Cap. IV: Hunnius, Calvin, Garissoles, Martyr, Walaeus; Synod wording; Garissoles admits the distinction

And will Aegidius Hunnius, the celebrated theologian of the Augsburg Confession, seem to you, reader, a fit witness? Here is his testimony in the Article on sin: The Apostle Paul therefore shows that Adam's fall is imputed to us his posterity NOT IMMEDIATELY for its own sake, but MEDIATELY and on account of another thing — because, namely, by that fall the nature of the first parents was polluted, so that they could beget children only corrupted and vitiated by sin. For if Adam, then upright in the image of God, could have had such posterity that no proper vice was derived into posterity from the first parents, then that fall, as another's sin, would plainly not be imputed to them. Paul therefore openly shows that that offense does not reach us for condemnation EXCEPT MEDIATELY, insofar as through that offense a horrible corruption is brought into nature, which he propagated by generation into the posterities themselves. Could that be declared more clearly or more expressly? You have in him the distinction of the imputation of Adam's first actual sin into mediate and immediate — the former asserted, the latter rejected — and that the Apostle Paul openly taught that doctrine.

But perhaps the Protestant churches thought otherwise. Hear, then, also Calvin in his Commentary on Romans 5:15 (Romans 5:15): When he teaches that many perished by one man's offense, you will not take it as if we ourselves were outside fault; but because his sin is the cause of our sin, Paul ascribes our ruin to him. I call our sin that which is inborn in us and with which we are born. I will not bring forward other places of Calvin here; for what he thought, I have a rich witness in D. Garissolius, On the Imputation of the First Sin, chapter 9, section 11, page 299: However much, he says, the guilt of the first lapse does NOT reach us EXCEPT THROUGH THE MEDIATION OF CORRUPTION — WHICH WE ACKNOWLEDGE WITH CALVIN, and which was set forth above — that still cannot hinder that guilt from being not only the guilt of our corruption, but also the guilt of Adam's first actual sin: namely, of the former immediately, of the latter mediately. This is Placeus's very judgment; which, if it is condemned, then the doctrine of the Apostle Paul also, of Aegidius Hunnius and of Calvin, and even of D. Garissolius himself — if he faithfully expressed his own judgment in those words — is condemned.

The same D. Garissolius in the same book, chapter 8, section 3, page 206, testifies that the imputation treated in Romans 5 is necessarily joined with native corruption, and even FOLLOWS IT. If it follows it, the imputation is consequent or mediate, which Placeus teaches with the Apostle. I will add here also the testimony of Peter Martyr, Common Places, On Original Sin, section 34, and of the most learned Walaeus, Reply to the Censure of Corvinus, chapter 8, page 238: The guilt of the first sin unto condemnation, as the Apostle speaks in Romans 5:16, CAN IN NO WAY BE IMPUTED to posterity EXCEPT THROUGH the inherent viciousness of that sin.

If, therefore, the Synod had condemned Placeus's doctrine, he would indeed have the comfort of the miserable, and men of the greatest name as partners in this condemnation; but in fact, as I have already proved by many arguments, it did not condemn it. If by that Decree the Synod had condemned the doctrine of those who deny immediate or antecedent imputation, it would certainly also have condemned absolutely the doctrine of those who restrict the nature of original sin to the hereditary corruption of Adam's posterity. Yet the Synod did not simply condemn the doctrine which restricts the nature of original sin to hereditary corruption, but that which so restricts it that it excludes the imputation of that first sin by which Adam fell. Therefore the Synod did not condemn the doctrine of those who deny immediate imputation. Only mediate or consequent imputation can stand with that restriction: that alone, therefore, the Synod understood.

And so with that prudence it wove its Decree, that when it thrice remembered corruption and imputation, it always named corruption before imputation — to hint that the imputation to be understood is the one that follows, not the one that precedes, that hereditary corruption. Finally, the Synod's Decree either agrees with Holy Scripture or it does not. If it does not, Article V of the Confession of Faith, which that very Synod approved, stands in the way of receiving it. If it agrees, then certainly it does not condemn the doctrine of those who, keeping the mediate imputation of Adam's first sin, deny only the immediate or antecedent. To make an end: D. Garissolius himself, than whom no one was less fair to Placeus, approved this distinction of imputation, and thought that once it was well understood the controversy could be finished. Yet with the distinction so understood, consensus could in no way be established if by that Synodical Decree the doctrine had been condemned which, admitting mediate imputation of that act, denies the immediate. There would remain a perfect disagreement between that Decree and Placeus's judgment. It is not, therefore, to be thought that by that Decree that doctrine was condemned.