are as capable as Adam was of acting in obedience to rea son and conscience; and that there is no necessity for supernatural influences to help our infirmities, and enable us to will and to do God's good pleasure.-But both the one and the other of these opinions will be found on examination contrary to experience and the declarations of scripture.

We are informed that Adam was created after the image of God, which consisted in knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. All his faculties were so harmoniously adjusted, that each performed its proper office, and no undue ascendancy of one more than another disturbed the composure of his soul. His mind was so sublimated as to be little impressed by the senses and appetites of the body; his will chose or refused, according to the strictest rules of rectitude, and his affections were excited towards every object in proportion to its value. But by his fall he lost that just counterpoise of all his mental powers; that nice discernment of good and evil; and that ability to perform his duty which he originally possessed in a state of innocence. Now, his corporeal and inferior appetites acquired an undue strength; his animal passions were easily inflamed, and his mental energies proportionally enfeebled; and he became liable to all the excitements which arise from internal or external causes; the law of his members henceforth warred against the law of his mind, and brought him into captivity to the law of sin. Such being the depravity now engendered in his soul, he communicated to his posterity a corrupted nature, which was despoiled of the image of God, deprived of that fulness of knowledge and power of obedience which were requisite to render all his actions both righteous and holy, and inclined to the commission to vice, whenever temptations sufficiently powerful should be presented to his mind. This seems to be the account which reason and scripture give of that change which took place in the nature of Adam when he fell from his primeval integrity.

There have been various hypotheses formed of the manner in which such pernicious effects could be produced, by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It

is supposed by divines, that this tree contained some dele. terious qualities, which might so much affect his whole animal system, as to render it tainted and corrupted. Thereby his sensitive appetites might be so far carnalized, as to disorder the operations of his mental faculties, and thus produce the same consequences in the soul, as we find violent diseases do in the body. We know that a very small quantity of poison may in a few minutes totally pollute the whole mass of blood; and the like change may have been produced on Adam's constitution by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Hereby his whole corporeal and rational powers might be so much pervert. ed, as henceforth to render his nature very different from its original rectitude. He having thus corrupted his own nature, would convey similar qualities of mind and body to his posterity, in the same manner as a parent transmits madness and other chronical distempers to his offspring, for many generations. Thus it may be proved, that it is nothing contrary to experience, that original sin has descended from Adam to the human race, by the same phy sical law which operates in producing hereditary diseases from the father to the children. Thus it may be conceiv ed, how all the evil dispositions with which men are born, may be ultimately traced, through successive generations, to the first man," who brought death into the world and all our woe."

If it be enquired, how original sin is propagated among mankind, it may be answered, that it is most probable the soul is defiled by its union with a corrupted body. It is certain that every soul is immediately created by the Almighty, for he is the "Father of our spirits." It is also probable, that as soon as the body in its embryo state iş prepared for the reception of the soul, the latter is sent to animate the former. This being the case, as a certain degree of depravity proceeds from the parent, it must infect the faculties of his children by means of the union which subsists betwixt the corporeal and intellectual parts of the human constitution. That this is the case, may be proved from the similarity of temper and disposition which is observable in parents and their offspring. Thus,

the radical principles of inherent corruption are conveyed from one race to another; and we are born into the world with such qualities as have a tendency to produce wickedness, whenever our faculties are so far matured as to be susceptible of temptation from the objects around us, or the circumstances in which we are placed.

As mankind are thus degenerated from the original righteousness which Adam possessed, it may be worthy of enquiry to investigate how far this degeneracy extends. We know from experience, that in the present imperfect state of human nature, we have an aversion to rectitude, and a proneness to vice; that the image of God, which consisted in perfect holiness, is now effaced; that of ourselves we are incapable of acting according to the rules of reason and religion, and require the assistance of divine grace to enable us to will and to do God's good pleasure. But still some remains of goodness are found in the soul, which when excited by proper motives, and cultivated by assiduous care, produce in many the fruits of righteous. ness. Many eminent examples of virtue were exhibited even among the Heathen philosophers; and there are many of the saints recorded in scripture, who adorned religion by their lives and conversations. There, we read of Enoch who walked with God, of Noah who was perfect in his generation, of Job who was an upright man that feared God and eschewed evil, of David who was a man according to God's own heart, of Jeremiah who was sanctified from the womb, of Daniel who was holy and beloved of God, of Zacharias and Elizabeth who walked in all the ordinances of the Lord blameless, of Nathaniel who was an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile, of St. John whom our Saviour loved for his amiable qualities, and of St. Paul who laboured more abundantly than they all. In every age and country, there have been many worthy men who have lived as becometh saints, and improved their characters by discipline and virtuous exertions. And we feel that by imbibing the principles of true religion, and regulating our conduct by its holy precepts, we may maintain upon the whole a conscience void of offence, acquire some degree of conformity to the will of God, and

regain in some measure that image of holiness in which we were at first created. Indeed the whole injunctions of Christianity suppose, that we are capable, notwithstanding our degeneracy, of yielding a sincere though imperfect obedience; otherwise they would not have been given by our merciful legislator," who knoweth our frame, and remembers that we are dust." If our natures were so entirely perverted as to be incapable of the least exertion in well doing, we would not have been required to "work out our own salvation, nor give all diligence to make our calling and election sure, by adding to our faith, virtue, godliness, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, and charity, that these graces being in us and abounding, we might neither be barren nor unfruitful in good works."

Yet we find, that after all our efforts, we fall far short of that rectitude of character required of us by the divine law. We find, that though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak; that in many things we offend, all, and that sin fulness seems to be inseparable from human nature in its most perfect condition. Hence some divines have con ceived, that their is a curse derived to us from the original guilt of our first parents; that their apostacy was imputed to us, and rendered us partakers of their iniquity; that we sinned in them, and fell with them in their first transgression. Accordingly certain of the Christian fathers taught, that a covenant was made betwixt God and Adam, in which he represented all mankind; that it was so con stituted as to be the medium of conveying happiness to them all upon his obedience, or of entailing misery through his disobedience; and that as he violated it, his guilt was transferred to all his descendants. Such an imputation of original sin seems to be taught by St. Paul, in the fifth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, in which he con: trasts the guilt and misery derived to us by Adam, with the righteousness and happiness procured for us by Christ. Thus he expresses his sentiments on this subject: "as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to justification of life." The

mediation of our Saviour thus rescues us from the penal consequences to which we were exposed by the breach of the covenant of works in Adam; so that there is now no condemnation to those who believe in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Whatever guilt might therefore be imputed to us through the first Adam, is removed by the imputation of the merits of the second. So that though our nature is perverted by the fall, yet if we endeavour by divine assistance to rectify it to the utmost of our power, we shall then be accepted in the beloved.

Having thus endeavoured to explain the nature of original sin, its imputation and the means of its remission to all the faithful, I proceed to describe,

III. The extent of the punishment to which we are liable by its imputation.

It has appeared to some contrary to every principle of justice that we should be punished at all, either in a greater or less degree, for the transgressions of one who lived many thousand years ago, and with whose conduct we had no concern. It is moreover alleged, that scripture teaches us to believe, that every one is punished only for his own iniquity; that the soul which sinneth it shall die. Hence they infer, that Adam's sin was entirely personal, and the punishment annexed to it did not extend to any of his posterity.

But no arguments, however plausible, are sufficient to contradict a matter of fact and experience. We find, that mankind are subject to evils both natural and moral; that they suffer many calamities of fortune, many diseases in their bodies, many sorrows in their minds, and death at last. These are miseries entailed upon us by our first parents, on whom was denounced this threatening, to deter them from eating of the forbidden fruit: " in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

If they had not violated this prohibition; if they had abstained from the accursed thing; the tree of life would have supported their bodies in perpetual vigour, and they would have been translated to heaven, without tasting of death.