1) Although God created man upright and perfect, and
gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept
it, and threatened death upon the breach
thereof,a yet he did not long abide in this
honour; Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve,
then by her seducing Adam, who, without any compulsion, did
willfully transgress the law of their creation, and the command
given unto them, in eating the forbidden
fruit,b which God was pleased, according to his
wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to
his own glory.
(a Genesis
2:16,17; b Genesis
3:12,13, 2
Corinthians 11:3)
2) Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their
original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them
whereby death came upon all:c all becoming dead
in sin,d and wholly defiled in all the
faculties and parts of soul and body.e
(c Romans
3:23; d Romans
5:12 etc; e Titus
1:15, Genesis
6:5, Jeremiah
17:9, Romans
3:10-19)
3) They being the root, and by God's 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,f being now conceived in
sin,g and by nature children of
wrath,h the servants of sin, the subjects of
death,i and all other miseries, spiritual,
temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them
free.j
(f Romans
5:12-19, 1
Corinthians 15:21,22,45,49;
g Psalms
51:5, Job
14:4; h Ephesians 2:3;
i Romans
6:20 Romans
5:12; j Hebrews
2:14,15, 1
Thessalonians 1:10)
4) From this original corruption, whereby we are
utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and
wholly inclined to all evil,k do proceed all
actual transgressions.l
(k Romans
8:7, Colossians 1:21;
l James
1:14,15, Matthew
15:19)
5) The corruption of nature, during this life, doth
remain in those that are regenerated;m and
although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both
itself, and the first motions thereof, are truly and properly
sin.n
(m Romans
7:18,23, Ecclesiastes 7:20, 1
John 1:8; n Romans 7:23-25, Galatians 5:17)