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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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578 Original Letters from the Baxter Manuscripts in Dr . Williams ' s Library .
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may beare , yet if y * word be more capable of an ill sense , it is not well done to exact rigorously a constant use of y word or to enuntiate absolutely in that word without explication , as you said of imputeing , p . 215 . And as the old ffathers used the words
merit and penitential justification , yet if y Papists or others will scrue up the sense of those words , they may deserve to be reproved as extremely
erroneous . I see not much difference betwixt you and mee but in point of proprietie ; indeed ^ ou use many scholasticall words w I have not time to examine , and w can pretend but
to some more than ordinary exactnesse or accuracy ; but for the use of Christians , if I was pastour of a parish I would tell my people what they are obnoxious unto by Adames fall , and warne them against that cursed inclination w we have more
or lesse by nature ; and if I call it a curse and you call it a sinne , y one may be as effectual as the other to move them to gett into X and pray for the assistance of the spirit , to
watch , strive , &c . You beginne with original righteousnesse as others doe , but you speake mostly from reason rather than scripture .
The image of God in Gen . i . seems to be expounded of dominion , w man hath stille in great measure over y creatures , and in w respect X * is undoubtedly said to be y image of y invisible God , Coll . i . 15 , and w , I doubt not , was intended in the allegoricall sense of this scripture ,
referreing cheifly to y exaltation of X . So 1 Cor . ii . 7 % Y woman is y glory Cor image ) of y , because shee is next to him in y government of y family ; y * in Coll . iii . 10 , is y new evangelical creature opposed to mere nature , and especially as inclineable to evill and depraved by y acts and habits of sinne ^ As for Eccles . vii .
ult . God made man upright , I say y although y book and Job are canonicall , yet they are not so proper to pick for the resolution of a question in divmitie . They are poeticall and in many places obscure , as this
ver . 28 . A A man amon&st a thousandver . 28 , man amongst a thousand , &c .: by the context y words would $ eem to be directed against the actual jiiarlotry of women rather than to inferre orginail sinne , against \ v the
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words might be rather construed , q , d . yt men were not borne so bad > but they made themselves so ; a ^ \ : \ Have heard a divine much insist 1 lp < tt ^ ye modesty of nature till abused : by man is not necessarily meant Adam , as appeareth by y opposition , they ; they have found out . Besides , ' tis sufficient ffor Adam if he was made
more inclineable to good than evill , though without such perfection of habits as a man may goe into his study and imagine , not as y truth is or may appeare in scripture , but as he is able to draw an idea of perfection . Some men are apt to think y * if God
makes a thing he must needs make it as' good as he can , yet wee commonly see yt good artificers doe not always make things as good as they can , but as is fit and reasoneable , and God thought good to lett that be first w was natural .
To be sure , God did not make man a sinner , but him and every thing else good in its kind and for y uses it was made , otherwise wee are not able to say in what degree of good nature or mere natural honesty man might have been made , or that he needs must be made an eternal being and under law in order td eternal
life ; nor see I much scripture w speaks of y original corruption of man ' s nature in general upon Adam ' s account or of a contagious propagation . That in Gen . vii . 11 is
certainly meant of actual sinnes ; y imaginations and thoughts of men ' s hearts are actual sinnes , and many Scriptures w you have quoted as of infants are most reasonably to be expounded of y adult ; but I gather it rather from reason and the
universal experience of y vvickednesse of the world ; and then seeing the apostle , Rom v . 12 , doth plainly attaint all men with a reputative guilt as from Adam , and considering the curse befallen men from that sinne and
some particular scripture , as y , Behold I was shapen in iniquity , &c-, I thinkevthis vitious inclination is most fairly reducible to Adam ' s sinne as a punishment of y 9 and included in y' clause , Rom . xii . 5 , For as much as
all sinned ; but I find neither scripture nor reason requiring me to believe this propagated contagion , w hath such evill effects , in y circumstances in w men are , to be a sinne in a
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1824, page 578, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2529/page/2/
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