We shall be pardoned this somewhat formal analysis in consideration of the clearness with which it enables us to survey the Puritan scheme of original sin, predestination, and justification. The historical transgression of Adam occupies, it will be observed, in Paul's ideas by no means the primary, fundamental, all-important place which it holds in the ideas of Puritanism. 'This' (the transgression of Adam) 'is our original sin, the bitter root of all our actual transgressions in thought, word, and deed.' Ah, no! Paul did not go to the Book of Genesis to get the real testimony about sin. He went to experience for it. '_I see_,' he says, 'a law in my members fighting against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity.'[79] This is the essential testimony respecting the rise of sin to Paul,--this rise of it in his own heart and in the heart of all the men who hear him. At quite a later stage in his conception of the religious life, in quite a subordinate capacity, and for the mere purpose of illustration, comes in the allusion to Adam and to what is called original sin. Paul's desire for righteousness has carried him to Christ and to the conception of the righteousness which is of God by faith, and he is expressing his gratitude, delight, wonder, at the boon he has discovered. For the purpose of exalting it he reverts to the well-known story of Adam. It cannot even be said that Paul Judaises in his use here of this story; so entirely does he subordinate it to his purpose of illustration, using it just as he might have used it had he believed, which undoubtedly he did not, that it was merely a symbolical legend, having the advantage of being perfectly familiar to himself and his hearers. 'Think,' he says, 'how in Adam's fall one man's one transgression involved all men in punishment; then estimate the blessedness of our boon in Christ, where one man's one righteousness involves a world of transgressors in blessing![80] This is not a scientific doctrine of corruption inherited through Adam's fall; it is a rhetorical use of Adam's fall in a passing allusion to it. [Footnote 79: _Rom._, vii, 23.] [Footnote 80: _Rom._, v, 12-21.]