cause they have forsaken me." 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. 66 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 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."* Thus the temporal evils to which

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

ད

mankind were sentenced for the sin of Adam, in-.contestably prove that they partake of his depravity.

There is one passage which has been thought to prove that the posterity of Adam are condemned for his sin to eternal death. The passage is in the 5th of Romans. It certainly proves that they are condemned for his sin; but whether to eternal or only to temporal death, is a question which I shall not undertake to decide. But which ever is meant, 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 veins or conductors to convey instantly his purity or poison to them. Thus inseparably united in temper, his publick transgression was as much the index of their hearts as of his own,--as much the index of their hearts as though it had been their own hand which had plucked the forbidden fruit. His publick act, standing thus in the place of an external act of theirs, became the ground of their publick condemnation, (whatever the sentence included,) in the same sense in which the outward act is in any case the ground of condemnation. In no case is it the ground otherwise than as being, or supposed to be, the index of the heart. And Adam's

posterity would not have been condemned for his act had not their hearts been as completely indicated by it as they could have been by any act of their own. Of course every evil denounced against them for his sin, (whether temporal or eternal,) proves that they partake of his depravity.

(4.) · The derivation of sin from Adam is supported by other passages of Scripture. Of these however I shall mention but two. "Adam-begat a son in his own likeness, after his image." Was it necessary, after mankind had seen animals propagate their kinds for 2500 years, for Moses to inform the world that Adam begat a son with a body shaped like his own? In the other passage the original righteousness and all the subsequent sins of man, are spoken of as the righteousness and sins of the species, as if the whole race lost their original holiness in Adam: "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions."*

Thus I have shown, in the first part of the argument, that depravity is derived from Adam. I shall now prove,

II. That the depravity thus derived is total.

(1.) Adam himself sunk into total depravity as soon as he had broken the covenant. That the wages of sin involved abandonment to unmixed depravity, I suppose will not be denied. One

* Gen. v. 3. Eccl. vii. 29.

thing is certain, from that moment he could receive no favour but by grace; for grace is favour to the ill-deserving. No divine influence could from that moment work holiness in his heart without being an operation of grace, or favour to the ill-deserving. If such an influence was necessary, he must have remained utterly destitute of holiness till it was given him by grace. To all then who believe that God is the source of holiness, otherwise than by creating rational beings and leaving them to themselves, it must be apparent that the fallen Adam was totally depraved till restored by the dispensation of grace.

(2.) Adam transmitted to his posterity the nature which he possessed immediately after the fall, not the nature which he received by grace. The moment he broke covenant by one offence, he had done all that he could do to fix the character and fate of his offspring.* He was their federal head in his fall, but not in his reascent. He left them there, to be raised, not by him, but by Christ. The idea that he became restored, and propagated that restored nature to his seed, is making him the federal head in the restoration of the world,-is putting him exactly in the place of the Second Adam. But the experience of a hundred generations proves that grace is not hereditary.

It is then apparent that the posterity of Adam, viewed as existing immediately after the fall, were

*Rom. v. 12-21.

totally depraved: and if any or all of them were to be restored to the lowest degree of holiness, or even to a neutral state, it was to be accomplished by Christ under the dispensation of grace. Let us then,

(3.) Inquire whether the race were so restored by Christ at the time of the first promise in Eden, that they come into the world in successive generations otherwise than totally depraved. To this question I answer,

[1.] That there is not a particle of evidence that Adam's posterity were at all affected by his sin, except what is contained in those declarations and facts which apply to them exclusively after they come into existence. Cast your eye over the texts on which all our knowledge of the connexion between Adam and his posterity depends, and you will find them uniformly referring to a posterity in actual existence, and no other. The notion that greater evils were antecedently denounced against that posterity than they actually find at their entrance on existence, is a fancy unsupported by a single hint in the whole Bible.

[2.] This opinion has arisen from two mistakes:

First, from the idea that infants are born pure. This has been shown to be an errour; but if it were not, it would not justify the notion of an antecedent restoration. If infants are born pure, as they cannot draw pollution from Adam afterwards, they never derive depravity from him. Those