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original sin. This being done, Dr. Schaff and such as he are brought into complete harmony with ourselves.

We now pass to consider the different phases of the opposition to the federal theory which has formed one of the distinctive features of the so-called New England theology-intending to signalize the important concessions consciously or unconsciously made by the Old and the New School types of that theology. Leaving out of view for the present the elder Edwards, whose great treatise on Original Sin vacillates between mediate and immediate imputation, between the strictly federal theory and the "root theory" of Stapfer carried so far into realism as to confound all ideas of personal identity, and of which Dr. Schaff correctly enough says, "his main object was to defend the doctrine of native depravity by the theory of identity; i. e., a divinely constituted oneness of Adam and his race, by which his posterity should be born in his moral image, whether good or bad, according to the law that like begets like," (p. 193), we pass to the statements of some representative divines, who articulated the New England doctrine after it had crystallized into a definite anti-imputationism. Before the time of Dr. Taylor, the doctrine was that, by a divine constitution, according to which living things propagate their kind, and like begets like, Adam transmitted the sinful nature incurred by his sin, to each and all of his posterity, at their birth; that for native sin, thus propagated, they were condemned from birth; but that they were punished for Adam's sin not immediately, but only mediately, inasmuch as this corrupt nature consents to, and thus contracts the guilt of that sin. What they stoutly contested was, that the visitation upon the race for Adam's sin was of the nature of punishment for it, or that it was made penal by the covenant or representative relation of Adam.

The New Haven School, while conceding the transmission of a depraved nature, as a consequence of Adam's sin, denied that this native corruption has the quality of sin; yet maintained that it insures the certainty of sinning in all individuals of the race as soon as moral agency begins. This school, too, are exceedingly strenuous in denying that this corruption of nature, and consequent certainty of sinning, although the

consequence of Adam's sin, are the penal consequence of it. But with all this, in both the foregoing forms of New England hamartiology, the following extracts will show how difficult it is for those claiming to be Calvinistic, to miss the truth, even while opposing it. We quote first from Dr. Samuel Hopkins, the founder of Hopkinsianism :

"The covenant or constitution, in which Adam was considered and treated as the father and public head of his future posterity, was more than mere law.”

"The covenant made with him was made with all mankind, and constituted him the public and confederating head of mankind, and he acted in this capacity as being the whole, and his obedience was considered as the obedience of mankind; and, as by this Adam was to obtain eternal life, had he performed it, this would have comprehended and insured the eternal life of his posterity. And, on the contrary, his disobedience was the disobedience of the whole, of all mankind, and the threatened penalty did not respect Adam personally, or as a single individual; but his whole posterity included in him and represented by him. Therefore the transgression being the transgression of the whole, brought the threatened punishment on all mankind."-Hopkins' Works. Boston edition, vol. i., pp. 292-5.

Again he remarks, on Rom. v. 12-21: "Here Adam is asserted, in the most plain and strongest terms, to be constituted the public covenanting head of mankind, so that sin, condemnation, and death came upon all his posterity by his disobedience."-P. 295. He argues the same thing also from the fact that the precise punishments threatened and inflicted on Adam actually fell on all his posterity. It would seem difficult to state all the elements of the federal or representative system, including the immediate imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, and their condemnation and punishment therefor, more explicitly. Yet Hopkins elsewhere argues that the first condemnation of the race is for their own personal sin, transmitted by natural derivation from Adam.

Smalley, a leading New England divine, and opponent of those who resolve all moral character, and some of them even the soul itself, into a chain of exercises, uses the following language:

"Now he (God) hath seen fit to create at first only one man and one woman, to be the progenitors of the rest of human kind-to create them in perfect maturity of natural powers, and in perfect rectitude of disposition-to place them under as good external advantages for persevering obedience as could reasonably be desired; and to ordain that their probation should be instead of the probation

of all men; that if they persevered and kept their virtue through the time appointed, all descending from them should be born in a state of confirmation, and be exposed to no further trials; that if they fell, all their descendants should be brought into existence in a fallen condition like theirs. ... Human na ̄ ture has had a fair trial in its most perfect state. We know, or might know, that had we been tried in innocence, as Adam and Eve were, and been left as they were left, we should have sinned and fell as they did. All the ends of a trial of innocent human nature on a constitution requiring sinless perseverance as the condition of life, are sufficiently answered by the trial of our first parents. Wis. dom requires no more. And, in point of justice, what can be the objection?"Smalley's Sermons, Hartford edition, pp. 186-7.

Yet he repudiates the imputation of Adam's sin in the very words in which he acknowledges its repute for orthodoxy, and its general acceptance as the doctrine of the Scriptures. He begins his discourse on this subject in the following terms: "Of all the articles of faith which have had the reputation of orthodoxy, or have generally been supposed to be plainly taught in the Holy Scriptures, none, perhaps, have made more infidels, and none appear harder to reconcile with reason and common sense, than the doctrines of imputed sin and imputed righteousness."-Id., p. 169. But he insists that Adam stood on trial for his posterity, so that the consequences of his sin to himself also befell them. Were they not penal? But Dr. Smalley answers himself elsewhere. He contends "that all men were brought into the present fallen state by the fall of one or both of our first parents, is evident from the continuation of the very same 'curse that was denounced upon them-as to the temporal part of it at least-to the present day." Then, after reciting it as given,-Gen. iii. 16-20,-he asks:

"Now, when we see every part of this sentence so exactly executed still on the sons and daughters of these first human transgressors, have we not the most sensible evidence that their offspring were included with them, thus far, at least, in their original condemnation? And if, as to the present life and temporal death, we are evidently dealt with according to the sentence passed upon our first parents, what reason have we to think that we were not, according to the original constitution, to be dealt with in like manner relative to the life to come? It is no easier to reconcile with reason and justice our being involved so far in the bitter consequences of their sin, as we certainly at present are, than it is our sharing all the fruits of man's first apostasy."-Pp. 176-7.

Now, if Adam so stood on trial for his posterity, as their representative, that they were included with him in the origi

nal condemnation, and suffer the curse visited upon him, and the sentence executed upon him in punishment for his sin, is also inflicted upon themselves in its unnumbered evils and woes, have we not given us all the elements of the federai hamartiology?

But he finishes the complete and utter refutation of his opposition to the imputation of Adam's sin, in his argument to prove native depravity, from the sufferings and death of infants. He says: "If sufferings may be supposed in God's moral kingdom when there is no imputation of sin, the ground is given up of ever knowing the Divine hatred of any thing in his creatures, by his righteous judgments inflicted on them either in this world or the world to come. Therefore, the common painful dissolution of infants plainly avers that they are some way sinful in the sight of God."-P. 174. But is not the evil of a corrupt and sinful character, transmitted to all our race at birth, which deserves and suffers God's wrath and curse in all miseries, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, according to Smalley's view, an evil far worse than any of the mere physical pangs which it causes? And if it "may be supposed where there is no imputation of sin," does it not sever the nexus between sin and suffering in moral beings, and confound moral distinctions by referring the most dreadful of all visitations upon man to the mere sovereignty of God? It is no answer to say that Adam's nature having once been vitiated by his sin, this vitiosity and sinfulness are transmitted by the laws of natural propagation. Who made these laws? Besides, punishment may as truly be inflicted by the operation of natural laws as in any other way? Do not the drunkard, glutton, and debauchee suffer dreadful punishments for their sins in the mere operation of natural laws on their own constitutions?

The New Haven divines say that all who bear the name of Calvinists will unite in the statement, "that Adam was not on trial for himself alone, but that, by a Divine constitution, all his descendants were to have, in their natural state, the same character and condition with their progenitor."-Christian Spectator, 1830, p. 343. This surely puts the representative character of Adam unequivocally. But they differ from Dr.

Smalley, and other preceding New England divines, in regard to the sinfulness of the corrupt nature transmitted from him. They deny that this inborn corruption is of the nature of sin, because they admit nothing to be sin but acts committed in violation of known law; but they insist that it causes a certainty of sinning in the first act of moral agency in the case of all men, or as soon as moral agency begins; that this dire certainty of sinning is the consequence to all Adam's descendants of his sinning when on trial for them as well as himself. But they differ from us, not only as from Smalley, when they deny the sinfulness of our hereditary corruption, but still further, in denying that these consequences of Adam's sin, involving a depraved nature, the certainty of sinning, and consequent death, and other woes, are penal. Though flowing from Adam's sin, they are not the punishment of it.

In, by far, the ablest, most authoritative, and elaborate discussion which ever proceeded from the New Haven divines on this subject (we refer to their article in controversy with this Journal, published in the Christian Spectator for June, 1831, and entitled, "The case of the Rev. Mr. Barnes, Biblical Repertory on Imputation "), they maintain most strenuously, that, while differing from us as above shown, as to what the consequences of that sin to his posterity are, yet as respects the relation of those consequences to his sin, they differ from us only in words. They pronounce it in capitals,

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SOLELY A DISPUTE ABOUT WORDS," p. 301. What words? They tell us imputation, guilt, punishment. Are these applicable to Adam's sin as related to his posterity, and as the ground on which its consequences to himself are inflicted on them? "In what, then, do they (Princeton and New England) differ?" Ask these divines, and they answer, "Not in the fact that these evils are a consequence of Adam's sin; but simply and solely whether they are properly termed the punishment of his posterity." And so, mutatis mutandis, they state the case in regard to the terms imputation and guilt. "It is agreed, then," they say, "that certain evils come on Adam's posterity, in consequence of his sin; and the question now before us is, whether this fact is to be resolved into the sovereignty of God, or to be accounted for, by asserting that

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