A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

The next thing considerable in the Description, is the propagating and communicating of it to all his posterity that naturally descend from our first Parents. This also is very material to open the nature of this sin, that it's by propagation Adam's sin was not personal, as ours are, but common to the whole nature; Therefore the Apostle Rom. 5. putteth it upon one sin, or offence, and that by one man. The Pelagians were vehement opposers of this, and therefore called the Orthodox Traduciani, because they hold the traduction of this original sin, Adam being a common person, and he as our Head being in Covenant with God, when he became a Covenant-breaker, then we all forfeited all in and by him; So that it's the Covenant of God that is the foundation of communicating original sin, as far as sin can be communicated to all mankind, yet natural generation is the medium, or way of conveying it; But of this more in it's time.

The next thing considerable in the Description, is the propagating and communicating of it to all his posterity that naturally descend from our first Parents. This also is very material to open the nature of this sinne, that it's by propagation Adam's sinne was not personal, as ours are, but common to the whole nature; Therefore the Apostle Rom. 5. putteth it upon one sinne, or offence, and that by one man. The Pelagians were vehement opposers of this, and therefore called the Orthodox Traduciani, because they hold the traduction of this original sinne, Adam being a common person, and he as our Head being in Covenant with God, when he became a Covenant-breaker, then we all forfeited all in and by him; So that it's the Covenant of God that is the foundation of communicating original sinne, as farre as sinne can be communicated to all mankind, yet natural generation is the medium, or way of conveying it; But of this more in it's time.

It followeth in the Description, That this original sin, as it is by propagation, so to all and every one of mankind, who were in his loins, for Christ was not properly in Adam's loins, and so his sin could not be imputed to Christ because Adam was not in Covenant for him, otherwise not the Virgin Mary or any other is exempted from this universal pollution. So that here we have the Subjectum praedicationis, as formerly inhaesonis, that subject of whom this sin may be predicated, and that is every Infant new born, as soon as he hath a being, so soon doth he become thus all over stained and abominable; and this should make Parents have sad and serious thoughts about their children, there is that corruption planted in their souls, which no instruction, no discipline can eradicate, nay the grace of God sanctifying doth not wholly expel in this life; Although the grace of God in some Obed-Edoms and Timothies appear in them from the youth, yet these were by nature dead in sin, and children of wrath, only Gods grace was very wonderfully conveyed unto them in their youth or infancy. Do not therefore think, that because thou hast a more ingenuous, civil and moral nature, that therefore original sin is not in thee, yea many times the actings, and workings of it are more mortiferous and pestilential than in gross sinners. But let us proceed to the parts, as it were essential and intrinsically constituent of this depravation, and that is said to be the loss of Gods glorious Image, and thereby a proneness to all evil; we need not say more to explicate these particulars: As in hell there is a privative part, the loss of the enjoying of God, and then a positive punishment through the torments of hell fire. Thus in original sin we are without the Image of God. There is not that light or holiness he created us in, and withal an impetuous inclination to whatsoever is evil; So that now all the powers of the soul they move inordinately, and with great precipitancy, as Seneca saith of old men, because of their feebleness, Dumb ambulare volunt, currunt, they do not walk but run; Thus our affections, our will, they do not so much go, as tumble headlong to their objects. Hence Tanrellus (Tryumphus Philos. pag. 18.)