the guilt of sin, Rom. iii. 19. which hath dominion over him, chap. vi. 14. Q. 5. Why is it called an [estate of misery]? A. Because, according to the penalty of the law, death and the curse involve him into all manner of misery, Rom. v. 12. Q. 6. Why is the estate of sin put before the estate of misery? A. Because there could be no misery, if there were no sin; sin being the procuring cause of all misery, Rom. vi. 23. Q. 7. How came man into this estate of sin and misery? A. By the abuse of his free will; hence mankind sinners, are called self-destroyers, Hos. xiii. 9. "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself." Q. 8. How doth the Spirit of God, in scripture, express man's estate of sin and misery, into which he is fallen? A. By a state of darkness, Eph. v. 8; a state of distance, Eph. ii. 13; a state of condemnation and wrath, John iii. 18. 36; a state of bondage, or captivity, Isa. xlix. 24, 25; and a state of death, both spiritual and legal, Eph. ii. 1. A Q. 9. Is man in any capacity to help himself out of this sinful and miserable estate? A. No more than a new-born infant, cast out in the open field, which, of all creatures, is the most helpless, Ezek. xvi. 4, 5. Q. 10. Hath he a desire and. will to be helped out of a state of sin and misery, when help is offered? A. No: his nature is become enmity against God, and the way of salvation proposed in the gospel, Rom. viii. 7. Psal. lxxxi. 11. and therefore rejects the only help of God's appointment, John v. 40. Q. 11. What may we learn from this? A. That the whole world being guilty before God, every mouth had been for ever stopped, though he had left all mankind to perish eternally with the fallen angels, with whom they said, a Confederacy, Rom. iii. 19; and therefore to admire the infinite love of God, in sending his only begotten Son, to save us from sin, as the only · way of being saved from misery, Heb. ii. 14. 16. QUEST. 18. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell? ANSW. The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it. Q. 1. What do you understand by [original sin]? A. The sin we have from our original; that is, when the soul is united to the body, or, the human nature completed, Psal. li. 5. Q. 2. How is original sin usually distinguished? A. Into original sin imputed, and original sin inherent. Q. 3. What is original sin imputed? A. [The guilt of Adam's first sin]. Q. 4. What is original sin inherent? A. [The want of original righteousness, and the corruption of the whole nature]. Q. 5. What do you understand by the [guilt] of sin? A. An obligation to punishment on account of sin, Rom. vi. 23. A. Because the covenant being broken by his first sin, his fœderal headship thereby ceased: for being then legally dead, and his posterity in him and with him, he stood afterwards but as a single person for himself, and no longer in the capacity of their public represen tative in that covenant of life, which, by that first sin, brought him and them under the sentence of death, Rom. v. 12, 13. Q. 9. When Adam ceased to be the fœderal head, by breaking the covenant of works, did that covenant cease likewise? A. No: that covenant, though broken, stands binding, so as the obligation to pay the debt of obedience to the precept, and satisfaction now to the penalty thereof, remains upon every one of his posterity, while in a natural state, under the law as a covenant of works, Gal. iii. 10. Q. 10. How doth it appear from scripture, that all Adam's posterity had his first sin imputed unto them? A. From their being said to be "made sinners by one man's disobedience," Rom. v. 19; and to have the judgment, or sentence, by one to condemnation, ver. 16; and surely there can be no condemnation, passed by a righteous judge, where there is no crime, Rom. iv. 15. Q. 11. Is it not said, Ezek. xviii. 20. "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father?" A. The prophet is there speaking of particular private parents, not of Adam as a fœderal head; he is speaking of adult children, who were preserved from some grosser violations of the law, which their parents were guilty of, and who did not imitate them therein: not of the posterity of Adam in general, as exempting them from his first sin, which the scriptures quoted in answer to the former question, plainly prove them chargeable with. Q. 12. What is meant by the [want of original righteousness]? A. The want of that rectitude and purity of nature, which Adam had in his first creation; consisting in a perfect conformity of all the powers and faculties of his soul, to the holy nature of God, and to the law which was written on his heart, Eccl. vii. 29. Q. 13. How doth it appear that all mankind are now destitute of this original righteousness? A. From the express testimony of God, that among all Adam's race, there is none righteous, no not one: and that by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, Rom. iii. 10, 11, 12. 20. Q. 14. What follows upon this want of original righteousness? A. That all mankind are naked before God; and that their fig-leaf coverings will stand them in no stead before his omniscient eye, nor answer the demands of his holy law, Rev. iii. 17. Isa. lxiv. 6. Q. 15. Doth the law of God demand original righteousness from mankind sinners, though they now want it? A. Yes: their want of it can never derogate from the right of the law to demand it, because God endowed man with this part of his image, at his creation; and his want of it, was owing to his own voluntary apostasy from God. Q. 17. Is there no help for a sinner in this deplorable state? A. None in heaven or in earth, but in Christ, the last Adam, the Lord our righteousness, Jer. xxxiii. 6. on whom our help is completely laid, Psalm lxxxix. 19. Q. 18. Doth original sin consist in a mere privation, or want of righteousness? A. It consists also in the corruption of the whole nature, Tit. i. 15. Rom. iii. 10-19. Q. 19. What is meant by [the corruption of the whole nature]? A. The universal depravation both of soul and body, in all the faculties of the one, and members of the other, Isa. i. 5, 6. Q. 20. How doth this corruption of the whole nature appear? A. In an utter impotency, and bitter enmity to what is spiritually good, Rom. viii. 7. and, in the strongest inclination and bias to what is evil, and to that only and continually, Gen. vi. 5. Q. 21. How may we be certain that our [whole nature] is corrupted? A. From the word of God, and from experience and obser vation. Q. 22. How doth the word of God assure us of the universal corruption of our nature? A. It tells us, that the image after which man was at first made, and the image after which he is now begotten, are quite opposite the one to the Q. 16. Under what penalty other; Adam was at first made doth the law demand this ori-" in the likeness of God," but ginal righteousness? A. Under the penalty of death and the curse, Rom. vi. 23. Gal. iii. 10. having fallen, he "begat a son in his own likeness, after his own image," Gen. v. 1. 3. The scripture assures us, that none "can bring a clean thing out of he that is born of a woman, an unclean," Job xiv. 4; that that he should be righteous?" we are shapen in iniquity, and that in sin did our mothers conceive us, Psal. li. 5; that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," John iii. 6.; and that we are by "nature children of wrath," Eph. ii. 3. Q. 23. How may we know the corruption of our nature by the experience and observation of things without us? A. The flood of miseries which overflows the world; the manifold gross outbreakings of sin therein; and the necessity of human laws, fenced with peInalties, are clear outward evidences of the corruption of our Q. 26. How can this corruption be propagated to the soul, seeing it is created immediately by God, and not generated with the body? A. As the creating and infusing of the soul are precisely at one and the same time, so the very moment the soul is united unto the body, we become children of fallen Adam, not only as our natural, but as our faderal head, Rom. v. 19. Q. 27. What is the consequence of becoming the chil dren of fallen Adam, as our fœderal head? A. The consequence is, that, nature. the moment we are so, his first Q. 24. What inward evi-sin is imputed to us, and theredences may every one of us by we become legally and spiexperience within ourselves, ritually dead, under the curse; of the corruption of our na- not only wanting original rightures? teousness; but having our whole of every one, is a part of that person, which is cursed in Adam; does God in the creating thereof, infuse any sin or impurity therein? A. Each of us may sadly ex-nature corrupted and deprav perience a natural dispositioned, 1 Cor. xv. 22. "In Adam all to hearken to the instruction die." that causeth us to err, Prov. Q. 28. Since then, the soul xix. 27; a caring for the concerns of the body more than those of the soul, Mat. xvi. 26; a discontentment with some one thing or other in our lot in a present world, 2 Kings vi. 33; A. By no means; but only, as an aversion from being debtors a righteous judge, in creating to free grace, and an inclination the soul, he denies or withholds to rest upon something in our- that original righteousness selves as the ground of our hope, which it once had in Adam; Rom. x. 3; every one of which and this he does as a just punmay be an evidence to our-ishment of Adam's first sin. selves, that our nature is wholly corrupted. Q. 25. How is the corruption of nature propagated since the fall? A. By natural generation, Job xv. 14. "What is man that he should be clean? and Q. 29. What follows upon God's withholding original righteousness from the soul, in its creation? A. The soul being united to the body, in the moment of its creation, the universal corruption of the whole man, follows good; and inclination to all evil, Rom. viii. 7. Q. 35. How are the affections corrupted? A. By being displaced and disordered, set upon trifling vanities and sinful pleasures, instead of God the supreme good, Psalm v. 2. 6. Isa. lv. 2. Q. 36. How is the conscience corrupted? A. By not discharging its of fice faithfully according to the law, in accusing or excusing, but many times calling "evil good, and good evil," &c. Isa. v. 20. Q. 37. How is the memory corrupted? A. By no means: the saints A. It is like the riddle, or are holy but in part, and that sieve, that lets through the pure by grace, not by nature: where-grain and keeps the refuse; it fore, as after the purest grain is sown, we reap corn with the chaff; so the holiest parents beget unholy children, and cannot communicate their grace to them, as they do their nature, Gen. v. 3. Q. 32. Hath this poison of corruption run through the whole man? A. Yes: "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint; from the sole of the foot to the head, there is no soundness in it," &c. Isa. i. 5, 6. Q. 33. Wherewith is the understanding corrupted? A. With darkness and blindness, so that we cannot know and receive the things of the Spirit of God, 1 Cor. ii. 14. Q. 34. Wherewith is the will corrupted? A. With enmity and rebellion against God; with opposition to his law and gospel; with aversion from the chiefest retains what is vain and unprofitable, and forgets what is spiritual and truly advantageous, Psal. cvi. 13. 21. Q. 38. How is the body corrupted? A. All the members of it are become instruments, or weapons of "unrighteousness unto sin," Rom. vi. 13. Q. 39. Is original sin of its own nature damning? because it is a state of sin and A. Beyond all doubt it is: spiritual uncleanness we are shall in no wise enter into the born in, Psal. li. 5. And "there that defileth;" Rev. xxi. 27. heavenly Jerusalem, any thing The blood of Christ is necessary to cleanse from it, as well as from actual sin; for Christ is "the Lamb of God which taketh away, the sin of the world," both original and actual, John i. 29. Q. 40. How may we know the being of original sin, ante |