The Christadelphian, July 1893, Robert Roberts

“In Adam”

H. J. M.—The subject of our connection with Adam and how we are affected by our own sins, is really very simple, but has become obscured in certain quarters by the clouds raised 20 years ago by the mischievous Renunciationist controversy. The obscuration and the bemuddlement need not distress you. They are inevitable from the prevalent incapacity to deal discerningly with topics of a spiritual import, and which are more or less expressed in figurative and elastic terms, and therefore giving scope to blunder. The obscurations never will be allayed by any amount of clear definition. Perverse ingenuity of the lawyer type can always get round the most squarely stated truth, and jump with impish agility from the figurative use of the literal to the literal use of the figurative, as the exigency of partizan polemics may require. Nothing but the Lord’s actual voice will allay the storms of jargon that have raged through the world since the apostolic doctrine of remission of sins was promulgated in his name. But honest men need not be troubled. They have simply to be contented with the truth in its own simplicity till then. As a brother recently remarked “We cannot vindicate God: we can only deliver a testimony for Him.” On the particular subject of your letter, your own definition is all sufficient—that the sins forgiven us at baptism are our own sins, of which alone we are guilty, and that the evil springing from our connection with Adam will not be cured till death is swallowed up of victory.