Читать книгу An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible - Catharine Esther Beecher - Страница 31

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“The great fact in the apostle's mind was, that God regards and treats all men, from the first moment of their existence, as out of fellowship with himself, as having forfeited his favor. Instead of entering into communion with them the moment they begin to exist (as he did with Adam), and forming them by his Spirit in his own moral image, he regards them as out of his favor, and withholds the influences of the Spirit. Why is this? Why does God thus deal with the human race? Here is a form of death which the violation of the law of Moses, the transgression of the law of nature, the existence of innate depravity, separately or combined, are insufficient to account for. Its infliction is antecedent [pg 026]to them all; and yet it is of all evils the essence and the sum. Men begin to exist out of communion with God. This is the fact which no sophistry can get out of the Bible or the history of the world. Paul tells us why it is. It is because we fell in Adam; it is for the offense of one man that all thus die. The covenant being formed with Adam, not only for himself but also for his posterity—in other words, Adam having being placed on trial, not for himself only, but also for his race, his act was, in virtue of this relation, regarded as our act.

“God withdrew from us as he did from him; in consequence of this withdrawal, we begin to exist in moral darkness, destitute of a disposition to delight in God, and prone to delight in ourselves and the world. The sin of Adam, therefore, ruined us; was the ground of the withdrawing of the divine favor from the whole race. But such evil was inflicted before the giving of the Mosaic law; it comes on men before the transgression of the law of nature, or even the existence of inherent depravity. It must, therefore, be for the offense of one man that judgment has come upon all men to condemnation.”