Wesley Corpus

He compares Adam with Christ, and shows how what we lost by the one is restored by the other with abundant advantage. He makes Adam to be a figure or type of Christ; considering them both as public persons, representing, the one, all his natural descendants; the other, all his spiritual seed; the one, Adam, all mankind, who are ‘all guilty before God;’ the other, Christ, all those ‘who obtain the righteousness of God, which is by faith to all them that believe.” “Concerning the consequences of Adam’s sin upon his posterity, we have here the following particulars:-- “(1.) That by one man sin entered into the world; that the whole world is some way concerned in Adam’s sin. And this indeed is evident, because,-- “(2.) Death, which is ‘the wages of sin, and the very punishment threatened to Adam’s first transgression, ‘en tered by sin, and passed upon all men, is actually inflicted on all mankind. Upon which it is asserted in the next words,-- “(3.) That all have sinned: ‘Even so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.’ All men then are deemed sinners in the eye of God, on account of that one sin, of which alone the Apostle is here speaking. And,-- “(4.) Not only after, but before, and ‘until the law, given by Moses, ‘sin was in the world;’ and men were deemed sinners, and accordingly punished with death, through many generations. Now, “sin is not imputed where there is no law; nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses; ” plainly showing, that all mankind, during that whole period, had sinned in Adam, and so died in virtue of the death threatened to him; and death could not then be inflicted on mankind for any actual sin, because it was inflicted on so many infants, who had neither eaten of the forbidden fruit, nor committed any actual sin whatever, and therefore had not sinned in any sense, “after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.’ Therefore, -- “(5.) It was ‘through the offence of one that many are dead. (Verse 15.) “By one offence death reigned by one.’ (Verse 17.) And seeing the sin of Adam is thus punished in all men, it follows,-- “(6.) That they were all involved in that sentence of con demnation which God passed upon him.