The truly blessed man

2. In what respect all mankind by nature are under this Imputation?

A. That all are so, is every where asserted in Scripture; and is evident, because the penalties properly belonging to sin are fallen upon them all▪ See Rom. 5.12.14. 1 Cor. 15.22. If all are Sinners, then sin is imputable to all, and if they are ⟨p. 85⟩dead by it, it hath surely been imputed. Certainly that Sin which hath killed a whole world, is imputed to them, how else had they died by it? it includes old and young, persons of understanding, and Infants, whosoever descends from Adam by natural generation, and hath a reasonable Soul. Now there is a threefold respect in which sin comes to be imputable to mankind, and that righteously.

1. When it is actually and personally committed by the man. I name this first, because it is most plain and accountable. Sin is properly a Moral Transgression, and supposeth a Law against which the transgression is: and to actual sin it is requisite that it be done by a reasonable creature, capable of acting as a cause by counsel: this therefore is not imputable to Infants, for, though they have a reasonable Soul in them, yet it is not in a present capacity of exercising that reason; which want seems not to be a fruit of sin, but a condition of nature, and had not man fallen, it would in all likelihood have been so; it is therefore said of those that die in their Infancy, That they have not sinned after the similitude of Adams Transgression,