J 01 General Considerations.

1. General Considerations.

Now, as sin is the same thing in all men, its essential principle and manifestations being the same in all, it must be regarded as something adhering to our nature in our present state of being. Were it not so, we should either find some men who are not sinners, or some whose sins spring from a different principle from that which lies at the source of those of others.

Further, the fact that all sin, both in act and in principle, is the same as that sin by which our first parents fell, viz. in act, a transgression of the law of God; and in principle, alienation from God, is a fact which, if it does not suggest, certainly falls in with the conclusion that the first sin has had something to do with the production of all that have followed.

Once more, if sin be the same thing in all men, and therefore something adhering to our nature as at present existing, it must be something which is either added to that nature in each individual man immediately by God, or it must be something which accrues to each man in consequence of the connection of all men with the common source of the race. Besides these two, there is no way in which we can suppose that a quality belonging to the nature of all men could have come to be attached to that nature; nothing but community of derivation, either directly by God or by connection with a common head, being adequate to account for a quality belonging to all men. The former supposi tion, however, is altogether incredible, and must therefore be rejected, inasmuch as it would make God directly and immediately the author of sin. We are therefore shut up to the latter, and must trace the universal sin of men to their connection with the first man, Adam. We do not at present express any opinion as to the nature of that connection; that will be subsequently investigated; we simply indicate the conclusion, that to a connection of some sort with the original man the sinfuluess of the human family must be traced.