Chapter 9: Why Adam alone, not other ancestors, is named
Click or tap any sentence to jump there. The side buttons skip a paragraph.
Yet if a reason for it must be given, it ought not be fetched from imputation: for at once another question would grow up—why was there not equally in other ancestors, as in Adam, something to be imputed to posterity?And at last one would flee to God's will, which without imputation could be offered here as the reason.But there is no need: other reasons come to hand, and two of them.First, from the word "all."As the Apostle says, we all die in Adam.And it is already plain that all die in Adam alone.Second, it can be drawn from this, that the first source, the first origin of death, is marked.The other ancestors were like channels through which sin and death flowed down from that source into us: Adam alone was the first author of death.
Latin
Si tamen eius ratio reddenda est, ab imputatione arcessiri non debet: succresceret enim statim alia quaestio, cur non aeque in alijs maioribus, ac in Adamo, quod imputaretur posteris fuisset? Tandemque ad Dei voluntatem esset confugiendum, quae sine imputatione posset hoc loco pro ratione afferri. Sed non est opus: succurrunt enim aliae rationes, & quidem duae. Prima, a voce omnes. Sicut, inquit Apostolus, omnes in Adamo morimur. Iam autem manifestum est omnes in solo Adamo mori. Altera inde peti potest, quod notatur primus fons, prima origo mortis. Reliqui maiores veluti canales fuerunt, per quos peccatum & mors ab illo fonte in nos dimanarunt: solus Adamus primus fuit author mortis.