ready explained,) for he came to save none but sinners. "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick."* Whoever is entitled to salvation by law cannot be saved by grace. But if infants are not saved by grace and by Christ, why bring them to him in baptism and fix upon them the seal of the covenant of grace? If they are pure why sprinkle them with water as if they were unclean? Why was an ordinance instituted to set forth their need of purification? If children are spotless infant baptism is a jest. But their depravity is settled.

"How can he be "The wicked are

[4.] By express declarations of Scripture. "Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me." "What is man that he should be clean, and he which is born of a woman that he should be righteous?" "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" clean that is born of a woman?" estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they be born." "I knew that thou wouldst deal very treacherously, and wast called a transgressor from the womb." "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child." "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." "The children of Israel-have only done evil before me from their youth." "As for thy nativity, [alluding to the pollution and ruin accompanying the first birth, and the remedy which divine mercy provided,] in the day thou wast born-thou [wast not] washed in water, but thou wast cast out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born. And when I passed by thee and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live: yea I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live." "That which is born of

* Mat. ix. 12, 13.

flesh is flesh,"-is carnal. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him." "Among whom we all had our conversation, and were by nature the children. of wrath even as others."*

Now if all mankind are born depraved, there is the same evidence that depravity is propagated from father to son through all generations, as that speech or reason or any of the natural affections are, (though in a sense entirely compatible with blame,) and of course is to be traced equally with them to the original parent.

But if on the other hand infants receive their whole nature from their parents pure,-if when they leave the duct through which all properties are conveyed from ancestors they are infected with no depravity, it is plain that they never derive a taint of moral pollution from Adam. There can be no

conveyance after they are born, and his sin was in no sense the occasion of the universal depravity of the world, otherwise than merely as the first example. These two points, the depravity of infants and the derivation of sin from Adam, stand or fall together. Either infants are born depraved, (just as they are born with the faculties of reason and speech, and with the instincts on which are founded the natural affections,) or the universal depravity of man no more follows from the sin of Adam than from the sin of Noah. I prove the derivation of sin from Adam,

(3.) From the fact that we are involved by him in condemnation and punishment.

In condemnation at least to temporal evils. That all the temporal evils pronounced upon our first parents, the toil and trouble, the thorns and thistles, the state of female subjection, the pains of child

*Gen. viii. 21. Job xiv. 4. and xv. 14. and xxv. 4. Ps. li. 5. and lviii. 3. Prov. xxii. 15. Isai. xlviii. 8. Jer. xxxii. 30. Ezek. xvi. 4, 5. John iii. 6. 1 Cor. ii. 14. Eph. ii. 3.

birth, and death itself, do in fact come upon their posterity, not casually, but according to the original sentence, is so evident that it is not denied. Just cast your eyes however on the following texts: "I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence; for Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in child-bearing if they continue in faith and charity." "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. [And to prolong the quotation though the subject changes,] -The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.— The first man is of the earth earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy such are they also which are earthy, and as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”*

It has been said that the temporal evils contemplated in the original sentence, were entailed on mankind merely as blessings. But how could they be regarded as blessings unless the race were viewed as sinners standing in need of chastisement? It is no blessing to a perfectly holy being to suffer.The very supposition that they were entailed as blessings gives up the argument. But the death entailed, (and by a parity of reason all the temporal sufferings which come by Adam,) is represented in the 5th of Romans, not as a mercy, but as a punishment following a sentence of condemnation.

But in whatever light you regard these sufferings,

* Gen, iii. 16—19. 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45-49. 1 Tim. ii. 2—15、

whether as blessings or punishments, God distinctly disclaims the principle of inflicting them on innocent children for the sins of the parents. At the time of the Babylonish captivity the Jews thought they had reason to complain, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge."Ezekiel was sent to reprove them and to say, "What mean ye that ye use this proverb?-The soul that sinneth it shall die.-If he beget a son that seeth all his father's sins-and doth not such like,— he shall not die for the iniquity of his father; he shall surely live. Yet say ye, Why, doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right,—he shall surely live. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." God indeed visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation," but it is upon the generations "of them that hate" him. When Josiah confessed, "Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us because our fathers have not hearkened," the answer was, "I will bring evil upon this place and upon the inhabitants thereof-because they have forsaken They suffered for the sins of their fathers because they partook of their fathers' sins. On the same principle the sins of persecuting ancestors were visited upon that generation who persecuted Christ and his apostles. "Behold I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city; THAT upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew, [the crime had been

me."

committed five hundred years before,] between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation." For the same reason the sin of Esau was visited upon his posterity. "For three transgressions of Edom and for four I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did. tear perpetually, and kept his wrath forever." Precisely for the same reason the sin of Adam is visited upon his posterity in temporal calamities and death. "Thy first father hath sinned AND thy teachers have transgressed against me; THEREFORE I have profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse and Israel to reproaches."* the temporal evils entailed on men for the sin of Adam incontestably prove that they partake of his depravity.

Thus

There is one passage which has been understood to assert that the posterity of Adam are condemned for his sin to eternal death. The passage is in the 5th of Romans. It certainly affirms that they are condemned for his sin; but whether to temporal only or to eternal death, is a question which I have no call to decide. Whichever death is intended the passage opens to my view the following theory. Adam was the federal head of his posterity. The covenant with him provided that if he stood they stood, if he fell they fell. It made him the root from which all the branches should derive their nature. It was as though they had all been contemporary with him, and with their hearts his heart had been connected by innumerable conductors to convey instantly his purity or poison to them. Thus inseparably united in temper, his public transgression was as much the index of their hearts as of his

* Exod. xx. 5. 2 King. xxii. 13, 16, 17. Isai. xliii. 27, 28. Ezek. xviii. 1-20. Amos i. 11. Zech. i. 1. Mat. xxiii. 34-36.