hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." Accordingly he gave her this new name, not at her first creation, but immediately after the promise of a Redeemer, of her seed. See Gen. iii. 15-20. Now as to the consequence which I infer from Adam's giving his wife this name, on the intimation which God had given, that Satan should by her seed be overthrown and disappointed, as to his malicious design, in that deed of his which God then spake of, viz., his tempting the woman. Adam infers from it, that great numbers of mankind should be saved, whom he calls the living; they should be saved from the effects of this malicious design of the old serpent, and from that ruin which he had brought upon them by tempting their first parents to sin; and so the serpent would be, with respect to them, disappointed and overthrown in his design. But how is any death or ruin, or indeed any calamity at all, brought upon their posterity by Satan's malice in that temptation, if instead of that, all the death and sorrow that was consequent, 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 twenty-four 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 connection 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 connection between his sin and death; such a connection as in our present common use of language is signified by the adverb of time, when ; 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 connection 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 hould not have another trial to see whether he would go over the brook Kidron second time. And then besides: II. If the words had implied that Adam should die that very day, within twenty-four 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 shown 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, "Entreat 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 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 tie 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 very little consideration is sufficient to show that there is no 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 Adain. For those that are saved by Christ, are not merely advanced to happiness by his merits, but are Page 120, &c., S 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 greater 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 be, 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, extraor dinary and glorious season, often spoken of, none can tell. And the honor 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 de nounced 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 exbibits 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 heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. They are all gone aside; they are together become filthy: there is none that doeth good; no, not one." The like we have again, Psal. liii. 2, 3. Dr. Taylor says, p. 104, 105, "The Holy Spirit does not mean this of every individual; because in the very same psalm, he speaks of some that were righteous; ver. 5, God is in the generation of the righteous." But how little is this observation to the purpose! For who ever supposed, that no unrighteous men were ever changed by divine grace, and afterwards made righteous? The Psalmist is speaking of what men are as they are the children of men, born of the corrupt race; and not as born of God, whereby they come to be the children of God, and of the generation of the righteous. The Apostle Paul cites this place in Rom. iii. 10, 11, 12, to prove the universal corruption of mankind; but yet in the same chapter he supposes these same persons here spoken of as wicked, may become righteous, through the righteousness and grace of God. So wickedness is spoken of in other places in the Book of Psalms, as a thing that belongs to men, as of the human race, as sons of men. Thus in Psal. iv. 2, "O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? How long will ye love vanity?" &c. Psal. lvii. 4, "I lie among them that are set on fire. even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." Psal. lviii. 1, 2, "Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congre gation? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? Yea, in heart ye work wickedness; ye weigh out the violence of your hands in the earth." Our author, mentioning these places, says, p. 105, Note, "There was a strong party in Israel disaffected to David's person and government, and sometimes he chooseth to denote them by the sons or children of men." But it would have been worth his while to have inquired, Why the Psalmist should choose to denote the wick edest and worse men in Israel by this name? Why he should choose thus to disgrace the human race, as if the compellation of sons of men most properly belonged to such as were of the vilest character, and as if all the sons of men, even every one of them, were of such a character, and none of them did good; no, not one? Is it not strange, that the righteous should not be thought worthy to be called sons of men, and ranked with that noble race of beings, who are born into the world wholly right and innocent! It is a good, easy, and natural reason, why he chooseth to call the wicked, sons of men, as a proper name for them, that by being of the sons of men, or of the corrupt, ruined race of mankind, they come by their depravity. And the Psalmist himself leads us to this very reason, Psal. lviii. at the beginning: "Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? Yea, in heart ye work wickedness, ye weigh out the violence of your hands. The wicked are estranged from the womb," &c., of which I shall speak more by and by. Agreeable to these places is Prov. xxi. 8, "The way of man is froward and strange; but as for the pure, his work is right." He that is perverse in his walk, is here called by the name of man, as distinguished from the pure: which I think is absolutely unaccountable, if all mankind by nature are pure, and perfectly innocent, and all such as are froward and strange in their ways, therein depart from the native purity of all mar.kind. The words naturally lead us to suppose the contrary; that depravity and perverseness properly belong to mankind as they are naturally, and that a being made pure, is by an after-work, by which some are delivered from native pollution, and distinguished from mankind in general; which is perfectly agreeable to the representation in Rev. xiv. 4, where we have an account of a number that were not defiled, but were pure, and Now what account can be given of these things, on Dr. Taylor's scheme? How strange is it, that we should have such descriptions, all over the Bible, of man, and the sons of men! Why should man be so continually spoken of as evil, carnal, perverse, deceitful, and desperately wicked, if all men are by nature as perfectly innocent, and free from any propensity to evil, as Adam was the first moment of his creation, all made right, as our author would have us understand, Eccl. vii. 29? Why, on the contrary, is it not said, at least as often, and with equal reason, that the heart of man is right and pure; that the way of man is innocent and holy; and that he who savors true virtue and wisdom, savors the things that be of men? Yea, and why might it not as well have been said, The Lord looked down from heaven on the sons of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and did seek after God; and they were all right, altogether pure, there was none inclined to do wickedness, no not one? Of the like import with the texts mentioned are those which represent wickedness as what properly belongs to the world; and that they who are otherwise, are saved from the world, and called out of it. As John vii. 7, "The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth; because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil." Chap. viii. 23, "Ye are of this world: I am not of this world." Chap. xiv. 17, "The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive; because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him." Chap. xv. 18, 19, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." Rev. xiv. 3, 4, "These are they which were redeemed from the earth-redeemed from among men." John xvii. 9, "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me." Ver. 14, "I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." 1 John iii. 13, "Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you." Chap. iv. 5, "They are of the world, therefore speak they of |