To shun much novel sentiment and nice,
I take the thing from its apparent rise;
It should seem then, as if imputed sin
Had made imputed Righteousness begin:
The one suppos'd, the other to be sure,
Would follow after - like disease and cure:
Let us examine then imputed guilt
And see on what foundation it is built.
As our first parent lost a heav'nly state,
All their descendants share their hapless fate,
Forewarn'd of God, when tempted not to eat,
Of the forbidden tree's pernicious meat;
Because incorporating mortal leaven
Would kill, of course, in them the life of heaven.
They disobey'd, both Adam and his wife,
And died of course to their true heav'nly life:
That life thus lost the day they disobey'd,
Could not by them be possibly convey'd;
No other life could children have from them,
But what could rise from the parental stem:
That love of God, alone, which we adore,
The life, so lost, could possibly restore:
Their children could not, being born to earth,
Be born to heaven, but by a heav'nly birth:
God found a way, (explain it how we will),
To save the human race from endless ill;
To save the very disobeying pair;
And mad their whole posterity his care.
Has this great Goodness any thing a-kin,
To God's imputing our first parents' sin
To their unborn posterity? - What sense
In such a strange, and scriptureless pretence?
For though men feel - (so far we are agreed)
The consequences of a sinful deed:
Yet where ascrib'd, by any sacred pen
But to the doers, is the deed of men?
Where to be found, in all the scripture through,
This imputation thus advanc'd anew?
