CHAP. VI.
Of the fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof.
1. Although God created Man upright, and perfect,
and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it,
(a) and threatned death upon the breach
thereof; yet he did not long abide in this honour; (b)
Satan using the subtilty of the serpent to seduce Eve, then by her
seducing Adam, who without any compulsion, did wilfully transgress
the Law of their Creation, and the command given unto them, in eating
the forbidden fruit; which God was pleased according to his
wise and holy Councel to permit, having purposed to order it, to
his own glory.
a Gen. 2.16,17,
2. Our first Parents by this Sin,
fell from their (c) original righteousness
and communion with God, and we in them, whereby death came upon
all; (d) all becoming dead in Sin,
and wholly defiled, (e) in all the
faculties, and parts, of soul, and body.
c Rom. 3.23.
3. They being the (f)
root, and by Gods appointment, standing in the room, and stead of
all mankind; the guilt of the Sin was imputed, and corrupted
nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary
generation, being now (g) conceived
in Sin, and by nature children (h)
of wrath, the servants of Sin, the subjects (i)
of death and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal and eternal,
unless the Lord Jesus (k)
set them free.
f Rom. 5.12-19. 1 Cor. 15.21,22.45.49.
4. From this original corruption, whereby
we are (l) utterly indisposed, disabled,
and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do (m)
proceed all actual transgressions.
l Rom. 8.7. Col. 1.21.
5. The corruption of nature, during this
Life, doth (n) remain in those that
are regenerated: and although it be through Christ pardoned, and
mortified, yet both it self, and the first motions thereof, are truely
and properly (o) Sin.
n Rom. 7.18.23. Eccles. 7.20. 1 Joh.
1.8.
