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| It is Probable that Children are Involved in the Guilt Not Only of the First Pair, But of Their Own Immediate Parents. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter 46.—It is Probable
that Children are Involved in the Guilt Not Only of the First Pair,
But of Their Own Immediate Parents.
And it is said, with much
appearance of probability, that infants are involved in the guilt
of the sins not only of the first pair, but of their own immediate
parents. For that divine judgment, “I shall visit the iniquities
of the fathers upon the children,”1167 certainly applies to them before
they come under the new covenant by regeneration. And it was this
new covenant that was prophesied of, when it was said by Ezekiel,
that the sons should not bear the iniquity of the fathers, and that
it should no longer be a proverb in Israel, “The fathers have
eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”1168 Here lies
the necessity that each man should be born again, that he might be
freed from the sin in which he was born. For the sins committed
afterwards can be cured by penitence, as we see is the case after
baptism. And therefore the new birth would not have been appointed
only that the first birth was sinful, so sinful that even one who
was legitimately born in wedlock says: “I was shapen in
iniquities, and in sins did my mother
conceive me.”1169 He did not
say in iniquity, or in sin, though he might have said
so correctly; but he preferred to say “iniquities” and
“sins,” because in that one sin which passed upon all men, and
which was so great that human nature was by it made subject to
inevitable death, many sins, as I showed above, may be
discriminated; and further, because there are other sins of the
immediate parents, which though they have not the same effect in
producing a change of nature, yet subject the children to guilt
unless the divine grace and mercy interpose to rescue
them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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