Are Men Born Sinners? - Library of Theology

this was through a degradation of their nature physically propagated down from father to
son; or whether it was (as Chrysostom, cumenius, Pelagius, Erasmus, and others have
with little probability maintained), only by virtue of the example which he set, or whether
it was in some other way, is not determined by the language of the text. Such expressions
as we have seen above, do not determine of themselves either the degree or the kind of
causality. Principal or subordinate causation in this case may either of them be expressed
by the phrase dia tes--katestathesan. The strenuous advocate for imputation avers,
however, that the posterity of Adam were constituted sinners, by his offence being
imputed to them, and their being treated as though they had committed it.
But when I look at the nature of this case, and ask what language the apostle would most
probably have employed, had he designed to convey such a meaning, I am constrained to
say, that the case can hardly be supposed with probability, that he would have employed
merely such language as that before us, when other modes of expression more explicit
and obvious were within his reach. hoti en auto hamartoloi elogisthesan--hoti autois
elogisthe he hamartia autou--or else hoti esan hupodikoi dia tes hamartias aotou, or
something equivalent to these expressions, might, not to say must, have been added after
hoi polloi, so as to prevent all mistake. But as the matter now is, with the necessarily
active sense of hamartoloi, the language itself cannot lead us philologically to the
supposition of an imputation scheme of sin. See comm. on this verse and the preceding
Excursus.
That men should be constituted or made sinners by the disobedience of Adam, most
naturally means, I had almost said, must necessarily mean, that in some way his offence
so affected them as that they become actual sinners in propria persona. Now is anything
more common than this mode of expression? 'A man of vicious character,' we say,
'corrupts his whole family. A profligate of winning exterior corrupts the whole
neighborhood of youth around him. One sceptic makes many doubters in revelation.
Voltaire made half of literary Europe sceptical.' Now in these and a thousand other like
expressions, we do mean to assert an active influence, a real causality in some proper
sense, of the evil done or spoken. Yet we never once think, for example, of Voltaire's
scepticism being imputed to half of literacy Europe; nor do we once imagine, that any of
the classes above named as being corrupted are corrupted without any voluntary agency
of their own. The sin of corrupt feelings and affections is entirely their own: it matters not
what the causes were which operated on them, so long as they were after all left to their
own choice whether they would yield to the excitement or resist it.
In what way, then, does Adam's sin operate, in order to produce the effect which the
apostle attributes to it? The degree, the extent, and nature of this influence, seem all to be
laid open in the text. It amounts to such a degree as to involve us in a ruinous state or
condition; it extends to all the posterity of Adam; it is a cause or ground of moral
depravation, for it is the cause or occasion of all men's coming into condemnation, and
therefore it must be a cause of their becoming sinners. But after all, the modus operandi is
not declared by the apostle. He does not say, whether the operation of Adam's sin is on
our physical or mental constitution; or whether it has influence merely on the condition in
which we are placed, as being expelled from paradise and surrounded by peculiar