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sequent, was the fruit of God's fatherly love, and not Satan's malice, and was an instance of God's free and sovereign favor, such favor as Satan could not possibly foresee? And if multitudes of Eve's posterity are saved, from either spiritual or temporal death, by a Redeemer, of her seed, how is that any disappointment of Satan's design in tempting our first parents? How came he to have any such thing in view, as the death of Adam's and Eve's posterity, by tempting them to sin, or any expectation that their death would be the consequence, unless he knew that they were included in the threatening?

Some have objected against Adam's posterity's being included in the threatening delivered to Adam, that the threatening itself was inconsistent with his having any posterity; it being that he should die on the day that he sinned.

To this I answer, that the threatening was not inconsistent with his having posterity, on two accounts.

Those words, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," according to the use of such like expressions among the Hebrews, do not signify immediate death, or that the execution shall be within twentyfour hours from the commission of the fact; nor did God, by those words, limit himself as to the time of executing the threatened punishment, but that was still left to God's pleasure. Such a phrase, according to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue, signifies no more than these two things:

1. A real connexion between the sin and the punishment. So Ezek. xxxiii. 12, 13. "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression. As for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live in the day that he sinneth ; But for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.” Here it is said, that in the day he sinneth, he shall not be able to live, but he shall die; not signifying the time when death shall be executed upon him, but the connexion between his sin and death; such a connexion as in our present common use of language is signified by the adverb of time, when 3° VOL. VI. 20

as if one should say, "According to the laws of our nation so long as a man behaves himself as a good subject, he may live; but when he turns rebel, he must die :" Not signifying the hour, day or month in which he must be executed, but only the connexion between his crime and death.

2. Another thing which seems to be signified by such an expression, is, that Adam should be exposed to death for one transgression, without waiting on him to try him the second time. If he eat of that tree, he should immediately fall under condemnation, though afterwards he might abstain ever so strictly. In this respect the words are much of the same force with those words of Solomon to Shimei, 1 Kings ii. 37. "For it shall be that on the day that thou goest out, and passest over the brook Kidron, thou shalt know for certain, that thou shalt surely die." Not meaning that he should certainly be executed on that day, but that he should be assuredly liable to death for the first offence, and that he should not have another trial to see whether he would go over the brook Kidron a second time.

And then besides,

II. If the words had implied that Adam should die that very day, within twentyfour or twelve hours, or that moment that he transgressed, yet it will by no means follow, that God obliged himself to execute the punishment in its utmost extent on that day. The sentence was in great part executed. immediately: He then died spiritually: He lost his innocence and original righteousness, and the favor of God; a dismal alteration was made in his soul, by the loss of that holy, divine principle, which was in the highest sense the life of the soul. In this he was truly ruined and undone that very day, becoming corrupt, miserable and helpless. And I think it has been shewn that such a spiritual death was one great thing implied in the threatening. And the alteration then made in his body and external state, was the beginning of temporal death. Grievous, external calamity is called by the name of death in scripture, Exod. x. 17. "Intreat the Lord that he may take away this death." Not only was Adam's soul ruined that day, but his body was ruined: It lost its

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beauty and vigor, and became a poor, dull, decaying, dying thing. And besides all this, Adam was that day undone in a more dreadful sense : He immediately fell under the curse of the law, and condemnation to eternal perdition. In the language of scripture, he is dead, that is, in a state of condemnation to death; even as our author often explains this language in his exposition upon Romans. In scripture language, he that believes in Christ, immediately receives life. He passes at that time from death to life, and thenceforward (to use the Apostle John's phrase) "has eternal life abiding in him." But yet he does not then receive eternal life in its highest completion; he has but the beginning of it, and receives it in a vastly greater degree at death; but the proper time for the complete fulness is not till the day of judgment. When the angels sinned, their punishment was immediately executed in a degree; but their full punishment is not until the end of the world. And there is nothing in God's threatening to Adam that bound him to execute his full punishment at once, nor any thing which determines that he should have no posterity. The law or constitution which God established and declared, determined that if he sinned, and had posterity, he and they should die; but there was no constitution determining concerning the actual being of his posterity in this case; what posterity he should have, how many, or whether any at all. All these things God had reserved in his own power : The law and its sanction intermeddled not with the

matter.

It may be proper in this place also to take some notice of that objection of Dr. Taylor's, against Adam's being supposed to be a federal head for his posterity, that it gives him greater honor than Christ, as it supposes that all his posterity would have had eternal life by his obedience, if he had stood; and so a greater number would have had the benefit of his obedience, than are saved by Christ. I think a yery little consideration is sufficient to shew that there is no

Page 120, &c, S.

weight in this objection; for the benefit of Christ's merits may nevertheless be vastly beyond that which would have been by the obedience of Adam. For those that are saved by Christ, are not merely advanced to happiness by his merits, but are saved from the infinitely dreadful effects of Adam's sin, and many from immense guilt, pollution and misery, by personal sins; also brought to a holy and happy state, as it were through infinite obstacles, and are exalted to a far great er degree of dignity, felicity and glory, than would have been due for Adam's obedience, for aught I know, many thousand times so great. And there is enough in the gospel dispensation, clearly to manifest the sufficiency of Christ's merits for such effects in all mankind. And how great the number will bey that shall actually be the subjects of them, or how great a proportion of the whole race, considering the vast success of the gospel, that shall be in that future, extraordinary and glorious season, often spoken of, none can tell. And the hon or of these two federal heads arises not so much from what was proposed to each for his trial, as from their success, and the good actually obtained, and also the manner of obtaining. Christ obtains the benefits men have through him by proper merit of condignity, and a true purchase by an equivalent; which would not have been the case with Adam, if he had obeyed.

I have now particularly considered the account which Moses gives us in the beginning of the Bible, of our first parents, and God's dealings with them, the constitution he established with them, their transgression, and what followed. And on the whole, if we consider the manner in which God apparently speaks to Adam from time to time; and particularly, if we consider how plainly and undeniably his posterity are included in the sentence of death pronounced on Adam after his fall, founded on the foregoing threatening; and consider the curse denounced on the ground for his sake, and for his and his posterity's sorrow: And also consider what is evidently the occasion of his giving his wife the new name of Eve, and his meaning in it, and withal consider apparent fact in constant and universal events, with relation to the state of our first parents,

and their posterity from that time forward, through all ages of the world; I cannot but think, it must appear to every impartial person, that Moses' account does, with sufficient evidence, lead all mankind, to whom his account is communicated, to understand, that God, in his constitution with Adam, dealt with him as a public person, and as the head of the human species, and had respect to his posterity, as included in him: And that this history is given by divine direction, in the beginning of the first written revelation, to exhibit to our view the origin of the present, sinful, miserable state of mankind, that we might see what that was, which first gave occasion for all those consequent, wonderful dispensations of divine mercy and grace towards mankind, which are the great subject of the scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament: And that these things are not obscurely and doubtfully pointed forth, but delivered in a plain account of things, which easily and naturally exhibits them to our understandings.

And by what follows in this discourse, we may have, in some measure, opportunity to see how other things in the Holy Scripture agree with what has been now observed from the three first chapters of Genesis.

CHAPTER II.

Observations on other parts of the Holy Scriptures, chiefly in the Old Testament, that prove the doctrine of ORIGINAL SIN.

ORIGINAL depravity may well be argued, from wickedness being often spoken of in scripture, as a thing belonging to the race of mankind, and as if it were a property of the species. So in Psal. xiv. 2, 3. "The Lord looked down from

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