Wesley Corpus

But he need not have been made sin at all, if we had not been made sinners by Adam. “And men suffer on account of Adam’s sin, and so they are made sinners.” Are they made sinners so only * That remains to be proved. “It seems then confirmed, beyond all doubt, that ‘by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, meaneth only, By Adam’s sin, the many, that is, all mankind, ‘were made subject to death.” He that will believe it (taking death in the common sense) may; but you have not confirmed it by one sound argument. 250 Tille DoCTRINE OF 11. You affirm, (4.) “The Apostle draws a comparison between Adam and Christ; between what Adam did, with the consequences of it, and what Christ did, with the consequences of that. And this comparison is the main thing he has in view.” (Page 36.) This is true. “The comparison begins at the twelfth verse: ‘Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,”--there he stops awhile, and brings an argument to prove, that death came on mankind through Adam’s trans gression.” (Pages 37, 38.) He does so; but not before he had finished his sentence, which literally runs thus: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, even so death passed upon all men, in that all had sinned.” The comparison, therefore, between Adam and Christ begins not at the twelfth but the fourteenth verse. Of this you seem sensible yourself, when you say, “Adam is the ‘pattern of Him that was to come.’ Here a new thought starts into the Apostle's mind.” (Page 39.) For it was not a new thought starting into his mind here, if it was the same which he began to express at the twelfth verse. You proceed: “The extent of the free gift in Christ answers to the extent of the consequences of Adam’s sin; nay, abounds far beyond them. This he incidentally handles, verses 15-17, and then resumes his main design, verses 18, 19, half of which he had executed in the twelfth verse.” Not one jot of it. That verse is a complete sentence, not half of one only.