Dabney:

11. Mediate Imputation.

The fourth solution attempted for the great objection, brings us to the nth question: the scheme of mediate imputation. The author and history of this are succinctly stated by Turrettin. Placaeus said that the imputation of Adam’s sin was only mediate, and consequent upon our participation in total native depravity, which we derive by the great law, that like begets like. We, being thus depraved by nature, and, so to speak, endorsing his sin, by exhibiting the same spirit and committing similar acts, it is just in God to implicate us in the same punishments. Let it be remarked, first, that the charge made in the National Synod of Charenton, was, that Placaeus had denied all imputation of Adam’s guilt, and had made original sin consist exclusively in subjective depravity. This is precisely what the Synod condemned. It was to evade this censure, that he invented the distinction between an " antecedent and immediate imputation " of Adam’s guilt, which he denied, and a " mediate and subsequent imputation," which he professed to hold. It appears then, that this invention was no part of the theology, of the Reformed churches, and had never been heard of before. So thought Dr. A. Alexander, (Princeton Review, Oct. 1839.) The distinction seems to have been a ruse designed to shelter himself from censure, and to lay a snare for his accusers. It was unfortunate that they, like his chief opponent, Andrew Rivet, fell into it, by advocating the “antecedent and immediate imputation,” as the only true view. It docs not appear to me that those who, with Rivet, have labored to show that this is the doctrine of the Reformed Symbols, have at all proved their point. The distinction is, like that of the Supralapsarian and Infralapsarian, an attempted over-refinement, which should never have been made, which explained nothing, and whose corollaries increased the difficulties of the subject.

Turrettin, and those who assert the “antecedent immediate imputation,” charge that the scheme of Placaeus is only Arminianism in disguise, and that it really leaves no imputation of Adam’s guilt at all; inasmuch as they say it leaves the personal guilt of the child’s own subjective corruption, as the real ground of all the penal infliction incurred by original sin. While these objections seem just in part, I would add two others: First. Placaeus, like the lower Arminian, seems to offer the fact that God should have extended the law “like begets like,” to man’s moral nature, as an explanation of original sin. This, as I urged before, is only obtruding the fact itself as an explanation of the fact. To extend this law of nature to responsible persons, is an ordination of God. The question is: on what judicial basis does this ordination rest? Second: Placaeus’ scheme is false to the facts of the case, in that it represents Adam’s posterity as having, in God’s view, an actual, antecedent, depraved existence, at least for a moment, before they passed therefor under condemnation; whereas the Scriptures represent them as beginning their existence condemned, as well as depraved. See Eph. 2:3.

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