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and to have encumbered himself with a weight which no power but Omnipotence could have supported. May not every individual take up the humiliating language of our church, with a personal application to himself, and say, "I have erred and strayed from Thy ways, like a lost sheep?" When God had created Adam, He placed him in Paradise, and fed him in green pastures, through which the waters of holy delight flowed in rich abundance. But where are we now? Is not our present state pathetically described by that of Israel in the desert, "a great and terrible wilderness, wherein are fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, "where there is no water?" Alas, what strange event has brought us into the awful situation in which we find ourselves? The Scripture informs us that our first parent, who was constituted by his Creator the federal head and representative of all his posterity, transgressed the gracious law which was given him as the condition of life, and thereby involved himself and all his children, to the latest generations, in guilt, misery, and ruin. Will any persons, in concurrence with Pelagius and his followers, object to the justice and equity of this proceeding? Sufficient for them is the answer of the Apostle: Nay but, Oman,

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* The tenth Article of our church may be considered as a striking comment on this beautiful and instructive parable. The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that "he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon Ged; "wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant "and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by "Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will; and working with us, when we have that good will."

† Deut. viii. 15.

"who art thou that repliest against God?" If it were the appointment of a righteous God, that Adam should represent all mankind, and that they should stand or fall in him, His will proves it to have been just; for His will is the result of the most perfect equity. The only question to be resolved is, whether this matter be revealed in Scripture? For, if it be, all controversy is at an end, with respect to those who receive the Bible as a revelation from God. Let the reader consult the fifth chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, and try to explain it on any other hypothesis. A few passages from that chapter it may not be improper to introduce here. (ver. 12.) "By one man sin "entered into the world, and death by sin: and "so death passed upon all men, for that all have "sinned."* (ver. 14.) "Death reigned from "Adam to Moses, even over them who had not "sinned after the similitude of Adam's trans

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gression, who is the figure of Him that was "to come." (ver. 15.) "Through the offence "of one, many are dead." (ver. 16.) "The judgment was by one to condemnation." (ver. 17.) "By one man's offence, Death 'reigned "by by one." (ver. 19.) By one man's disobedience, many were made sinners." † The parallel throughout the chapter, between Adam and our Lord Jesus Christ, shews that we were made sinners through our connection with and relation to the first Adam, after the same man

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ner in which any of us are made righteous through our connection with the second; and

Marg. Reading. ep w, in whom.

* Κατεςάθησαν αμαρτωλοί were constituted sinners, (viz.) by the Divine appointment.

that is by imputation. Therefore, in another epistle, the Apostle speaks of all men as being by nature the children of wrath."* This is clearly the doctrine of the church of England, as appears by her baptismal service, where she instructs us to pray that the child brought to be baptised may be delivered from the wrath of God. † She believes that all mankind are liable to that wrath, so soon as they are born into the world, before actual sin can have been committed. But this cannot be, unless there be some preceding act of sin which has rendered them guilty. No reasonable account can be given of the propagation of corruption (considered as a punishment) without presupposing the imputation of the original offence as its meritorious cause. The second homily on the misery of man speaks decidedly on this subject: "In ourselves (as of ourselves) we find nothing, "whereby we may be delivered from this mise"rable captivity (of sin) into the which we are

* Eph. ii. 3.

+ See the first prayer in The Public Baptism of Infants. The advocates of the doctrine of original sin, and of those doctrines which are inseparably connected with it, have been rendered odious by their adversaries, through a wilful misrepresentation of their creed. They have been charged with asserting the damnation of infants. The author of these essays is glad of this opportunity to avow his belief, that all infants, dying before the commission of actual sin, will be saved. But this belief he builds, not on any supposed innocence, which such children may be imagined to possess, intitling them to the favour of God; but on the redemption which hath been effected by the blood of Christ. "Infants being baptised, and dying in their infancy, are by "this sacrifice (of Christ) washed from their sins, brought "to God's favour, and made His children, and inheritors "of His kingdom of heaven."-See the first part of_the Homily of Salvation.-See also the Rubric after the Form of Baptism.

And

"cast through the envy of the devil, by breaking of God's commandment in our first parent, "Adam." The homily on the Nativity speaks the same language: "As in Adam all men sinned universally, so in Adam all men universally received the reward of sin." again, "Oh, what a miserable and woeful state was this, that the sin of one man should destroy and condemn all men!" All this is exactly in unison with the ninth article, the title of which is very remarkable: " Of original or "birth-sin." To be born a descendant of Adam, and to be a sinner, are things inseparable. Whatever opposition may be made to this humiliating doctrine, either by professed infidels or false brethren, none can arise from those persons who have honestly subscribed to the truth of the XXXIX articles of our church, therein declaring that both the books of Homilies "contain a Godly and wholesome doctrine."*

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*

"An appeal to the thirty-nine articles has unhappily the less weight in the modern times, because an ingenious device has been fabricated, to elude the force of conviction from that quarter. According to the title prefixed to them by the convocation of 1562, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, They were agreed upon for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing consent touching true religion.' And afterwards, in the declaration which was set forth by King James the First, order was given, that ' no man thereafter should put his own sense or comment ⚫ to be the meaning of the article, but should take it in the literal and grammatical sense.' Of late it hath been said, that they who subscribe to the articles are permitted to put on them a liberal construction. But from whom do they derive this permission? or who has authority to sanction so flagrant an act of duplicity? Besides this, a liberal construction, being once permitted, will subject the articles to as many thousand different senses as there are persons, both ecclesiastical and civil, who by oath subscribe to them; and will also annihilate the solemnity and moral obligation of every oath which is administered in our courts of judicature,

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Our personal wanderings are, in our general confession, traced up to their proper source, the corruption of our nature: "We have followed "too much the devices and desires of our own "hearts." Are our hearts full of evil devices and desires? Who will deny it? The evil is not adventitious, but natural to us. The fountain is corrupt, therefore the streams are filthy. The tree is bad, therefore the fruit is sour. On this subject the Scripture is very plain; and volumes might be filled with evidence drawn from thence and from matter of fact. "Adam "begat a son in his own likeness, after his "image." And this was not the image of God in which Adam had been created, because that was lost; but the image and likeness of the fallen spirit, to whose temptation he had yielded.

What is man, that he should be clean and "he, which is born of a woman, that he should "be righteous? That which is born of the "flesh, is flesh." Therefore "ye must be born again. ‡ Behold, I was shapen in iniquity:

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"Nor will this refinement prove a safe refuge to those who have recourse to it; for it will not, in many instances, set aside the literal and grammatical sense. Let its patrons, for instance, try their critical, powers, and employ all the arts of sophistry, in endeavouring to reconcile Unitarianism or Arianism with the first of the articles; or to make justification by faith only, as maintained in the eleventh, to signify either justification by works, or justification by works and faith together."-The Rev. Rd. Hart's Church of England's Test of Religious Sincerity, p. 5.

Should the pious reader wish for further information on the doctrine of original sin, he will peruse with pleasure Bishop Beveridge's Exposition on the Thirty-nine Articles; Archbishop Usher's Body of Divinity; and particularly Dr. John Edwards's Veritas Redux.

* Gen. v. 9. + Job xv. 14.

John iii. 6, 7.