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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
0 n Death , as the punishment of Adam's Sin * % ^ t %
Untitled Article
hut shall such a notion be maintained in direct opposition to the positive declaration and solemn * ath of Jehovah ? The Mosaic account of the fall contains no intimation that all the descendants of the first man would be punished with death on account of iis transgression : it does not necessarily imply that even Adam became mortal and liable to death inconsequence of his sihning ; only that his mortality was then fully made known ; and the certainty of his dying declared . This is all
that the account necessarily imports ; it contains not one word about either the physical or moral condition of his posterity , much less that capital piinishnient was then pronounced on them all ; nly it must be inferred that they would be similar in nature to
their parents , The earthly particles of which man was composed , must , from the first , have been capable of separation , and his frame of consequent dissolution ; the breath of life which animated
him of becoming extinct ; nor could any thing but divine power , hy whatever means it might operate , have prevented the decay and dissolution of a being so constituted . Whether the divine
power would have so operated , ind by what means , had not man sinned , we are not informed . We have no intimation of any change taking plq . ce in man ' s physical nature when the sentence of death
was passed upon him ; but had he been before immortal , a great change must have taken plaice , tad it could 'hardly have been left unnoticed by the writer . The th reatening of death , in case he took of the forbidden fruit , implied that ke was then capable of
Untitled Article
dying . If it cannot be proved that human nature first became mortal after Adam had sinned , and I believe it cannot , it must be impossible to prove that the mortality and death of all his posterity is the punishment of his sin . If . it be admitted that human nature first became mortal after Adam transgressed , and that in consequence of his offence mortality and death ' are entailed on his posterity , it will not follow that death is entailed upon them either as a curse or punishment ; it may , even in that case be allotted to
them , through his instrumentality , as a blessing , as wise , benevolent , and necessary to be interposed between their present and future existence . There is a clear
distinction between mere suffering and punishment ; the former may , for wise purposes , be the lot of the innocent , without involving the least idea of culpability , but the latter belongs only to the guilty ;
and suffering rs punishment only when associated with guilt . To inflict death as a punishment on the innocent , for the crime of t * person whom they never knew ,
would be a gross violation of justice : such a violation of justice does the notion I am opposing impute to the holy aud righteous Lord God *
Human nature is what God hath made it : it is at present mortal : he hath seen it wisest and best that it should be so : nor ought we to be dissatisfied with our condition ^ nor to regard man *» kind as criminals condemned to
the punishment of death ; but to consider mortality as an Essential part of that Uirtiolesoitie discipline under ' Which our heavenly 'Ffetlie'jr hath placed as , to train up and
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1811, page 223, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2415/page/31/
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