Thus does the sturdy logician, notwithstanding his almost indomitable hardihood, seem to stand appalled before the consequences to which his principles would inevitably conduct him. Having followed those principles but a little way, the scene becomes so dark with his representations of the divine justice, that he feels constrained to retrace his steps, and arbitrarily introduce the divine mercy, in order to mitigate the indescribable horrors which continually thicken around him. Such hesitation, such wavering and inconsistency, is the natural result of every scheme which places the decisions of the head in violent conflict with the indestructible feelings of the heart. In his attempt to reconcile the scheme of imputation with the justice of God, Edwards has met with as little success as Augustine. For this purpose, he supposed that God had constituted an identity between Adam and all his posterity, whereby the latter became partakers of his rebellion. “I think it would go far toward directing us to the more clear conception and right statement of this affair,” says he, in reference to imputation, “were we steadily to bear this in mind, that God, in every step of his proceedings with Adam, in relation to the covenant or constitution established with him, looked on his posterity as being _one with him_. And though he dealt more immediately with Adam, it yet was as the _head_ of the whole body, and the _root_ of the whole tree; and in his proceedings with him, he dealt with all the branches as if they had been then existing in their root. From which it will follow, that both guilt, or exposedness to punishment, and also depravity of heart, came upon Adam’s posterity just as they came upon him, as much as if he and they had all coëxisted, like a tree with many branches; allowing only for the difference necessarily resulting from the place Adam stood in as head or root of the whole. Otherwise, it is as if, in every step of proceeding, every alteration in the root had been attended at the same instant with the same alteration throughout the whole tree, in each individual branch. I think this will naturally follow on the supposition of their being a constituted _oneness_ or _identity_ of Adam and his posterity in this affair.”(175) As the sap of a tree, Edwards has said, spreads from the root of a tree to all its branches, so the original sin of Adam descends from him through the generations of men. In the serious promulgation of such sentiments, it is only forgotten that sin is not the sap of a tree, and that the whole human race is not really one and the same person. Such an idea of personal identity is as utterly unintelligible as the nature of the sin and the responsibility with which it is so intimately associated. Surely these are the dark dreams of men, not the bright and shining lights of eternal truth.