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| All, on Account of the Sin of Adam, Were Delivered into the Power of the Devil.
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Chapter
12.—All, on Account of the Sin of Adam, Were Delivered into the
Power of the Devil.
16. By the justice of God in some
sense, the human race was delivered into the power of the devil;
the sin of the first man passing over originally into all of both
sexes in their birth through conjugal union, and the debt of our
first parents binding their whole posterity. This delivering up is
first signified in Genesis, where, when it had been said to the
serpent, “Dust shalt thou eat,” it was said to the man, “Dust
thou art, and unto dust thou shall return.”814
In the words, “Unto dust shalt
thou return,” the death of the body is fore-announced, because he
would not have experienced that either, if he had continued to the
end upright as he was made; but in that it is said to him whilst
still living, “Dust thou art,” it is shown that the whole man
was changed for the worse. For “Dust thou art” is much the same
as, “My spirit shall not always remain in these men, for that
they also are flesh.”815
Therefore it was at that time
shown, that he was delivered to him, in that it had been said to
him, “Dust shall thou eat.” But the apostle declares this more
clearly, where he says: “And you who were dead in trespasses and
sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of
this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the
spirit that now worketh in the children of unfaithfulness; among
whom we also had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and
were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”816
The
“children of unfaithfulness” are the unbelievers; and who is
not this before he becomes a believer? And therefore all men are
originally under the prince of the power of the air, “who worketh
in the children of unfaithfulness.” And that which I have
expressed by “originally” is the same that the apostle
expresses when he speaks of themselves who “by nature” were as
others; viz. by nature as it has been depraved by sin, not
as it was created upright from the beginning. But the way in which
man was thus delivered into the power of the devil, ought not to be
so understood as if God did this, or commanded it to be done; but
that He only permitted it, yet that justly. For when He abandoned
the sinner, the author of the sin immediately entered. Yet God
did not certainly so abandon His own creature as not to show
Himself to him as God creating and quickening, and among penal
evils bestowing also many good things upon the evil. For He hath
not in anger shut up His tender mercies.817
Nor did He dismiss man from the law
of His own power, when He permitted him to be in the power of the
devil; since even the devil himself is not separated from the power
of the Omnipotent, as neither from His goodness. For whence do even
the evil angels subsist in whatever manner of life they have,
except through Him who quickens all things? If, therefore, the
commission of sins through the just anger of God subjected man to
the devil, doubtless the remission of sins through the merciful
reconciliation of God rescues man from the devil.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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