A Puritan Catechism

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Questions 11-20

11.  Q. What are God's works of providence? 

A. God's works of providence are his most holy (Ps. 145:17), wise, (Isa. 28:29) and powerful (Heb. 1:3), preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions (Ps. 103:19; Matt. 10:29).

12.  Q. What special act of providence did God exercise toward man in the state wherein he was created? 

A. When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; (Gal. 3:12) forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death. (Gen. 2:17)

13.  Q. Did our first parents continue in the state wherein they were created? 

A. Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the state wherein they were created, by sinning against God, (Eccl. 7:29) by eating the forbidden fruit (Gen. 3:6-8). 

14.  Q. What is sin? 

A. Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of the law of God (1 Jn. 3:4). 

15.  Q. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression? 

A. The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 5:12). 

16.  Q. Into what estate did the fall bring mankind? 

A. The fall brought mankind into a state of sin and misery (Rom. 5:18). 

17.  Q. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that state whereinto man fell? 

A. The sinfulness of that state whereinto man fell, consists in the guilt of Adam's first sin (Rom. 5:19), the want of original righteousness, (Rom. 3:10) and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin (Eph. 2:1; Ps. 51:5), together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it (Matt. 15:19). 

18.  Q. What is the misery of that state whereinto man fell? 

A. All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God (Gen. 3:8, 24), are under his wrath and curse (Eph. 2:3; Gal. 3:10), and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever (Rom. 6:23; Matt. 25:41).

19.  Q. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the state of sin and misery? 

A. God having, out of his good pleasure from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life (2 Thess. 2:13), did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the state of sin and misery, and to bring them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer (Rom. 5:21).

20.  Q. Who is the Redeemer of God's elect? 

A. The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5), who being the eternal Son of God, became man (Jn. 1:14), and so was and continues to be God and man, in two distinct natures and one person for ever (1 Tim. 3:16; Col. 2:9). 

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