, but that some of the ancient writers of the Jewish church, as well as the inspired writers of the New Testament, had as true a knowledge of these distant traditions, as any modern espouser of allegories can pretend to; and therefore, when we read in the book of Wisdom, that God created man to be immortal, and made him to be the image of his own eternity;' but that, through the envy of the devil, death came into the world:' when the son of Sirach tells us, that "God,' at the first, 'filled man with the knowledge

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of understanding, and, shewed him good and evil,' but This origin of evil is a question which none of them 'that error and darkness had their beginning, together could resolve. They saw the effect, but were ignorant with sinners; that death is the sentence of the Lord of the cause; and therefore their conjectures were absurd. over all flesh;' 'that the covenant, from the beginning, 15 Some of them laid the whole blame on matter, as if its was, Thou shalt die the death;' and that of woman union with the mind gave it a pernicious tincture. Others came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die:' | imagined a pre-existent state, and that the bad inclinawhen we read, and compare all these passages together, I tions which exerted themselves in this world were first of say, can there be any reasonable foundation to doubt in all contracted in another. 16 Several established two what sense the ancient Jewish church understood the principles, the one the author of all the good, and the history of the fall? other the author of all the evil (whether natural or moral) that is found in human nature: and, in prejudice to this absurdity, many betook themselves to atheism, and denied any first principle at all; accounting it better to have no God in the world, than such an unaccountable mixture of good and evil. But now, had but these wise men had the advantage of reading the Mosaic account, they would never have taken up with such wild hypotheses, but immediately concluded with our Saviour's argument, that 17a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit;' because the explication of the rise of sin, by an original lapse, is not only freed from these absurdities wherewith other explications abound, but, according to the sense which the author of the Book of Wisdom has of it, sets the goodness of God in the creation of the world in its proper light; namely, that God made not death, neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. He created all things, that they might have their being, and the generations of the world were healthful. There was no poison of destruction in them, nor the kingdom of death upon the earth, until that ungodly men called it to them; 19 and so error and darkness had their beginning together with sinners.

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Nay more. When not only we find the wicked, and the enemies of God represented under the image of a 'serpent,' of a 'dragon,' of a 'leviathan, the crooked serpent,' &c.; and the prophet telling us expressly, that "dust shall be the serpent's meat;' but our blessed Saviour likewise declaring, that the devil was a murderer from the beginning, a liar, and a father of lies;' St Paul asserting, that the woman being deceived, was first in the transgression,' and that the serpent beguiled her through his subtilty;' and St John, in his Revelation, "calling that wicked and malicious spirit, the devil, or the dragon, Satan, or the old serpent, indifferently; we cannot but perceive, that these passages are not only plain references to the first deception of mankind under the form of that creature, but that they virtually comprise the sum and substance of the Mosaic account. 11 So that, if we have any regard either to the tradition of the Jewish church, or the testimony of Christ and his apostles, we cannot but believe, that the history of man's fall, and the consequences thereupon, were really such as Moses has represented them.

CHAP. III.-On the Sentiments entertained by the
Ancients concerning the Origin of Moral Evil.

(SUPPLEMENTAL BY THE EDITOR.)

THE оpinions which were entertained by the ancients concerning the origin of moral evil were various.

And to confirm us in this belief, we may observe farther, that the tradition of almost every nation is conformable to his relation of things: 12 That not only the state of man's innocence, in all probability, gave rise to the poet's fiction of the golden age; but that the story of Adam and Eve, of the tree, and of the serpent, was extant among the Indians long ago, and (as travellers tell us) is still preserved among the Brachmans, and the inhabitants of Peru: 13 That, in the old Greek mysteries, the people used to carry about a serpent, and were instructed to cry Eva, whereby the devil seemed to exult, as it were, over the unhappy fall of our first mother; and that in his worship in idolatrous nations, even now, there are frequent instances of his displaying this his conquest under the figure of a serpent: strong evidences of the truth of the Mosaic account! to say nothing of the rationale which it gives us of our innate *pudor circa res venereas,' of the pains of childbirth, of the present sterility of the earth, of the slowness of children's education, of their imbecility above all other creatures, of the woman's subjection to her husband, of our natural antipathy to viperous animals, and (what hath puzzled the wisest of the heathen sages to discover) of the depravation of our wills, and our strong propen-powerful but malevolent beings, who having first seduced sity to what is evil.

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The operation of some injurious principle vitiating the nature of man, and perverting his moral views, could not be disputed; and the influence of a malignant power seemed even to have introduced disorder in the original appointments of Providence, and to have counteracted the beneficial tendency of his ordinances.

Popular convictions everywhere prevailed touching the existence of some beings of the higher order, who had revolted from the heavenly power which presided over the universe. It is probable that these convictions were originally founded on the circumstances referred to in Scripture with respect to Satan and his angels, as

Adam from his obedience, incessantly labour to deceive, corrupt, and destroy his descendants. The notion of the Magi of Plutarch, and of the Manicheans, concerning two independent principles, acting in opposition to each other, was also founded on the real circumstances

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of the apostasy of angels, and of their interference and influence in the affairs of men.

CHAP. IV.—Of Original Sin.

ORIGINAL sin indeed is a phrase which does not occur in the whole compass of the Bible; but the nature of the thing itself, and in what manner it came to be committed, are sufficiently related: so that those who admit of the authority of the Scriptures, make no question of the fact. The great matter in dispute is, what the effect of this transgression was; what guilt it contained; what punishment it merited; and in what degree its guilt and punish

The original temptation, by which they drew our first parents from their duty, and led them to transgress the only prohibition which God had imposed, is described in the first pages of Scripture; and it is repeated under much disguise, in many fables of classical mythology. Origen considers the allegorical relations furnished by Plato, with respect to Porus tempted by Penia to sin when intoxicated in the garden of Jove, as a disfigured history of the fall of man in paradise. It seems to have been blended with the story of Lot and his daughters.ment both may be said to affect us. Plato might have acquired, in Egypt, the knowledge of Some have not stuck to affirm, 2 that in the beginning the original circumstances of the fall, and have pro- of the world, there was no such thing as any express duced them, under the veil of allegory, that he might covenant between God and man; that the prohibition of not offend the Greeks by a direct extract from the Jewish the tree of knowledge was given to our first parents only, Scriptures. and they alone consequently were culpable by its transThe particular circumstances also of the leader of the gression; that Adam, in short, was mortal, like one of evil spirits having envied man's happiness, and by disguis-us; he was no representative for his posterity; his sin ing himself under the form of a serpent, occasioned his purely personal; and that the imputation of guilt, down ejection from paradise, was figured out in other accounts. to this time, for an offence so many thousand years ago The worship established towards the evil spirit by his committed, is a sad reflection upon the goodness and contrivance, sometimes under the very appearance in justice of God. which he seduced mankind, is to be found among the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

The general idea of the serpent as a mysterious symbol annexed to the heathen deities, and particularly assigned to Esculapius the god of healing, might have been suggested by perverted representations of the agency of the fallen spirit, who assumed the form of a serpent; and the invocation of Eve in the Bacchanalian orgies, (with the production of a serpent, consecrated as an emblem, to public view,) seems to bear some relation to the history of our first parents who introduced sin and death into the world.

The tutelar deity of particular districts was sometimes introduced in the same manner; thus a serpent is represented by Virgil to have appeared to Æneas.

The first worship of Apollo was offered to him under the representation of a serpent; but Apollo was generally regarded as the deity who had killed the serpent Python, which word was probably derived from the Hebrew word which signifies a serpent. The account of Discord being cast out from heaven, referred to by Agamemnon, in the nineteenth book of Homer's Iliad, has been thought to be a corrupt tradition of the fall of the evil angels.

The original perfection of man, the corruption of human nature resulting from the fall, and the increasing depravity which proceeded with augmented violence from generation to generation, are to be found in various parts of profane literature. Euryalus, the Pythagorean, declared that man was made in the image of God. The loss of that resemblance was supposed to have resulted from the effects of disobedience, and was considered as so universal that it was generally admitted, as is expressed by Horace, that no man was born without vices. The conviction of a gradual deterioration from age to age, of a change from a golden period, by successive transitions to an iron depravity, of a lapse from a state devoid of guilt and fear, to times filled with iniquity, was universally entertained.'

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In opposition to this, others think proper to affirm, that at the first creation of things, there was a covenant made with all mankind in Adam, their common head and proxy, who stipulated for them all; that by a transgression of this covenant, our first parents fell from their original righteousness, and thence became dead in sin, and actually defiled in all their faculties of soul and body; and that this corruption is not only the parent of all actual transgressions, but (even in its own nature) brings guilt upon every one that is born into the world, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and the curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all the miseries that attend it, spiritual, temporal, and eternal.

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There is another opinion which concerns itself not with the imputation of the guilt, but only with the punishment of this transgression, and thereupon supposes, that though Adam, as to the composition of his body, was naturally mortal, yet, by the supernatural gift of God, (whereof the tree of life was a symbol or sacrament,) he was to be preserved immortal: from whence it is inferred, That the denunciation of the sentence, In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,' is to be understood literally indeed, but then extended no farther than natural death; which, considering the fears, and terrors, and sundry kinds of misery which it occasions, may be reputed punishment severe enough, though fairly consistent with our notions of God's goodness and justice, because it is but a temporal punishment, and abundantly recompensed by that eternal redemption which all mankind shall have in Christ Jesus.

Others again do so far approve of this, as to think it in part the punishment of original sin; but then they suppose, that besides this natural mortality, there is a certain weakness and corruption spread through the whole race of mankind, which discovers itself in their inclination to evil, and insufficiency to what is good.

Burnet on the Articles; and Taylor's Polemical Discourses. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity; and A Treatise on the Divine Imputation of Original Sin, by D. Whitby.

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