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

SECT. III.

IT is the peculiar and incommunicable prerogative of Christ alone in respect of his humane nature, to be exempted from original sin (as you have heard) And therefore it's an inseparable and inevitable property following every one of mankind: As it is said of Justification by Christ, Bond and free, Jew and Grecian, all are out, Gal. 3. 28. So there is neither rich or poor, Christian or Heathen, Noble or ignoble, civil or profane, male or female, but all are one in original sin, because all are of Adam by natural generation, and thereby original sin is propagated to all, which Doctrine is to be explicated in more propositions. And

IT is the peculiar and incommunicable prerogative of Christ alone in respect of his humane nature, to be exempted from original sinne (as you have heard) And therefore it's an inseparable and inevitable property following every one of mankind: As it is said of Justification by Christ, Bond and free, Jew and Grecian, all are out, Gal. 3. 28. So there is neither rich or poor, Christian or Heathen, Noble or ignoble, civil or prophane, male or female, but all are one in original sinne, because all are of Adam by natural generation, and thereby original sin is propagated to all, which Doctrine is to be explicated in more propositions. And

First, Though our natural generation from corrupted Parents, be the means by which we all are born polluted and depraved, yet this doth not exclude the justice of God, and his righteous Decree, that from a sinful fountain shall arise such polluted streams, from such a bitter root also bitter fruit, but doth necessarily presuppose it. So that the just judgement of God in punishing of all mankind, for Adam's first transgression must always be acknowledged, and we must not separate the natural propagation of sin from the sentence and Decree of God; For if this were the only reason, that we became guilty of Adam's sin, because in his lions, then all Adam's other sins should be made ours, as well as that first act of disobedience in eating of the forbidden fruit, and the sins of our immediate parents in whose loins we were, should be transmitted to us, as well as Adam's; yea happily, if this were so, then the longer original sin hath been propagated, it would still grow more evil, and thereby men in the later age of the world become more polluted with original sin, then men in the former age; but Cain and Abel, who were the immediate off-spring of Adam, were as deeply plunged in this native defilement, as any are now. Therefore some learned men, though in this Controversy they do allow the phrase of the Propagation of original sin, because commonly used, yet would gladly have a more commodious and fit expression; Hence they do more willingly use the word Traduction, or happily transmitting and transfusing; for the sin is not properly propagated, but the humane nature to which original corruption adhereth, because we have not that so properly from our parents, though by them, as of Adam; for the reason why upon the conjunction of soul and body an Infant is immediately defiled with sin, is not because born of such parents, but because of Adam; and therefore though they be the cause of being a man, yet Adam is of being a sinful man; So that as all the lines from the circumference do equally meet in the centre; Thus do all mankind in Adam, and he that is now born, doth as immediately partake of Adam's sin, as Cain did, though so many thousand years ago born immediately of Adam;