Short Notices [pp. 759-784]

Shtort Notices.
tioned what he condemns, one or the other must be wrong. We
think that Dr. Baird has provoked this controversy against
great odds. It is not one man versus another, but it is Dr.
Baird versus the great body of his brethren.
Let us look for a moment at these several points-imputation,
original sin, and justification. A real causal relation between
the sin of Adam and the apostasy of the race, being admitted,
there are but three methods of explaining it. 1. That which
we hold to be the common doctrine of the church, Latin,
Lutheran, and Reformed, viz. that in virtue of the union between Adam and his posterity, his sin is the judicial ground of
their condemnation, and as the penalty threatened against sin
was death, that condemnation involved the loss of original
righteousness and the corruption of our whole nature, so that
all who are descended from Adam, by ordinary generation, are
born in a state of spiritual death. 2. The doctrine of mediate
imputation, viz. that as the sin of Adam involved a corruption
of his moral nature, that nature in its corrupted state is inherited by his posterity, and is the ground of their condemnation.
They are not condemned for Adam's sin, but for the inherent
depravity inherited from him. 3. The doctrine that in virtue
of the identity of nature between Adam and his race, his sin
was truly and properly their sin. Being the act of their nature,
it was their act, for which they are responsible on the same
ground that they are chargeable with any personal transgression. It was an act of voluntary self-apostasy from God on
their part as truly as on the part of Adam. Dr. Baird adopts
this last theory. This would be a harmless matter were it not
for the reasons assigned for it, and the consequences drawn from
it. If any man can attach any idea to the words that he sinned
by an act of self-determination thousands of years before he
existed, he may be allowed to say so. We cannot help agreeing with Dr. Thornwell in saying that this is substituting absurdity for obscurity. Still there is no sin in absurdity. But
the case is very different when we are told we must believe this
doctrine, because otherwise God would be unjust; or, when it is
asserted, in support of this theory, that the judgments of God
must be founded on the personal merits or demerits of those
whom they affect; that it is a denial of his moral nature, and
even atheistic, to say that he can pronounce the just unjust, or,
the unjust just; that the only legitimate ground of judgment
are character and works; and when still further it is asserted,
that community in a propagated nature involves all those to
whom that nature belongs in the criminality and pollution of
their progenitor. Then we say the whole gospel is destroyed,
1860.]
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