Romans 11:2

2 . Yet what would have been the condition of the human race if continued without the Redeemer is a very theoretical question. It would apparently have been in a state of spiritual death, without power of self-recovery, which, if perpetuated by a natural immortality, would have become a necessary, eternal, living death. The whole, being imposed despotically upon the race, would have been irreconcilable with the benevolence and justice of God; and it is for this very reason that we may hold that the race would not have been thus perpetuated. The condemnation (Romans 5:18) of the race, theoretically viewed, would have consisted in the absence of the Divine Spirit, the want of all those moral qualifications which Divine Holiness could approve, and the natural impossibility of any true happiness or blessedness. But the whole, being necessitated, could not amount to a real desert of judicial penalty from a just God.