Chapter VI. Of the fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof.

CHAP. VI.

Of the fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment thereof.

1. Although God created Man upright, and perfect, and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it,Gen. 2.16,17.and threatned death upon the breach thereof; yet he did not long abide in this honour;¹⁰⁵Satan using the subtilty of the serpent to seduce Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion, did wilfully transgress the Law of their Creation, and the command given unto them, in eating the forbidden fruit; which God was pleased according to his wise and holy Councel to permit, having purposed to order it, to his own glory.

2. Our first Parents by this Sin, fell from their ¹⁰⁶original righteousness and communion with God, and we in them, whereby death came upon all; ¹⁰⁷ all becoming dead in Sin, and wholly defiled, ¹⁰⁸in all the faculties, and parts, of soul, and body.

3. They being the ¹⁰⁹root, and by Gods appointment, standing in the room, and stead of all mankind; the guilt of the Sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation, being now ¹¹⁰conceived in Sin, and by nature children ¹¹¹of wrath, the servants of Sin, the subjects ¹¹²of death and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus ¹¹³set them free.

4. From this original corruption, whereby we are ¹¹⁴utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do ¹¹⁵proceed all actual transgressions.

5. The corruption of nature, during this Life, doth ¹¹⁶remain in those that are regenerated: and although it be through Christ pardoned, and mortified, yet both it self, and the first motions thereof, are truely and properly ¹¹⁷Sin.