1. Although God created man upright and
perfect, and gave him a righteous law, which had been unto life had he kept it, and
threatened death upon the breach thereof, yet he did not long abide in this honour; Satan
using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who, without
any compulsion, did willfully 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 counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.
( Genesis
2:16, 17; Genesis
3:12,13; 2
Corinthians 11:3 )
2. Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion
with God, and we in them whereby death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly
defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.
( Romans
3:23; Romans
5:12, etc; Titus
1:15; Genesis
6:5; Jeremiah
17:9; Romans
3:10-19 )
3. They being the root, and by God's 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 conceived in sin, and by
nature children of wrath, the servants of sin, the subjects of death, and all other
miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal, unless the Lord Jesus set them free.
( Romans
5:12-19; 1
Corinthians 15:21, 22, 45, 49; Psalms
51:5; Job
14:4; Ephesians
2:3; Romans
6:20 Romans
5:12; Hebrews
2:14, 15; 1
Thessalonians 1:10 )
4. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made
opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual
transgressions.
( Romans
8:7; Colossians
1:21; James
1:14, 15; Matthew
15:19 )
5. The corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated;
and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and the first
motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.
( Romans
7:18,23; Ecclesiastes
7:20; 1
John 1:8; Romans
7:23-25; Galatians
5:17 )
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