bring, from our mother’s womb, though it brings not forth immediately its own fruits, is yet sin
before God, and deserves his vengeance: and this is that sin which they call original. For as Adam
at his creation had received for us as well as for himself the gifts of God’s favor, so by falling away
from the Lord, he in himself corrupted, vitiated, depraved, and ruined our nature; for having been
divested of God’s likeness, he could not have generated seed but what was like himself. Hence we
have all sinned; for we are all imbued with natural corruption, and so are become sinful and wicked.
Frivolous then was the gloss, by which formerly the Pelagians endeavored to elude the words of
Paul, and held, that sin descended by imitation from Adam to the whole human race; for Christ
would in this case become only the exemplar and not the cause of righteousness. Besides, we may
easily conclude, that he speaks not here of actual sin; for if everyone for himself contracted guilt,
why did Paul form a comparison between Adam and Christ? It then follows that our innate and
hereditary depravity is what is here referred to.^164
13.For until the law, etc. This parenthesis anticipates an objection: for as there seems to be no
transgression without the law, it might have been doubted whether there were before the law any
sin: that there was after the law admitted of no doubt. The question only refers to the time preceding
the law. To this then he gives this answer, — that though God had not as yet denounced judgment
by a written law, yet mankind were under a curse, and that from the womb; and hence that they
who led a wicked and vicious life before the promulgation of the law, were by no means exempt
from the condemnation of sin; for there had always been some notion of a God, to whom honor
was due, and there had ever been some rule of righteousness. This view is so plain and so clear,
that of itself it disproves every opposite notion.
(^164) The particles , at the end of this verse, have been variously rendered, without much change in the meaning. “In quo —
in which,” i.e., sin, Augustine; “in quo — in whom,” i.e., man, Chrysostom and Beza; “per quem — by or through whom,”
Grotius; “propterea quod,” vel, “quia,” vel, “quoniam — because,” Luther, Pareus, and Raphelius; which is the same with that
of Calvin See Matthew 26:50; 2 Corinthians 5:4; Philippians 3:12
Wolfius quotes a singular passage from a Jewish Rabbi, Moses Tranensis, “In the sin which the first man sinned, the whole
world through him (or in him, ) sinned: for he was every man, or all mankind — .” The idea is exactly the same with
that of the Apostle.
“There are three things,” says Pareus, “which are to be considered in Adam’s sin, — the sinful act, the penalty of the law,
and the depravity of nature; or in other words, the transgression of the command, the punishment of death, and natural corruption,
which was the loss of God’s image, and in its stead came deformity and disorder. From none of these his posterity are free, but
all these have descended to them; there is a participation of the transgression, an imputation of guilt, and the propagation of
natural depravity. There is a participation of the sin; for all his posterity were seminally in his loins, so that all sinned in his sin,
as Levi paid tithes in the loins of Abraham; and as children are a part of their parents, so children are in a manner partakers of
their parents’ sin. There is also an imputation of guilt, for the first man so stood in favor, that when he sinned, not only he, but
also all his posterity fell with him, and became with him subject to eternal death. And lastly, there is the propagation or the
generation of a dreadful deformity of nature; for such as Adam became after the fall, such were the children he begat, being after
his own image, and not after the image of God. Genesis 5:1. All these things, as to the first sin, apply to the parent and also to
the children, with only this difference — that Adam sinning first transgressed, first contracted guilt, and first depraved his nature,
— and that all these things belong to his posterity by participation, imputation, and propagation.”
Both Stuart and Barnes stumble here; and though they denounce theorizing, and advocate adherence to the language of
Scripture, they do yet theorize and attempt to evade the plain and obvious meaning of this passage. But in trying to avoid one
difficulty, they make for themselves another still greater. The penalty, or the imputation of guilt, they admit; which is indeed
undeniable, as facts, as well as Scripture, most clearly prove: but the participation they deny, though words could hardly be
framed to express it more distinctly than the words of this verse; and thus, according to their view, a punishment is inflicted
without a previous implication in an offense; while the Scriptural account of the matter is, according to what Calvin states, that
“sin extends to all who suffer its punishment,” though he afterwards explains this in a way that is not altogether consistent. —
Ed.