Wesley Corpus

Call it by what name you please. But “punishment always connotes guilt.” (Page 21.) It always connotes sin and suffering; and here are both. Adam sinned; his posterity suffer; and that, in consequence of his sin. But “sufferings are benefits to us.” Doubtless; but this does not hinder their being punishments. The pain I suffer as a punishment for my own sins may be a benefit to me, but it is a punishment nevertheless. But “as they two only were guilty of the first sin, so no other but they two only could be conscious of it as their sin.” (Page 14.) No other could be conscious of it as their sin, in the same sense as Adam and Eve were; and yet others may “charge it upon themselves * in a different sense, so as to judge themselves “children of wrath” on that account. To sum up this point in Dr. Jennings's words: “If there be anything in this argument, that Adam’s posterity could not be justly punishable for his transgression, because it was his personal act and not theirs, it must prove universally, that it is unjust to punish the posterity of any man for his personal crimes. And yet most certain it is, that God has in other cases actually punished men’s sins on their posterity. Thus the posterity of Canaan, the son of Ham, is punished with slavery for his sin. (Gen. ix. 25, 27.) Noah pronounced the curse under a divine afflatus, and God confirmed it by his providence. So we do in fact suffer for Adam's sin, and that too by the sentence inflicted on our first parents. We suffer death in consequence of their transgression. Therefore we are, in some sense, guilty of their sin. I would ask, What is guilt, but an obligation to suffer punishment for sin? Now since we suffer the same penal evil which God threatened to, and inflicted on, Adam for his sin; and since it is allowed, we suffer this for Adam’s sin, and that by the sentence of God, appointing all men to die, because Adam sinned; is not the consequence evident? Therefore we are all some way guilty of Adam’s sin.” (Jennings’s Vindication.) 6. “The consequences appointed by the judicial sentence of God are found in that pronounced on the serpent, or the woman, or the man.” (Page 15.) “The serpent is cursed, Gen. iii.