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

Objections Answered.

WE are vindicating the righteousness of God in his proceedings with mankind about original sin, being presumptuously accused by those who harden themselves against this truth. I proceed therefore to lay down one Proposition only more, thereby answering their particular Objections, which will help us to much light in this point, that it may seem no new or strange thing, that Radix damnata should proferre ramos damnatos, a condemned root should bring forth condemned branches, or a poisoned fountain envenomed streams.

WE are vindicating the righteousness of God in his proceedings with mankind about original sinne, being presumptuously accused by those who harden themselves against this truth. I proceed therefore to lay down one Proposition only more, thereby answering their particular Objections, which will help us to much light in this point, that it may seem no new or strange thing, that Radix damnata should proferre ramos damnatos, a condemned root should bring forth condemned branches, or a poisoned fountain invenomed streams.

The Proposition is this, God who made man thus perfect and exactly qualified every way to attain that glorious and for which he was made, did not appoint him as a mere single person to stand and fall for himself, but as a public person, in whom we were all represented, and whose will should be as the will of all mankind; and therefore Rom. 5. we are not only said to be made sinners by him, which denoteth our inherent corruption, but also to sin in him, which supposeth, that our persons were represented in him, not in this sense, as if we had appointed Adam our delegate (as it were) and so had passed over our wills to him, for how could that be, when we had no existency or being at all; Therefore this was wholly by the appointment of God, that it should be so, who is the supreme Lord over all mankind; Even as Christ was Surety for all those who were given him of the Father, not as if believers did delegate him (as some have absurdly and odiously stated the Question) but he was designed to that office by the appointment of God. Adam then was made the common Trustee and Treasurer for all mankind, though he did prove (as it were) the Phaeton, involving all his posterity in utter destruction; so that Adam was the head of mankind two ways,