arbitrary, in the obnoxious sense of reasonless, but it is absolute. Yet not absolute, as a human tyrant, from-the seizure and abuse of unlawful power, but as having no equal or coëfficient, the source of all things, and the supreme,-competent to an administration resulting in the highest good of the universe, both in what it does and what it permits. The sovereignty of his will rests on his wisdom, equity and love. The executive in the divine government, so to speak, falls back on the legislative, and the legislative upon the judiciary or court of equity in the divine nature. God must be sovereign, or nothing. He must rule in the world, and in our theologies, or evil will, and death and hell. Hence his sovereignty is a primary belief, a regulative idea in all generally sound theology. Hence too all good men, rightly conceiving of it, have grasped it as a first truth, and loved it. "Absolute sovereignty," says Edwards, "is what I love to ascribe to God." And of this, Mills exclaimed in God's early disclosures to him of his love: "Glorious sovereignty! Glorious sovereignty."

IV. The last great work of President Edwards is the Treatise on Original Sin. And as this is the last, so, as an index of his theology, it is the most valuable. It embraces a wider range of thought, and contains his views on a greater variety of theological topics.

The Treatise is divided into four parts. Our limits will allow us only a brief summary of each.

The caption makes evident the design: "The great Christian doctrine of Original Sin defended." *

In Part First, he defines original sin as "the innate sinful depravity of heart," understood as including the imputation of Adam's first sin.

As the qualities and principles of virtue and vice lie in the disposition of the heart, which precedes choice, and gives it its quality, this Part is occupied with the evidence that the heart of man is naturally of a corrupt and evil disposition.

In the Second Part the argument is continued from man's

*Works, I, 303-583.

normal state, by considering whether he was created with original righteousness. In the outset, he meets the grand objection, both to original righteousness and original sin, that it is inconsistent with the nature of virtue that it should be con-created-that "a necessary holiness is no holiness," that Adam "must exercise thought and reflection before he could be righteous." To this he answers: "It is agreeable to common-sense, not only that the fruit or effect of a good choice is virtuous, but that the good choice itself from whence that effect proceeds, is so; yea, also, the antecedent good disposition, temper, or affection of mind from whence proceeds that good choice, is virtuous. This is according to the general notion, not that principles derive their goodness from actions, but that actions derive their goodness from the principles whence they proceed. Therefore, a virtuous temper of mind may be before a good act of choice, as a tree may be before the fruit, and the fountain before the stream which proceeds from it." Therefore there is no necessity that all virtuous dispositions and affections should be the effect of choice. And so no such supposed necessity can be a good objection against such a disposition being natural.

Having disposed of the objection, the negative form of the argument, the author proceeds to the positive. Pres. Edwards regards it as an axiom that "in a moral agent, subject to moral obligations, it is the same thing to be perfectly innocent as to be perfectly righteous." There can no more be a medium. between being right and being wrong in a moral sense than between straight and crooked. Here he is steadfast with Augustine and the church anthropology against the Pelagian characterless, middle ground-"Ut sine virtute, ita et vitio procreamur." Adam's sin, with relation to the forbidden fruit, was his first sin. Hence he must have been till then, from the first moment of his existence, perfectly righteous, and consequently must have been created righteous. The supposition of a disposition to right action being obtained by repeated right action is inconsistent with itself. For it supposes a course of right action before there is any disposition to right action. As all Adam's holy acts are traceable to his original righteous

ness, so the want of original righteousness in his posterity, and the corruption of their moral nature, are historically traceable to his transgression. Thus it is evident that God dealt with Adam as a public person, both as the natural and federal head of the race, and had respect to his posterity as representatively included in him.

The Third Part adduces the evidence of original sin from the work of redemption. All whom Christ came to redeem are sinners—the evil in all is sin and its deserved punishment. If there are any who at any period of their being have no sin, they at that period need no Saviour, and are not capable of salvation. If infants are born sinless, and die as they are born, they are incapable of pardon, for they are not guilty, and need no atonement. They are equally incapable of regeneration, for they have no sinful nature to be changed, no wrong volitions to be corrected, and no moral pollution to be washed away. But Christ's work of redemption does include the provision of salvation for infants. Therefore they are de facto among the "lost," for the grace which provides a deliverer from any state supposes the subject to be in that state prior to his deliverance. This cuts off the evasion that infants are saved from a future sin, for the sin that was never present, and never will be, never could be future. It could exist only in imagination; and therefore salvation from it could be only an imaginary, hypothetical salvation. But the salvation of infants is a reality. There is a wrong in the status of will, the core of their infant being, from their Adamic origin, which is both rectified and remitted a something polluted, which is made pure. Hence what the Scripture teaches of the application of Christ's redemption, and the change of state and nature necessary to true and final happiness, affords clear and abundant evidence to the truth of the doctrine of original sin.

Part Fourth answers objections.

1. The first is based on the supposed integrity of the will, and its freedom from all natural bias, inclination, or disposition as motives to evil. If we come into the world infected with sinful and depraved dispositions, sin must be natural; and if natural, then necessary; and if necessary, no sin.

The objection is founded on a false idea of the freedom of the will. No such freedom from natural inclination and the power of motive is either necessary to sinful action, or, in man's fallen state, possible. Sinful choice does not make a sinful disposition or tendency; but a tendency to sin precedes a sinful choice.

2. The doctrine of original sin makes God the author of sin, or of a sinful corruption of nature. The objection supposes what the doctrine neither implies nor allows-that "the nature must be corrupted by some positive influence," like a taint or infection altering the natural constitution and faculties of the soul. When man sinned, the superior spiritual principles, in which consisted God's image and man's original righteousness, left his heart, and the communion with God, on which these depended, entirely ceased. Man was thus left in a state of corruption and ruin, without God's putting any evil into his heart, or implanting any bad principle. God's withdrawing, as it was necessary He should, from rebel man, and the natural principles of self-love, appetite, and passion being left to themselves, is sufficient to account for Adam's becoming entirely corrupt. And as the nature was corrupted in the first man, the members received it from the head. That the posterity of Adam should be born with a depraved nature is as much by the established course of nature as Adam's continuing unholy after he had become so. For Adam's posterity are from him as the natural head, and, as it were, in him, and belonging to him, according to the established course of nature, as the branches of a tree are of the tree, in the tree, and belonging to the tree. Thus, the objection has no force. If, by a course of nature, men continue wicked after they have made themselves so, they cannot therefore make Him who is the cause of their continuance in being, and of the course of nature, the cause of their continuance in wickedness.

3. Third objection. It is unreasonable and unjust to impute Adam's sin to his posterity, inasmuch as they are not one person.

Answer: Though personally distinct, Adam and his posterity are one identical human family or nature. But unless this

unity of race be unreasonable and unjust, it was not so for God to regard it in this light, and allow Adam a posterity like himself. But this is the natural basis of the imputation of Adam's sin. "The imputation of Adam's first sin," says our author, "is nothing else than this, that his posterity are viewed as in the same place with their father, and are like him. But seeing, agreeable to what we have already proved, God might, according to his own righteous judgment, which was founded on his most righteous law, give Adam a posterity that were like himself-and indeed it could not be otherwise according to the very laws of nature- therefore he might also, in righteous judgment, impute Adam's sin to them, inasmuch as to give Adam a posterity like himself, and to impute his sin to them, is one and the same thing. And therefore, if the former be not contrary to the divine perfections, so neither is the latter."

"The derived evil disposition in Adam's posterity, amounting to a full consent to his sin, is not properly a consequence of the imputation of that sin, for it is antecedent to it in them, as it was in him. The first depravity of heart, and the imputation of Adam's sin, are both the consequence of the union which God has established between Adam and his posterity-a union depending on the divine will, which will depends on the divine wisdom. The evil disposition in them, as in him, is first, and the charge of guilt after and consequent. Therefore the sin of the apostacy is not theirs merely because God imputes it to them, but it is truly and properly theirs by hereditary anticipation in its extended pollution; and on that ground God imputes it to them."

These are Edwards' most definite statements respecting the imputation of Adam's sin. They do not involve the idea of a unity of him and his posterity in the sense of one will, being, or agent. They did not actually commit his first sin, or any of his sins. They did not act in him volitionally, but representatively, as Levi paid tithes in Abraham; yet there was a constituted oneness between the head and its members. They were "one blood," one physical, intellectual, and moral human race, by creative constitution, according to which the qualities and attributes of the fallen head were derived to, and repeated