Obituary.

Cave and Sever, Printers, 18, St. Ann's-streel, Manchester.

ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL, AND THE DIVINE MEANS OF RESTORATION.

(A Discourse delivered by Dr. Tafel, of Tübingen, to the Receivers of the Doctrines of the New Church assembled from different parts of Germany, at their Quarterly Meeting at Stutgardt, on Easter Monday, April 1st, 1850.)*

BELOVED BRETHREN AND FRIENDS,

THE order which we have hitherto followed at these meetings, leads us now to consider the consequences of the Fall of Man. That portion of the Gospel which we have this day read, (Luke xxiv.) treats of the removal of these consequences by means of the sufferings and resurrection of the Lord, both which cohere together, and lead us to inquire what we have to do in order to have, individually, our sins removed, and to become partakers of the Lord's resurrection glory, and thus to be received as true members into His kingdom, which is His New Jerusalem.

Now, if we first inquire, in what these consequences of the fall did not consist, we shall at once come in contact with two extremes of opinion on this subject; first, with those who [according to the creeds of the Lutheran and reformed churches] believe that these consequences were so extremely great, and had so utterly destroyed the liberty of the human will, as to render man incapable of receiving the benefits of redemption,—and secondly, with those who imagine [as the Pelagians and Socinians] that these consequences were so unimportant, as even to deny their existence altogether, and who, by such belief, destroy the necessity of redemption.

* See in our Miscellaneous department an account of this meeting.-EDITOR. N. S. No. 126.-VOL. XI.

That humility which from the deepest ground of the heart acknowledges that we are nothing, and that the Lord is every thing, is certainly the true foundation of Christianity, and of all religion in the soul; and with a view to shew this, the Lord begins His Sermon on the Mount with these words," Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. v. 3.) It appears, indeed, plausible when Luther, and the Protestant creeds of the Old Church, found their entire doctrine on the position of man's natural corruption, and on the consequences of the fall, and consider these consequences to be as great as they can possibly be conceived. For how could these consequences, as to their extent, be considered greater, than to ascribe their origin to Adam, and to extend them to all his posterity? And how could, in each individual, greater corruption be imagined, than when not only the guilt and punishment due to Adam is transferred to his posterity, but when all the powers both of man's body and soul are so entirely destroyed by that corruption, as to render him utterly incapable of receiving any thing good and true from God? And also, that mankind are, in consequence, subject, and have become entire slaves to sin and to the devil? Yea, when it is also alleged, that as a further consequence of the fall, it is impossible even for the redeemed and the regenerate to keep the divine commandments. All this, however, is the doctrine of the Protestant creeds and catechisms, but which, by such teaching, bring the mind to a position the very contrary to that at which they desire to arrive; for, by thus desiring to carry the doctrine of original sin and its punishment to the utmost possible consequences, they destroy the doctrine itself altogether. For if we, by nature, have an irresistible inclination to evil, we are certainly excusable and guiltless in doing evil, and what evil we do is no longer a sin, and can no more be justly imputed to us than the act of plunder to the beast of prey, which only follows its instinctive and natural inclination; inasmuch as sin and guilt necessarily suppose the power of free determination, which the doctrines referred to above deny to man. According to these doctrines, however, when we speak of imputation, all our sins should be imputed to our original father, Adam. But this assertion would be entirely groundless, since according to Luther and the other reformers, it is God himself who excites and urges on to evil, and who is consequently the doer of it, and to whom all evil, as its Author, must be ascribed. But when, in addition, we consider that according to this doctrine, God, by his omnipotence, is the Doer of all things which happen, though they be contrary and opposite, we cannot even stop here, and say that God is the Doer of evil, inasmuch as such a God as these dogmas teach, is no

God at all, but an impersonal, unintelligent, blind power of nature; because a personal and an intelligent being employs his activities in one consistent direction, and by no means in directions which are opposite to one another. Hence it follows, that the old doctrine also, in this point leads, by an inherent necessity, straightway to naturalism and to the denial of God, and, consequently, to the utter destruction of Christianity and of all religion.

And yet this merely negative result, to which the doctrines of the Protestant Church, when carried out to their full consequences, irresistibly lead us, is not the greatest evil hence arising, inasmuch as it still leaves the idea of sin and guilt untouched, and allows the possibility, when more deeply considered, of returning to a knowledge of the personal God. But this doctrine of Luther leads to the destruction of those ideas of sin and guilt, and to the perversion of every thing holy in God into its opposite, inasmuch as it teaches that God, on account of the sin of the first parents, not only inflicted upon them, but also their innocent posterity, an irresistible inclination to evil, and also punished them with temporal death, and with eternal damnation. By this teaching it follows, that God's justice and holiness are changed into the extreme of injustice and cruelty, and He who should be the object of the highest adoration and love, is thereby converted into an object of terror and abhorrence, who, indeed, as Luther often confessed, is more dreadful and cruel than the devil himself. In vain did the Pelagians ask the following questions:-"How is it possible that God, who forgives a man his own sins, can impute the sins of another to him ?" "By whom was the crime of another ever imputed to the undefiled conscience of him who abhorred the crime?" 66 Where is the heartless

barbarian who, forgetting God and every principle of justice, could ever pronounce such a judgment?" Since the days of Augustin, the apostle Paul has, in respect to this doctrine, been appealed to, who refers the sin and the guilt of all to Adam, when he says,- As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men;" (Rom. v. 12.) in which passage Augustin allows the apostle to proceed thus-" in whom all have sinned;" against which rendering, however, already the bishop Julian objected, stating that it was a false translation, inasmuch as Paul says, not as Augustin would have it, in whom," &c., but because all have sinned," in which translation both Calvin and Luther agree with Julian, and Luther renders it in the same manner [dieweil sie alle gesündigt haben.]* But if we, with modern

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* In the margin of the common version we also read "in whom," which rendering is derived from Augustin, and it is put in the margin, (although it is rightly trans

interpreters, only find a collateral ground, and translate it thus,-“ as then also all have sinned," there is still in this passage, as in verse 19, neither an imputation of the sin of Adam, nor a participation of his punishment, nor the inheriting of an irresistible inclination to evil imputed to his posterity, but only this,—that in Adam was the beginning of sinful development, so that not the doctrine of original or hereditary sin, nor of hereditary guilt, but of hereditary evil,* is declared in this passage. And when Augustin, in proof of his doctrine, referred to Heb. vii. 9, 10, where we read that Levi, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham, "for he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him;" yet in this passage the question is not concerning a spiritual and personal, but only concerning a natural and judicial connection; hence it was that Julian, in his reply to this, states “ that Levi had then no will of his own." But Augustin referred also to the Word itself in confirmation of his position, stating that "God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation.” (Exod. xx. 5, xxxiv. 7; Deut. v. 9.) But here it must not be forgotten, that only the third and fourth generation are mentioned, and not all succeeding generations, and likewise that the words "upon them that hate me" immediately follow; from which we see, that it is only when the children remain in the evil nature they have inherited from their parents, that they expose themselves to this visitation. On the contrary, God himself entirely destroys this dogma of imputed sin or of imputed merit, when he so decidedly declares," The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither

lated in the text by "for that," which in old English is equivalent to because) in order to give countenance to the common notion that Adam's sin and guilt are transferred to his posterity. But all the most learned interpreters agree that eo does not signify in whom, but because, inasmuch as, or as the common version gives it, "for that." (See Trollope's "Analecta Theologica," &c., vol. ii., p. 342.) We will here observe, that the germs of many false doctrines, such as predestination, the transmission of Adam's sin and guilt to his posterity, the vicarious sacrifice, and justification by faith only, are found in the writings of Augustin; and as his works were much read by Luther and Calvin, and other reformers, we can easily see how it was that these germs were so fully developed in their systems of church doctrine.-EDITOR.

* We will here state, for the sake of strangers and novitiate readers, that hereditary evils are those tendencies and dispositions to evil which we inherit from our parents and ancestors; but sin arises when man, instead of resisting these evil tendencies, allows them to come into act. (See James i. 13-15.) Hence the indispensable necessity of regeneration. There is consequently no such thing as original (or hereditary) sin, because "sin (says the apostle) is the transgression of the law," and the new-born infant cannot have transgressed the law, and can consequently have no sing it has, however, hereditary tendencies to evil.-EDITOR.