Now, what if the patient or some of his neighbours should charge this good Samaritan, with having given rise to the mischievous notion of an inexplicable disease, involving the honour of the King of the country;--should inveigh against _him_ as the author and first introducer of the notion, though of the numerous medical works composed ages before _his_ arrival, and by physicians of the most venerable authority, it was scarcely possible to open a single volume without finding some description of the disease, or some lamentation of its malignant and epidemic character:--and, lastly, what if certain pretended friends of this good Samaritan, in their zeal to vindicate him against this absurd charge, should assert that he was a perfect stranger to this disease, and boldly deny that he had ever said or done any thing connected with it, or that implied its existence?
In this Apologue or imaginary case, reader, you have the true bearings of Christianity on the fact and doctrine of Original Sin. The doctrine (that is, the confession of a known fact) Christianity has only in common with every religion, and with every philosophy, in which the reality of a responsible Will and the _essential_ difference between good and evil have been recognised. _Peculiar_ to the Christian religion are the remedy and (for all purposes but those of a merely speculative curiosity) the solution. By the annunciation of the remedy it affords all the solution which our _moral_ interests require; and even in that which remains, and must remain, unfathomable, the Christian finds a new motive to walk humbly with the Lord his God.
Should a professed Believer ask you whether that, which is the ground of responsible action in _your_ will, could in any way be responsibly present in the Will of Adam,--answer him in these words: "_You_, Sir! can no more demonstrate the negative, than I can conceive the affirmative. The corruption of my will may very warrantably be spoken of as a _consequence_ of Adam's fall, even as my birth of Adam's existence; as a consequence, a link in the historic chain of instances, whereof Adam is the first. But that it is _on account_ of Adam; or that this evil principle was, _a priori_, inserted or infused into my Will by the will of another--which is indeed a contradiction in terms, my Will in such case being no _Will_--_this_ is nowhere asserted in Scripture explicitly or by implication." It belongs to the very essence of the doctrine, that in respect of Original Sin _every_ man is the adequate representative of _all_ men. What wonder, then, that where no inward ground of preference existed, the choice should be determined by outward relations, and that the first _in time_ should be taken as the diagram? Even in Genesis the word, Adam, is distinguished from a proper name by an Article before it. It is _the_ Adam, so as to express the _genus_, not the individual--or rather, perhaps, I should say, _as well as_ the individual. But that the word with its equivalent, _the old man_, is used symbolically and universally by St. Paul, (1 Cor. xv. 22, 45. Eph. iv. 22. Col. iii. 9. Rom. vi. 6.) is too evident to need any proof.