-- CHAPTER III: By what principles in a converted man's heart he comes to be convicted of the guilt
confirmed from other scriptures, so answerably thereunto I shall divide this practical discourse about this sin into two parts.
First, The first discussing what humiliation or repentance is due from us for our guiltiness of the act of Adam's sin imputed.
Secondly, The second, what humiliation or acts of repentance we are obliged unto for that inbred sinful corruption which is derived there from to us, and dwelleth in us.
CHAPTER III:
By what principles in a converted man's heart he comes to be convicted of the guilt of Adam's fact A discussion premised, By what principles in a converted man's heart he comes to be convicted of the guilt of Adam's fact, and how far the conscience may be and is made sensible of it in true converts
As for the act of Adam's sin made our own by imputation: ere I come to set out the particular acts of humiliation or repentance about the guilt of this, first, it is necessary for me to clear and remove those grounds of objection specified in the first chapter, whereupon the schoolmen and others (who do elevate and diminish repentance for this guilt) do chiefly build, which I there mentioned to be chiefly these two.
1. That repentance properly is only actus proprii, of and for an act of sin done by a man's own self.
Pænitet et facto torqueor ipse meo.
Whereas this sin was perpetrated by Adam, and not by ourselves personally.
2. The second is, that there is not, nor can be, any sting or regret in the conscience of any man for this sin, no morsus conscientiæ, as for a man's own actual sin there is.
The removal of these, as also the clearing the truth hereabout, is best performed by a discussion, By what principles in a convert's heart his soul takes in and comes to be convicted of this guilt; and it is necessarily introductory unto those acts of humiliation which are to follow such a conviction, that we treat this point first, how and by what man is convicted thereof.
And the discussion hereof is not now by us to be managed by handling and proving the doctrinal truth of the imputation of this sin to us (this my discourse supposeth that here, as they also do, though something I have spoken to it in the last third head of exposition), but I being upon the clearing the practical part, &c., my business is to find out the practic principles in a convert's heart by which the Holy
Ghost (working upon a man's soul) makes him apprehensive and sensible of this guilt, and in what sense, or how far, even conscience is or may be struck with it.
And first, I here grant that there is no sting or morsus of conscience for the act of Adam's sin imputed; that is, the soul can never be tormented with this thought, I have done this act myself. This is granted; and the apostle affirms it, when setly speaking of our guilt of this sin, and that infants who die sinned in him, yet 'not after the similitude of Adam's transgression,' Rom. 5:14, so as there is not neither a worm begotten in conscience after the similitude of Adam's torture about it, whose conscience had this to say to him, which ours do not, This I myself have done, and have destroyed all others by it; all which I speak as of the guilt of the act of Adam's sin.
Yet, secondly, the soul is capable of a conviction of judgment that that sin of his is our sin as truly as any other; that it is proprium peccatum, though not propriæ operationis; it is our own proper sin, though not of our own proper acting and operation, and of this the soul is capable to be convinced. And that which is proper for me to beat out in this practical handling of it, is what manner of conviction this is, and how, or by what principle in man, it is effected. And my return is, that partly by faith in the word, and partly from the equity and justice of its being reckoned unto us, by virtue of the law of nature.
1. By faith on the word of God, which hath revealed it, and affirms it; which faith and word may and do bring it home even to our consciences; I say to our consciences; for if faith brings home and applies Christ's blood to our consciences, and purifies our conscience from the guilt of all sins, if the blood shed by another (Christ) purifieth and dischargeth the conscience from the sins perpetrated by a man's self, insomuch as that conscience receives a quietus est from another's fact sprinkled upon it, as we have it express, Heb.
9:14; then why should not conscience also take upon it the sin of another, when the word of God so plainly chargeth us, and the just and righteous God pronounceth and says that every man is guilty of it, and lays it at our doors, as well as any other sin never so much our own? And thereupon, why should not conscience own it as well as any other sin, and admit this word of condemnation from the mouth of God, as well as it joyfully receives and takes into itself the word of justification: as Rom. 10:6, 8, 'But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down from above.—But what saith it?
The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach.' It is the same God our lawgiver, who 'hath power to save and to condemn' (as the apostle speaks), whose word it is in both, and both spoken from him unto that principle in our consciences which is the seat or receptacle of all the guilt of sin, as it is of the pardon thereof. And if conscience be that faculty which is absolved from all sin that is any way our own, then
also it is that faculty that takes in its discharge from this; for the Scripture mentions that faculty, at least principally, to be the receiver of acquittances from the guilt of all sorts of sins for the whole man.
If, therefore, conscience be capable to apprehend an absolution from this sin when that it is pardoned, then surely it is and was first capacitated to take in conviction of a man's being guilty thereof, yea, and of trouble for it; only as the word of God chargeth it, so conscience receives it; and though the word of God chargeth it not as a sin of a man's own committing, and therefore answerably conscience hath not this sting, to say, I myself committed it, yet the word applying it as a man's own sin, conscience may and ought so to apprehend it, and be possessed of its guilt accordingly; for conscience is that principle in man which answers to the holy law of God in respect of sin chargeable upon us; and what the law says it says to conscience, which is its subject, and 'under the law.'
2. Especially when the sentence of the word is seconded and confirmed by the equity and justice of the law of nature; whereby I mean, not that law which the Jews would have accused God of, that every child should bear the sin of his father, which, by two prophets,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, God doth renounce; but that which the prophet Isaiah had before in a special manner declared of our first father: Isa. 43:27, 'Thy first father hath sinned, and thy teachers have transgressed against me.' He being created the head and source of the nature of all mankind, and by the law of nature, or the law of his and our creation, and that made and enacted before he had sinned; and by which law it was that he had by creation the image of God's holiness to convey to us; if he had stood till he had put forth our nature by propagation out from him, and set it running in its course, he, by the equity of the same law (which indeed was the common law, as I may term it, to beasts and herbs, to bring forth in their kind,
Gen. 1:11, 24), must beget in his own image of sin, if he fell and did sin; and therefore he was naturally and necessarily constituted the representative of them all, in respect of the first act of sin he should perpetrate; and the guilt thereof must naturally, in the sense given, be devolved to them, or else that part of the law of nature and
creation, viz., to convey his own sinful image as sinful, had not had the same fulness of equity in its fulfilling, as that other part of conveying the image of God as an holy image should by the law of creation have attained. For it is evident, that nothing but the guilt of an act of sin could cause that image of sin to be sin; and as not in Adam himself had that privation of holiness been a sin to him, had it not been he had been guilty of an act of sin first that caused that privation, so neither in us had that inherent privation of holiness become a sin, had we not first been made sinners in the imputation of that first sinful act of his. But of these things I have treated more largely before.
As there are two things concur in a godly man, unto our knowledge and conviction, that this world was made by God: first, that we know this by faith, as Heb. 11:2; then, secondly, by the light of reason, viewing the workmanship of God therein, as in which the attributes of his Godhead are clearly seen, &c., Rom. 1:21, which doth confirm a godly man's faith therein, and may alone serve as a conviction, even to a heathen that hath no knowledge of the word, which is the apostle's scope there; so is it here, only with this difference, that the light of mere nature perhaps would never have attained to the knowledge of the imputation of our first father's act of sinning, if the word had not first revealed it, according to that of Solomon: Eccles.
7:29, 'This only have I found' (namely, in the word of God by Moses) 'that God made man upright, but they,' &c.; yet so as being once revealed by the word, there may be discerned an equity in it, according to the very primitive law of our creation, recorded in that Gen. 1. And by this means may conscience itself be possessed of it, as of that which is a man's own sin, and accordingly lay it to heart, though not with this sting, that I in my own person did it, it can never rise to a facto torqueor ipse meo. Yet take conscience in this large sense, that it is a knowledge together with God, so as to know that God knows and judgeth we are guilty so and so; and thus may our consciences, through the conviction of those means mentioned, be made conscious, or to know with God this our guilt, and answerably lay it to heart. I still urge, if Christ's blood shed for us,
and not by us, may speak (in our consciences as well as before God) better things, &c., as the apostle affirms, Heb. 12:24, then why may not Adam's sin, committed by him, and not by us, when brought hence and charged upon our souls by God, cry and speak bitter things in our consciences, according as the guilt thereof deserveth, as well as of any other sin, though still that voice, I myself did it, can never be heard in it? For consider how that the parallel in that place is made between the sin of Cain, which was acted by himself; and on the other hand, of what Christ did for us, and on our behalf: both which are in this common, that the one cries, and in the conscience too, as well as the other. Both speak, only the things they cry are opposite. Abel's blood cried terror and vengeance in Cain's conscience, and Christ's blood speaks peace, but both in conscience; and therefore the echo of it is termed the answer or plea of a conscience made good by Christ's death and resurrection: 1 Peter
3:21, 'The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save as (not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.' And it is observable, that in that same chapter it may be found, that a good conscience is termed both that kind of testimony in conscience, which ariseth from the consciousness of a man's own well-doing;—so in ver. 16, 'Having a good conscience; that whereas they speak evil of you, as of evil doers,' &c.;—and then again, in ver. 21, of a conscience purified and pacified by Christ's death and resurrection (compare
Rom. 4:25), is termed a good conscience also, as that which hath within itself, strengthened by Christ's resurrection, to appear before, and plead before God for its justification. And acts of conscience, and voices in conscience, these both are, yea, and towards God.
I have insisted the more upon this argument, both because it assoils the greatest difficulty and most specious objection that the schoolmen and others go upon, why it is not, nor can be (say they) matter of our repentance for it, because it pertains not, as they say, unto the conscience, as also because this hitherto said lays a foundation for our demonstrating,—