Chapter 2: two formulations — miseries of life vs hereditary corruption; Placeus vs Garissoles
So drop the word penalty, and you could have put the question without ambiguity: Why are we born liable to the miseries of this life, to bodily death, and to eternal death? Because Adam's first actual sin is imputed to us proximately and immediately? Or because, without any such imputation, his viciousness has come down from him into us and been poured through by natural propagation? You affirm the first; I the second. Or put it this way: Why do we draw from Adam that hereditary moral corruption usually called original sin? Because God the Judge imputes Adam's first actual sin to us, and, as the penalty of that imputed sin—so that it may be avenged and justice satisfied—inflicts that moral corruption which is itself sin and the spring of other sins? Or rather because, without such imputation, this was nature's law before the fall: like begets like—man a man, the corrupt the corrupt, the vicious the vicious, the leprous the leprous? Again you assert the first; I the second. Though the state of the question, framed to fit your mind, is not wholly unserviceable, it still does not satisfy me on every side: it states the parts of the question more than the question as a whole.
Latin
Misso igitur poenae nomine, potuisses sic quaestionem instituisse sine ulla ambiguitate: Cur nascamur obnoxii miseriis hujus vitae, morti corporis, et morti aeternae? an quia nobis imputetur proxime et immediate primum peccatum actuale Adami? aut quia sine ejusmodi imputatione, vitiositas ejus ab eo in nos derivata est, et per propagationem naturalem transfusa? Tu prius affirmas, ego posterius. Vel sic, Cur trahimus ab Adamo corruptionem moralem haereditariam, quae peccatum originale dici solet? An quia nobis a Deo Judice primum peccatum actuale Adami imputetur, ac in ejus imputati poenam, ut vindicetur, et justitiae satisfiat, infligatur illa corruptio moralis, quae et ipsa peccatum est, et fons aliorum peccatorum? Aut vero quia, sine ejusmodi imputatione, haec est naturae lex ante peccatum constituta, ut sui quaeque res similem gignat, homo hominem, corruptus corruptum, vitiosus vitiosum, leprosus leprosum? Tu rursus prius asseris, ego posterius. Quamvis autem status questionis, ita propositus accommodate ad mentem tuam, non prorsus incommodus sit, nondum tamen mihi omni ex parte satisfacit: exprimit enim potius partes questionis, quam ipsam quaestionem universam.