# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1857_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Matters Connected Therewith, etc. 137

"...and damns all those who are under the eternal wrath of God," etc. — Apology, ibid., etc. Cf. Gerhard, loc. de pecc. orig., §52. Behind the alienum that falls into appearance ("as now a foreign guilt has mocked us all in Adam," etc.) there lies hidden, as the truth of this relationship, a proprium; for "non posset," says Quenstedt, II, p. 112, quite rightly, "in nos propagari reatus, nisi praecessisset imputatio actus, quippe qui illius fundamentum est." Cf. the words of St. Bernard cited there: "aliena est (sc. culpa), quia in Adam omnes nescientes peccavimus; nostra, quia, etsi in alio, nos tamen peccavimus; et nobis justo Dei judicio imputabatur, licet occulto" — and, a little before, that same author's words again: "nam primus homo omnium posterorum voluntates in sua quasi voluntate locatas habuit, unde et contra datam legem pro se et posteris suis suum et posterorum declaravit animum." The imputation of the condition, brought with us into the world, objectively reprehensible before God, by virtue of which we, growing up, live as it were in agreement, out of our own inclination, with Adam's sinful fall — a condition which, being corrupted, can therefore only ever manifest itself in evil fruits — the imputatio peccati Adamitici mediata sive consequens, that is, mediated through the propagation of a qualitas standing under divine wrath and displeasure, hangs without any real foundation, without support, in the air, unless all the natural descendants who bear that condition within themselves have actually taken part in the deed which is its cause (Quenstedt, loc. cit., p. 58, thesis 19: imputatione reatus realis — participatione culpae actualis); hence the imputatio immediata sive antecedens can rightly be maintained as that imputation to which the above, if it is not to be abandoned, must be traced back. The objection, that the sins of the ancestors would then always have to be imputed to the descending individuals existing in them potentially or virtualiter (or actu primo, in an immaterial manner, according to the soul — cf. Chr. A. Crusius, Metaphysica, p. 956), is for that reason not admissible, because we have already, in Adam's primal deed, fallen as guilty, without exception, under eternal death; all those following it are only fruits of the tree that has become rotten, which must indeed be regarded as a collective subject. (Quenstedt, loc. cit., p. 53, thesis 19. Thereby the proposition set forth on p. 113 — "Stabat enim et cadebat primus homo ut caput (sc. morale, principium repraesentativum), in quo et conservarentur et perderentur concessa dona et privilegia" — receives its complement, inasmuch as we are, at the same time, in Adam as the principium naturale, seminale generis humani, this very subject.) The determination which the species, the universal, gave itself in the Fall must, according to its whole content, realize itself in all individuals; all differences in particularization, according to kind and degree, arise on the ground of something self-identical: the loss of a perfect wisdom and righteousness, and of the aequale temperamentum qualitatum corporis — which, for that reason, can also, through the sanctification of faith, absolutely never be restored on the natural side of the parents, who in procreation, out of their dark, to...