Augustine, as is well known, maintained the startling paradox, that all mankind were present in Adam, and sinned in him. In this way, he supposed that all men became partakers in the guilt of Adam’s sin, and consequently justly liable to the penalty due to his transgression. Augustine was quite too good a logician not to perceive, that if all men are responsible for Adam’s sin, because they were in him when he transgressed, then, it follows, that we are also responsible for the sins of all our ancestors, from whom we are more immediately descended. This follows from that maxim of jurisprudence, from that dictate of common-sense, that a rule of law is coëxtensive with the reason upon which it is based. Hence, as Wiggers remarks: “Augustine thought it not improbable that the sins of ancestors _universally_ are imputed to their descendants.”(171) This conclusion is clearly set forth in the extracts made by the translator of Wiggers.(172) If this scheme be true, we know indeed that we are all guilty of Adam’s sin; but who, or how many of the human race, were the perpetrators of Cain’s murder beside himself, we cannot determine. Indeed, if this frightful hypothesis be well founded, if it form a part of the moral constitution of the world, no man can possibly tell how many thefts, murders, or treasons, he may have committed in his ancestors. One thing is certain, however, and that is, that the man who is born later in the course of time, will have the more sins to answer for, and the more fearful will be the accumulation of his guilt; as all the transgressions of all his ancestors, from Adam down to his immediate parents, will be laid upon his head. Clearly as this consequence is involved in the fundamental principle of Augustine’s theory, the good father could not but reel and stagger under it. “Respecting the sins of the other parents,” says he, “the progenitors from Adam down to one’s own immediate father, _it may not improperly be debated_, whether the child is implicated in the evil acts and multiplied original faults of _all_, so that each one is the worse in proportion as he is later; or that, in respect to the sins of their parents, God threatens posterity to the third and fourth generation, because, _by the moderation of his compassion_, he does not further extend his anger in respect to the faults of progenitors, lest those on whom the grace of regeneration is not conferred, _should be pressed with too heavy a burden in their own eternal damnation_, if they were compelled to contract by way of origin (_originaliter_) the _sins_ of _all_ their preceding parents from the commencement of the human race, and _to suffer the punishment due to them_.(173) Whether, on so great a subject, anything else can or cannot be found, by a more diligent reading and scrutiny of the Scriptures, I dare not hastily affirm.”(174)