Q-16: DID All Mankind Fall in Adam’s First Transgression?
A: The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him, by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression.
‘By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,’ &c. Rom 5:12.
Adam being a representative person, while he stood, we stood; when he fell, we fell, We sinned in Adam; so it is in the text, ‘In whom all have sinned.’
Adam was the head of mankind, and being guilty, we are guilty, as the children of a traitor have their blood stained. Omnes unus ille Adam fuerunt. ‘All of us,’ says Augustine, ‘sinned in Adam, because we were part of Adam.’
If when Adam fell, all mankind fell with him; why, when one angel fell, did not all fall?
The case is not the same. The angels had no relation to one another. They are called morning-stars; the stars have no dependence one upon another; but it was otherwise with us, we were in Adam’s loins; as a child is a branch of the parent, we were part of Adam; therefore when he sinned, we sinned.
How is Adam’s sin made ours?
(1.) By imputation. The Pelagians of old held, that Adam’s transgression is hurtful to posterity by imitation only, not by imputation. But the text, ‘In whom all have sinned,’ confutes that.
(2.) Adam’s sin is ours by propagation. Not only is the guilt of Adam’s sin imputed to us, but the depravity and corruption of his nature is transmitted to us, as poison is carried from the fountain to the cistern. This is that which we call original sin. ‘In sin did my mother conceive me.’ Psa 51:5. Adam’s leprosy cleaves to us, as Naaman’s leprosy did to Gehazi. 2 Kings 5:27. This original concupiscence is called,
(1.) The ‘old man.’ Eph 4:22. It is said to be the old man, not that it is weak, as old men are, but for its long standing, and for its deformity. In old age the fair blossoms of beauty fall; so original sin is the old man, because it has withered our beauty, and made us deformed in God’s eye.
(2.) Original concupiscence is called the law of sin. Rom 7:25 Original sin has vim coactivam, the power of a law which binds the subject to allegiance. Men must needs do what sin will have them, when they have both the love of sin to draw them, and the law of sin to force them.
I. In original sin there is something privative, and something positive.
[1] Something privative. Carentia Justitiae debitae [The lack of that righteousness which should be ours]. We have lost that excellent quintessential frame of soul which once we had. Sin has cut the lock of original purity, where our strength lay.
[2] Something positive. Original sin has contaminated and defiled our virgin nature. It was death among the Romans to poison the springs. Original sin has poisoned the spring of our nature, it has turned beauty into leprosy; it has turned the azure brightness of our souls into midnight darkness.
Original sin has become co-natural to us. A man by nature cannot but sin; though there were no devil to tempt, no bad examples to imitate, yet there is such an innate principle in him that he cannot forbear sinning. 2 Pet 2:14. A peccato cessare nesciunt, who cannot cease to sin, as a horse that is lame cannot go without halting. In original sin there is,
(1.) An aversion from good. Man has a desire to be happy, yet opposes that which should promote his happiness. He has a disgust of holiness, he hates to be reformed. Since we fell from God, we have no mind to return to him.
(2.) A propensity to evil. If, as the Pelagians say, there is so much goodness in us since the fall, why is there not as much natural proneness to good as there is to evil? Our experience tells us, that the natural bias of the soul is to that which is bad. The very heathens by the light of nature saw this. Hierocles the philosopher said, ‘it is grafted in us by nature to sin.’ Men roll sin as honey under their tongue. ‘They drink iniquity as water,’ Job 15:16. Like a hydropsical person, that thirsts for drink, and is not satisfied; they have a kind of drought on them, they thirst for sin. Though they are tired out in committing sin, yet they sin. Eph 4:19. ‘They weary themselves to commit iniquity’; as a man that follows his game while he is weary, yet delights in it, and cannot leave it off. Jer 9:5. Though God has set so many flaming swords in the way to stop men in their sin, yet they go on in it; which all shows what a strong appetite they have to the forbidden fruit.
II. That we may further see the nature of original sin, consider,
[1] The universality of it. It has, as poison, diffused itself into all the parts and powers of the soul. ‘The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint.’ Isa 1:5. Like a sick patient, that has no part sound, his liver is swelled, his feet are gangrened, his lungs are perished; such infected, gangrened souls have we, till Christ, who has made a medicine of his blood, cures us.