Chapter 9: Indirect Levi argument; admit mediate reading; deny actual-sin immediate imputation
But perhaps someone can gather indirectly from this place that Adam's actual sin is immediately imputed to us. For, says D. Garissoles, if what Abraham did in giving tithes is reckoned done by Levites born so many ages later, and yet nothing in that kind of imputation is alien to reason or to God's justice, nobody will give a reason why those who assert that Adam's sin is reckoned the posterity's sin — so that in him they are said to have sinned and been damned — should be held for cartloads of absurdities, or for adversaries of right reason and divine justice. Again this whole can be granted without any loss to the cause I am pleading. For I confess that Adam's sin is reckoned the posterity's sin on account of the vice inhering in them, derived from him. I confess that his posterity can be said to have sinned in him and been damned, because from him they drew inherent sin and, through sin, their own damnation. But I deny that Adam's actual sin is so imputed to all of us his posterity that by that imputation it becomes ours — otherwise not ours — and that, being so imputed, it is punished by inflicting hereditary corruption, which truly is sin, as a penalty properly so called, and also the death of the body and eternal death, as though justice were to be done. This is what we heap with absurdities, from which we cannot be freed by Levi's being tithed in Abraham's loins. For from the fact that Levi is said to have been tithed in Abraham's loins, does it follow that that imputation can be proved from the sacred letters, that it does not clash with the oracle "The son shall not bear the father's iniquity," that it does not make God the author of sin and Christ a sinner, and so on? Does it hinder there being good and solid arguments by which we attack that imputation? In no way. What then does this tithing help that imputation? Nothing at all. Shall I show further how badly D. Garissoles reasons?
Latin
Sed fortasse ex hoc loco colligere potest aliquis indirecte, peccatum Adami actuale nobis imputari immediate. Nam, inquit D. G. si quod fecit Abrahamus decimas dando, fecisse censentur tot postea seculis nati Levitae, nec tamen est in ejusmodi imputatione aliquid a ratione, aut Dei justitia alienum, nemo causam dicet, quare qui asserunt Adae peccatum censeri posterorum peccatum, ita ut in eo dicantur peccasse ac damnati fuisse, habendi sint pro absurditatum hamaxariis, aut rectae rationis & divinae justitiae adversariis. Rursus potest hoc totum concedi, absque ullo causae quam ago dispendio. Fateor enim Adae peccatum censeri posterorum peccatum ob vitium illis inhaerens ab eo derivatum. Fateor in eo dici posse posteros ejus peccasse ac damnatos fuisse, quia nimirum ab eo peccatum inhaerens & per peccatum damnationem suam traxerunt. Sed nego peccatum actuale Adami ita nobis omnibus ejus posteris imputari, ut ea imputatione nostrum fiat, alioqui non nostrum, & ut sic imputatum puniatur, corruptionem haereditariam, quae vere peccatum est, tanquam poenam proprie dictam, ac ut justitia fiat, infligi, nec-non mortem corporis & aeternam. Hoc est quod absurditatibus cumulamus, a quibus liberari non potest per decimationem Levi in Lumbis Abrahae. An enim ex eo quod decimatus dicitur Levi in Lumbis Abrahae, consequitur, imputationem illam posse probari ex sacris literis, non pugnare cum oraculo, Filius non feret iniquitatem Patris, non facere Deum autorem peccati, & Christum peccatorem &c.? Impedit-ne ne sint bona & solida argumenta, quibus imputationem illam oppugnamus? Nullo modo. Quid igitur imputationem illam juvat haec decimatio? Nihil prorsus. Vin' praeterea ostendam quam male ratiocinetur D. Garissolius?