The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

under subjection to death; it is not what I did, but what I am, that subjects
me to these, and I am what I am because I spring from Adam, and
because he fell. And on that same mysterious, but indubitable principle,
that what we are, as well as what we do,determines our destiny, God might,
in keeping with the justice which nature reveals, actually subject the race
to the eternal destiny which was the result of sin, apart from the Divine
arrest of its tendency, to Adam. No human logic, which acknowledges the
Providence of God in nature, could overthrow the proposition, even were it
absolute, that original sin brings eternal death to the race.
7. Nor is the language too strong, that original sin is, in its own
nature, worthy of death. The word of God teaches that there are but two
states possible, one of life, the other of death. Death is always the result of
what is due. Life is always the result of grace. Death is the wages of sin.
Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Death is the natural due then of every human creature as a creature
of sin, and eternal life can only come to man as a gracious and free gift.
Nature, as well as voluntary character, is regarded as properly subject to
penalty. “We were by nature children of wrath, even as others," Eph. iii. 3,
that is, we who are Jews by nature, by our natural descent; we who are
born Jews are, by our natural birth, just as the Gentiles are, subject to
wrath, because in both cases men are born with a sinful nature. Death is
the due of sin.
8. That infants are included is not only necessary, logically, and
involved in the words of Paul just quoted, but is expressly taught. "Death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the
similitude of Adam's transgression."
9. The results of Adam's fall, and of Christ's mediation, are
represented as entirely parallel in the range of their subjects; the one
embraces exactly the same persons as the other. "If Christ died for all,
then were all dead." "As in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made
alive," (in the resurrection). "Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the grace of God,
tasted death for every man." "By the offence of one, judgment came upon
all