Wesley Corpus

But how are many dead, or made sinners, through the disobedience of Adam? His first sin so far affects all his descendants as to constitute them guilty, or liable to all that death which was contained in the original threatening.” (Page 72.) “But Dr. Taylor avers, ‘To be made sinners, means only to be subjected to temporal death.’ “I answer, (1.) Whatever it means, the disobedience of Adam had a proper, causal influence upon it; just as the obedience of Christ has upon our being made righteous. “(2.) What ‘to be made sinners’ means, must be learned from the opposite to it, in the latter part of the verse. Now, allowing the Apostle to be his own interpreter, “being made righteous’ is the same with “justification.” (Verse 16.) Of this he had treated largely before. And through the whole of his discourse, ‘to be justified is to be acquitted from guilt, and accepted of God’ as righteous. Consequently, ‘to be made sinners’ is to be ‘condemned of God,” or to be ‘children of wrath, and that on account of Adam’s sin.” (Page 73.) “By man came death: In Adam all die.” (1 Cor. xv.21, 22.) Let the reader please to bear in mind the whole of the two verses and the context. By ‘man,’ in the twenty-first verse, is meant Adam. The “all” spoken of are all his natural descendants. These ‘all die;’ that is, as his descendants, are liable to death, yea, to death everlasting. That this is the meaning appears hence: That the ‘being made alive,” to which this dying stands opposed, is not a mere recovery of life, but a blessed resurrection to a glorious immortality. Hence I observe, (1.) Man was originally immortal as well as righteous. In his primitive state he was not liable to death. (2.) Death is constantly ascribed to sin, as the sole and proper cause of it. As it was threatened only for sin, so the sentence was not pronounced till after man had sinned. (3.) All men are mortal from their birth. As soon as they begin to live they are liable to death, the punishment de nounced against sin, and sin only. (4.) This is the genuine effect of the first sin of our first father.