Adam's Fall

2
 Though Adam had been made in the image of God, taken into communion with Him, fitted to rejoice in all the manifestations of
His wisdom and goodness which surrounded him in Eden, nevertheless he was capable of falling. Since it is a point which has sorely
puzzled many of the Lord’s people, how it was possible for a holy person, devoid of any corruption, to sin, we will endeavour to explain. First, Adam’s liability to fall lay in the fact that he was but a creature. As such he was entirely dependent upon Him “which
holdeth our soul in life” (Psa. 66:9). As our natural life continues only so long as God sustains it, so it was with Adam’s spiritual life:
he stood only so long as he was Divinely upheld. Moreover, as a creature, he was but finite, and therefore possessed of no invincible
power with which to repel opposition. Nor was he endowed with omniscience, so that he had been incapable of being deceived or mistaking an evil for an apparent good. Thus, though man’s original condition was one of high moral excellence, with no evil tendency in
any part of his nature, yea, with nothing in him which in the least deviated from the moral law, yet, being but a creature, he was capable of falling.
 Second, Adam’s liability to fall lay in his mutability. Changeableness is the very law or radical characteristic of the creature, to
distinguish it from the Creator. God alone is “with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:18). Therefore, it is
that “He cannot be tempted with evil” (James 1:13) i.e., induced to sin: a statement which clearly implies that the creature as such has
a capacity to be so tempted—not only a depraved creature, but even an unfallen one. Immutability and impeccability (non-liability to
sin) are qualities which essentially distinguish the Creator from the creature—the angels possess neither, as the fall of at least onethird of their number (Rev. 12) demonstrated. Further, as the excellent Goodwin pointed out, God alone acts from His own power,
whereas the creature acts by a power given to him which is distinct from himself. “God’s own goodness and happiness is His ultimate
end, therefore He can never act but holily, for He acts by Himself, and for Himself, and so cannot fail in acting, but is holy in all His
ways and works, and cannot be otherwise.” But man neither acts immediately by his own power nor is himself the legitimate end of
his acting, but rather God. Thus, with all his faculties, man may falter when using them.
 Third, Adam’s liability to fall lay in the freedom of his will. He was not only a creature and a rational creature, but also a moral
one. Freedom of will is a property which belongs to man as a rational and responsible being. As we cannot separate understanding
from the mind, neither can we liberty from the will, especially in connection with things within its own sphere, and most especially
still when considering that all the faculties of man’s soul were in the state of perfection before the Fall. With Adam and Eve the freedom of the will consisted in a power of choosing or embracing what appeared agreeable to the dictates of their understandings, to be
good, or in refusing and avoiding what was evil; and that without any constraint or force laid upon them to act contrary to the dictates
thereof. Such freedom also supposed a power to act pursuant to what the will chooses, otherwise it could not obtain the good desired
or avoid the evil detested, and in such cases its “liberty” would be little more than a name. Freedom of action is opposed to that which
is involuntary or compelled, and the will is both self-inclining and self-determining in the acting, both internally and externally; for
then only can it, strictly speaking, be said to be free.