OF MAN’S SIN. – John Bunyan

Question. How did God make Man in the day of his first creation? Answer. God made Man upright. In the image of God created he him. Ecclesiastes 7:29; Genesis 1:27. Question. Did God when he made Man, leave him without a rule to walk by? Answer. No; he gave him a law in his nature, and imposed upon him a positive precept; but he offered violence to them, and brake them both. Genesis 3:3,6. Question. What was the due desert of that transgression? Answer. Spiritual death in the day he did it, temporal death afterwards, and everlasting death last of all. Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:19; Matthew 25:46. Question. What is it to be spiritually dead? Answer. To be alienate from God, and to live without him in the world, through the ignorance that is in men, and through the power of their sins. Ephesians 4:18,19. Question. Wherein doth this alienation from God appear? Answer. In the love they have to their sins; in their being loth to come to him; in their pleading idle excuses for their sins; and in their ignorance of the excellent mysteries of his blessed gospel. Ephesians 2:2,3,11,12; Romans 1:28; Ephesians 4:18,19. Question. What is temporal death? Answer. To have body and soul separate asunder; the body returning to the dust as it was, and the spirit to God that gave it. Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 12:7. Question. What is everlasting death? Answer. For body and soul to be separate for ever from God, and to be cast into hell-fire. Luke 13:27; Mark 9:43.

HOW WE COME INTO THE WORLD. Question. Do men go body and soul to hell so soon as they die? Answer. The body abideth in the grave till the sound of the last trump; but the soul, if the man dies wicked, goes presently from the face of God into hell, as into a prison, there to be kept till the day of judgment. Corinthians 15:52; Isaiah 24:22; Luke 12:20. Question. Do we come into the world as upright as did our first parent? Answer. No; he came into the world sinless, being made so of God Almighty; but we come into the world sinners, being made so by his pollution. Question. How doth it appear that we came into the world polluted? Answer. We are the fruit of an unclean thing, are defiled in our very conception, and are by nature the children of wrath. Job 14:4; Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:3. Question. Can you make further proof of this? Answer. Yes, it is said, that by one man came sin, death, judgment, and condemnation, upon all men. Romans 5:12, 15-19. Question. Do we then come sinners into the world? Answer. Yes, we are transgressors from the womb, and go astray as soon as we are born, speaking lies. Isaiah 48:8; Psalm 58:3. Question. But as Adam fell with us in him, so did he not by faith rise with us in him? For he had no seed until he had the promise. Answer. He fell as a public person, but believed the promise as a single person. Adam’s faith saved not the world, though Adam’s sin overthrew it. Question. But do not some hold that we are sinners only by imitation? Answer. Yea, being themselves deceived. But God’s word saith, we are children of wrath by nature, that is, by birth and generation. Question. Can you bring further proof of this? Answer. Yes. In that day that we were born, we were polluted in our own blood, and cast out to the loathing of our persons. Again, the children of old that were dedicated unto the Lord, a sacrifice was offered for them at a month old, which was before they were sinners by imitation. Ezekiel 16:4-9 : Numbers 18:14-16. Question. Can you make this appear by experience? Answer. Yes. The first things that bloom and put forth themselves in children, show their ignorance of God, their disobedience to parents, and their innate enmity to holiness of life; their inclinations naturally run to vanity. Besides, little children die; but that they could not, were they not of God counted sinners; for “death is the wages of sin.” Romans 6:23. Question. What is sin? Answer. It is a transgression of the law. 1 John 3:4. Question. A transgression of what law? Answer. Of the law of our nature, and of the law of the ten commandments, as written in the holy scriptures. Romans 2:12,14,15; Exodus 20. Question. When doth one sin against the law of nature? Answer. When you do any thing that your conscience tells you is a transgression against God or man. Romans 2:14,15. Question. When do we sin against the law as written in the ten commandments? Answer. When you do any thing that they forbid, although you be ignorant of it. Psalm 19:12. Question. How many ways are there to sin against this law? Answer. Three. By sinful thoughts, by sinful words, and also by sinful actions. Romans 7:7 ; Matthew 5:28; Matthew 12:37; Romans 2:6. Question. What if we sin but against one of the ten commandments? Answer. Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all; for he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill; now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art a transgressor of the law. James 2:10,11.