Chapter 6: even granting — still need imputation for posterity

grant that all stand no otherwise than as it pleased the learned man: that the generative power is a moral faculty; that Adam's corruption turned it to generation as a last end; that the whole superior part of the soul with the sensitive appetite—that is, the whole Adam—was turned the same way; that corrupt seed flowed from these. Still all this would not have brought it about that that first corruption should stain those born of Adam, unless something else be added. For the same can happen in others. A man will contaminate himself with perjuries, adulteries, murders, &c., and will contract the worst habits from them; he will turn his generative power, sensitive appetite, and superior part of soul, and himself entire as much as he is, to generation as a last end: yet beyond those things by which he has drawn just condemnation on his own head, he will not by natural propagation derive it into posterity as was done in Adam. Something else therefore must have intervened in that first sin which does not so hold in other sins of fathers. Namely God, who has absolute right over his creatures, willed by most just judgment that that first sin of Adam be imputed to all his posterity: he does not so will other sins to descend upon all posterity.