infinite wisdom and goodness, and without some interruption of that dependence on God, from whom the world proceeded.

The very first apprehensions of the nature of God, and the condition of the universe, declare, that man was formed free from sin, which is his voluntary subduction of himself from under the government of his Maker; and free from trouble, which is the effect of God's displeasure, in consequence of man's subduction or deviation; in which two, the whole nature of evil consisteth, so that evil must have some other origin.

§3. Furthermore, In this first effort of immense power, did God glorify himself, both in the wisdom and goodness wherewith it was accompanied, and also in that righteousness whereby, as the supreme rector and governor of all, he allotted unto his rational creatures the law of their obedience, annexing a reward thereunto, in a mixture of justice and bounty. For that obedience should be rewarded, is of justice; but that such a reward should be proposed unto the temporary obedience of a creature, as is the eternal enjoyment of God, was of mere grace and bounty. And that things should have continued in the state and condition wherein they were created, I mean as unto mankind, supposing an accomplishment of the obedience prescribed unto them, is manifest from the very first notions we have of the nature of God; for we no sooner conceive that he is, than we also assent that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him, Heb. xi. 6. This is essential unto him, and inseparable from his nature as the sovereign ruler of the works of his hands. And thus was the continuance of this blessed state of the creation of all things provided for, and laid in a tendency unto farther glory; all distance between God and man being excluded, except that which is natural, necessary and infinite, arising from their beings. There was no sin on the one side, nor displeasure on the other. And this secured the order of the universe. For what should cause any confusion there, whilst the law of its creation was observed, which could not be transgressed by brute and inanimate creatures?

§ 4. That this state of things hath been altered from time immemorial; that there is a corrupt spring of sin and disorder in the nature of man; that the whole world lieth in ignorance, darkness, evil and confusion; that there is an alienation and displeasure between God and man, God revealing his wrath and judgments from heaven, whence at first nothing might be expected but fruits of goodness, and pledges of love, and man naturally dreading the presence of God, and trembling at the effects of that presence which at first was his life, joy and refreshment, reason itself, with prudent observation, will discover: it hath done so unto many contemplative men of old. The whole creation groans out this complaint, as the apostle witness

1

eth, Rom. viii. 20, 21. and God makes it manifest in his judg. ments every day, ch. i. 18. That things were not made at first in this state and condition in which they now are, that they came not thus immediately from the hand of infinite Wisdom and Goodness, is easily discernible. God made not man to be at a perpetual quarrel with him, nor to fill the world with tokens of his displeasure because of sin. This men saw of old by the light of nature; but what it was that opened the flood-gates unto all that evil and sin which they saw and observed in the world, they could not tell. The springs of it indeed they searched after, but with more vanity and disappointment than they who sought for the sources of the Nile. The evils they saw were catholic and unlimited, and therefore not to be assigned unto particular causes; and of any general one, proportioned unto their production, they were utterly ignorant. And this ignorance filled all their wisdom and science with fatal mistakes, and rendered the best of their discoveries but uncertain conjectures. Yea, the poets who followed the confused rumours of old traditions, about things whose original was occasional and accidental, give us a better shadow of truth than the philosophers, who would reduce them unto general rules of reason, which they would no way answer.

Post ignem ætherea domo

Subductum, Macies et nova febrium
Terris incubuit Cohors :

Semotique prius tarda necessitas

Lethi corripuit Gradum :

Horat. Car. lib. 1. Od. 3.

is a better allusion to the origin of sin and punishment, than all the disputations of the philosophers will afford us.

§ 5. But that which they could not attain unto, (and because they could not attain to it, they wandered in all their apprehensions about God and themselves, without certainty or consisteney), has been clearly made known to us by divine revelation. The sum of it is briefly proposed by the apostle, Rom. v. 12. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." Sin and death are comprehensive of all that is evil in any kind in the world. All that is morally so, is sin; all that is penally so, is death. The entrance of both into the world, was by the sin of one man, that is Adam, the common father of us all. This the philosophers knew not, and therefore knew nothing clearly of the condition of mankind in relation unto God. But two things doth the Scripture teach us concerning this entrance of evil into the world.

First, The punishment that was threatened unto, and inflicted on the disobedience of Adam. Whatever there is of disor

der, darkness or confusion, in the nature of things here below; whatever is uncertain, irregular, horrid, unequal or destructive, in the universe; whatever is penal unto man, or may be so in this life, or in eternity; whatever the wrath of the holy rightebus God, revealing itself from heaven, hath brought, or shall ever bring, on the works of his hands; are to be referred unto this head. Other origin of them can no man assign.

Secondly, The moral corruption of the nature of man, the spring of all sin, the other head of evil, proceeded hence also. For by this means, that which before was good and upright, has become an inexhaustible fountain of sin. And this was the state of things in the world, immediately upon the fall and sin of Adam.

Now the work which we assign unto the Messiah, is the deliverance of mankind from this state and condition. On the facts of the fall of man, and of the misery consequent on this fall, as these are revealed in Scripture, is the whole doctrine of the office of Messiah founded, as shall afterwards more largely be declared. We contend that, in the wisdom, grace, and righteousness of God, he was promised, and exhibited as a relief against this sin and misery of mankind, as our apostle also expressly proveth, ch. ii. of his epistle unto the Hebrews. This is denied by them, as that which would overthrow all their fond imaginations about his person and office. We must therefore consider what is their sense and apprehension about these things, with what may be thence educed for their own conviction, and then confirm the truth of our assertion from the testimony of those Scriptures which they themselves own and receive.

$6. The first effect and consequent of the sin of Adam, was the punishment wherewith it was attended. What is written hereof pars in the Scripture, the Jews neither can nor do deny. Death was in the commination given to deter him from his transgression. an na, Gen. ii. 17. Dying thou shalt die. Neither can it be reasonably pretended, that it was death to his own person only, which is intended in that expression. The event sufficiently evinceth the contrary. Whatever is, or might be evil unto himself and to his whole posterity, with the residue of the creation, so far as he or they might be any way concerned therein, hath grown out of this commination. And this is sufficiently manifested in the first execution of it, Gen. iii. 16— 19. The malediction was but the execution of the commination. It was not consistent with the justice of God to increase the penalty, after the sin was committed. The threatening therefore was the rule and measure of the curse. But this is here extended by God himself, not only to all the miseries of man (Adam and his whole posterity) in this life, in labour, disappointment, sweat and sorrow, with death under, and by vir

tue of, the curse; but to the whole earth also, and consequent ly to those superior regions and orbs of heaven, by whose influence the earth is as it were governed and disposed unto the use of man, Hos. ii. 21, 22. It may be yet farther inquired what was to be the duration and continuance of the punishment to be inflicted in consequence of this commination and malediction. Now there is not any thing tending in the least degree to intimate, that it should have a term affixed unto it when it should expire; or that it should not be commensurate unto the existence or being of the sinner. God lays the curse on man, and there he leaves him, and that for ever. A miserable life he was to spend, and then to die under the curse of God, without hope of emerging into a better condition. About his existence after this life, we have no controversy with the Jews. They all acknowledge the immortality of the soul; for the sect of the Sadducees is long since extinct, neither are they followed by the Karæans in their Atheistical opinions, as hath been declared. Some of them indeed incline unto the Pythagorean Metempsychosis, but all acknowledge the soul's perpetuity.

Supposing then Adam to die penally under the curse of God, as without extraordinary relief he must have done, the righteousness and truth of God being engaged for the execution of the threatening against him, I desire to know what would have been the state and condition of his soul? Doth either revelation or reason intimate, that he should not have continued for ever under the same penalty and curse, in a state of death or separation from God? And if he should have done so, then was death eternal in the commination. This is that which with respect unto the present effects in this life, and the punishment due to sin, is termed by our apostle, ǹ ogrn ɛexoμevn, 1 Thess. i. 10. the wrath to come, from whence the Messiah is the deliverer.

Nor will the Jews themselves contend, that the guilt of any sin respects only temporal punishment. The event of sin unto themselves they take to be only temporal, imagining their observation of the law of Moses, such as it is, to be a sufficient expiation of punishment eternal. But unto all strangers from the law, all that have not a relief provided, they make every sin mortal; and Adam, as I suppose, had not the privilege of the present Jews, to observe the law of Moses. Wherefore they all agree, that by his repentance he delivered himself from death eternal, which, if it were not due unto his sin, he could not do; for no man can by any means escape that, whereof he is in no danger. And this repentance of his they affirm to have been attended with severe discipline and self-maceration, intimating the greatness of his sin, and the difficulty of his escape from the punishment due thereunto. So Rabbi Eliezer, in

: באחד בשבת נכנם אדם במי גיחון העליון .20 .Pirke Aboth, c

On the first day of the week, Adam entered into the waters of the upper Gihon, until the waters came unto his neck; and he afflicted himself seven weeks, until his body became like a sieve. And Adam said before the holy blessed God, Lord of the whole world, let my sins I pray thee be done away from me, and accept of my repentance, that all ages may know that there is repentance, and that thou wilt receive them that repent and turn unto thee.' Hençe also they tell us, that upon the pardon of his sin, he sang a song of praise unto the Lord on the sabbath day, which is mentioned in the Targum on the Song of Solomon, ch. i. 1. as one of the songs in reference whereunto that of Solomon is called, w, the Song of Songs, or the most excellent of them. And although indeed that expression, in min, dying thou shalt die, denotes only the certainty and vehemency of the death threatened, to express which the Hebrew language useth reduplications; yet some of them have not been averse to apprehend a twofold death, namely of the body and also of the soul, to be intimated in that expression, as Fagius on the place well observes. Body and soul, they say, both sinned; and therefore both were to be punished.

אילו הבשר חוטא בלא רוח מדוע הנפש נענשת וכי וזה חוטא If the flesh sin -וזה נענש אלא כך הדבר שניהם תוטאים באחר

without the spirit, why is the soul punished? Is it one thing that sins, and another that is punished? Or rather is it not thus, that both sin together?' and so both are justly punished together.

noxious unto.

§ 7. Thus is the sin and punishment of our first parents themselves acknowledged by them. And the condition of their posterity is the same. What was threatened unto, and was inflicted upon those who first sinned, all are now liable and obAre they not all as subject unto death as was Adam himself? Are the miseries of man in his labour, or the sorrows of women in child-bearing, taken away? Is the earth itself freed from the effects of the curse? Do they not die who never sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression? The Jews themselves grant, that all death is penal.p ja po" There is no death without sin; no punishment or correction without iniquity.' It is the saying of R. Ame in the Talmud, Tractat. Sabbat. cited in Sepher Ikharim, lib. 4. cap. 13. And this principle Maimonides carries so high, as to deny all nan D, correction of love, affirming none to be of that mind, but some Gæonims deceived by the sect of Muatzali, More Nebuch. p. 3. cap. 17. And they who die penally under the curse, abide in no other estate than that mentioned. They acknowledge also the remainder of the

העולם כלו לא .curse on the earth itself on the same account נברא אלא בשביל האדם ואחד שאדם חטא האדמה הפרדה