be. For aught we know, if there had been no salvation through Christ, as a part of the actual constitution and system of the world, then there would have been no other part of that system whatever. We are not told, and we do not know, what it would have been consistent with the justice of God to do in relation to the world, if there had been no remedy provided for its restoration. Perhaps it might never have been created at all. The work of Christ is the great sun and centre of the system as it is; and if this had never been a part of the original grand design, we do not know that the planets would have been created to wander in eternal darkness. We do not know that even the justice of God would have created man, and permitted him to fall, wandering everlastingly amid the horrors of death, without hope and without remedy. We find nothing of the kind in the word of God; and in our nature it meets with no response, except a wail of unutterable horror. We like not, we confess, those vindications of God's goodness, which consist in drawing hideous, black pictures of his justice, and then telling us that it is not so dark as these. We want not to know whether there might not be darker things in the universe than God's love; we only want to know if there could be anything brighter, or better, or more beautiful.

The most astounding feature of this vindication of the divine goodness still remains to be noticed. We are told that the constitution in question is good, because it was so likely to have had a "happy issue." And when this constitution was established by the sovereign will and pleasure of God, the conduct of Adam, it is conceded, was perfectly foreseen by him. At the very time this constitution was established, its Divine Author foresaw with perfect absolute certainty what would be the issue. He knew that the great federal head, so appointed by him, would transgress the covenant, and bring down the curse of "death, temporal, spiritual, and eternal," upon all his posterity. O, wonderful goodness! to promise eternal life to the human race on a condition which he certainly foreknew would not be performed! Amazing grace! to threaten eternal death to ali mankind, on a condition which he certainly foreknew would be fulfilled!

This cannot be evaded, by asserting that the same difficulty attaches to the fact, that God created Adam foresceing he

would fall. His foreknowledge did not necessitate the fall of Adam. It left him free as God had created him. Life and death were set before him, and he had the power to stand, as well as the power to fall. He had no right to complain of God, then, if, under such circumstances, he chose to rebel, and incur the penalty. But if the scheme of Edwards be true, the descendants of Adam did not have their fate in their own hands. It did not depend on their own choice. It was necessi tated, even prior to their existence, by the divine constitution which had indissolubly connected their awful destiny, their temporal and eternal ruin, with an event already foreseen. And the constitution binding such awful consequences to an event already foreseen, is called an expression of the goodness of God!

Suppose, for example, that a great prince should promise his subjects that on the happening of a certain event, over which they had no control, he would confer unspeakable favours upon them. Suppose also, that at the same time he should declare to them, that if the event should not happen, he would load them with irons, cast them into prison, and inflict the greatest imaginable punishments upon them during the remainder of their lives. Suppose again, that at the very time he thus made known his gracious intentions to them, he knew perfectly well that the event on which his favour was suspended would not happen. Then, according to his certain foreknowledge, the event fails, and the penalty of the covenant or appointment is inflicted upon his subjects:-they are cast into prison; they are bound in chains, and perpetually tormented with the greatest of all imaginable evils:-not because they had transgressed the appointment or sovereign constitution, but because an event had taken place over which they had no control. Now, who would call such a ruler a good prince? Who could conceive, indeed, of a more cruel or deceitful tyrant? But we submit it to the candid reader, if he be not more like the prince of predestination, than the great God of heaven and earth?

This scheme of imputation, so far from being an expression of infinite goodness, were indeed an exhibition of the most frightful cruelty and injustice. It would be a useful, as well as a most curious inquiry, to examine the various contrivances of ingenious men, in order to bring the doctrine of imputation

into harmony with the justice of God. We shall briefly allude to only two of these wonderful inventions,-those of Augustine and Edwards. Neither of these celebrated divines supposed that a foreign sin, properly so called, is ever imputed to any one; but that the sin of Adam, which is imputed to his descendants, is their own sin, as well as his. But here the question arises, How could they make Adam's sin to be the sin of his descendants, many of whom were born thousands of years after it was committed?

Augustine, as is well known, maintained the startling paradox, that all mankind were present in Adam, and sinned in him. In this way, he supposed that all men became partakers in the guilt of Adam's sin, and consequently justly liable to the penalty due to his transgression. Augustine was quite too good a logician not to perceive, that if all men are responsible for Adam's sin, because they were in him when he transgressed, then, it follows, that we are also responsible for the sins of all our ancestors, from whom we are more immediately descended. This follows from that maxim of jurisprudence, from that dictate of common-sense, that a rule of law is coëxtensive with the reason upon which it is based. Hence, as Wiggers remarks: 'Augustine thought it not improbable that the sins of ancestors universally are imputed to their descendants."+ This conclusion is clearly set forth in the extracts made by the translator of Wiggers. If this scheme be true, we know indeed that we are all guilty of Adam's sin; but who, or how many of the human race, were the perpetrators of Cain's murder beside himself, we cannot determine. Indeed, if this frightful hypothesis be well founded, if it form a part of the moral constitution of the world, no man can possibly tell how many thefts, murders, or treasons, he may have committed in his ancestors. One thing is certain, however, and that is, that the man who is born later in the course of time, will have the more sins to answer for, and the more fearful will be the accumulation of his guilt; as all the transgressions of all his ancestors, from Adam down to his immediate parents, will be laid upon his head.

Clearly as this consequence is involved in the fundamental prin

Edwards on Original Sin, part iv, chap. iii, p. 543.

† Encheir., c. 46, 47. See also remarks by the American editor and translator. See p. 284.

ciple of Augustine's theory, the good father could not but reei and stagger under it. "Respecting the sins of the other parents," says he, "the progenitors from Adam down to one's own immediate father, it may not improperly be debated, whether the child is implicated in the evil acts and multiplied original faults of all, so that each one is the worse in proportion as he is later; or that, in respect to the sins of their parents, God threatens posterity to the third and fourth generation, because, by the moderation of his compassion, he does not further extend his anger in respect to the faults of progenitors, lest those on whom the grace of regeneration is not conferred, should be pressed with too heavy a burden in their own eternal damnation, if they were compelled to contract by way of origin (originaliter) the sins of all their preceding parents from the commencement of the human race, and to suffer the punishment due to them.* Whether, on so great a subject, anything else can or cannot be found, by a more diligent reading and scrutiny of the Scriptures, I dare not hastily affirm."+

Thus does the sturdy logician, notwithstanding his almost indomitable hardihood, seem to stand appalled before the consequences to which his principles would inevitably conduct him. Having followed those principles but a little way, the scene becomes so dark with his representations of the divine justice, that he feels constrained to retrace his steps, and arbitrarily introduce the divine mercy, in order to mitigate the indescribable horrors which continually thicken around him. Such hesitation, such wavering and inconsistency, is the natural result of every scheme which places the decisions of the head in violent conflict with the indestructible feelings of the heart.

In his attempt to reconcile the scheme of imputation with the justice of God, Edwards has met with as little success as Augustine. For this purpose, he supposed that God had constituted an identity between Adam and all his posterity, whereby the latter became partakers of his rebellion. "I think it would go

If God, out of the abundance of his compassion, imputes the sins of parents only to the third or fourth generation, how has it happened that Adam's transgression is imputed to all his posterity, and punished throughout all generations? Is there any consistency, or harmony, in such views respecting the government of the world?

Wiggers's Presentation, note by translator, p. 285.

far toward directing us to the more clear conception and right statement of this affair," says he, in reference to imputation,

were we steadily to bear this in mind, that God, in every step of his proceedings with Adam, in relation to the covenant or constitution established with him, looked on his posterity as being one with him. And though he dealt more immediately with Adam, it yet was as the head of the whole body, and the root of the whole tree; and in his proceedings with him, he dealt with all the branches as if they had been then existing in their root. From which it will follow, that both guilt, or exposedness to punishment, and also depravity of heart, came upon Adam's posterity just as they came upon him, as much as if he and they had all coëxisted, like a tree with many branches; allowing only for the difference necessarily resulting from the place Adam stood in as head or root of the whole. Otherwise, it is as if, in every step of proceeding, every alteration in the root had been attended at the same instant with the same alteration throughout the whole tree, in each individual branch. I think this will naturally follow on the supposition of their being a constituted oneness or identity of Adam and his posterity in this affair."* As the sap of a tree, Edwards has said, spreads from the root of a tree to all its branches, so the original sin of Adam descends from him through the generations of men.

In the serious promulgation of such sentiments, it is only forgotten that sin is not the sap of a tree, and that the whole human race is not really one and the same person. Such an idea of personal identity is as utterly unintelligible as the nature of the sin and the responsibility with which it is so intimately associated. Surely these are the dark dreams of men, not the bright and shining lights of eternal truth.

Before we take leave of President Edwards, we would remark, that he proceeds on the same supposition with Calvin,† Bates, Dwight,§ Dick, and a host of others, that suffering is always a punishment of sin, and of "sin in them who suffer."] "The light of nature," says Edwards, " or tradition from ancient revelation, led the heathen to conceive of death as in a peculiar manner an evidence of divine vengeance. Thus we have an

• Edwards on Original Sin, part iv, ch. iii.

Divine Attributes.

|| Original Sin, part i, ch. ii.

Institutes, book ii, ch. i. § Sermon on Original Sin.