temptation to it. Sufficient power was given him, to enable him to ftand if rightly ufed, yet being created mutable, he was liable to fall. The dif ference betwixt Adam in his perfect ftare, and the true believer in Christ herein is, Adam had a posse, thefe a velle; Adam in paradise had a power to stand, yet left free to fall; believers in Christ, are made willing to stand, and upheld by omnipotence, fhall not finally fall. It has been enquired by fome, what the firft fin was that obtained place in Adam's heart. I think it is not to be doubted but many evils entered into the compofition, fuch as pride, evil-desire, difcontent, &c. But of this however we are well affured, that unbelief was a principal ingredient. God faid, in the day thou eateft thereof, thou shali furely die, the devil faid, ye shall not die. To whom fhould Adam have hearkened? Had he not been guilty of an inattention, below the dignity of a rational creature, he would doubtlefs have indignated every fpecies of being in heaven or earth, that fhould have dared to contradict what God had spoken. He liftened to the fubtle tempter, and feduced, fell; fell from his dignity, and rectitude, forfeited the favour of his best friend and bounteous benefactor; and aspiring to be as God, fell below, and utterly loft the happiness and dignity he poffeft and enjoyed as man. He who, a little before ftood at the head of the creation, and deputed Lord of all below, was now deservedly depofed, and degraded; and he who while obedient to the precepts of his maker, ftood poffeffed of the image and favours of his God, was now driven as a vagabond from his prefence, and bore the difgraceful badges of violated truft, in bor rowing a hairy garment from the brute, to cover his own and his accomplice's naked bodies; and expelled the happy garden, are doomed to almoft inceffant and unavailing toil; to eat bread in the fweat of their face, and dig a bitter and scanty morfel from the barren clod. 12th, * Unto Adam and to his wife, &c. Some will needs have this to be underftood figuratively, that God taught Adam and Eve to make thefe coats for themfelves, as thinking it too low for the majesty of heaven to stoop to an office fo mean, &c. But I fee no reason for understanding the words of Mofes otherwise, than in this plain and literal fense, that the Lord God made coats of skins, and cloathed them, feeing HE who by his word had called thete skins from nothing, could by a fingle nod transform them as he pleased. Befides, why may not these coats themselves, as well as God's condefcending to make them, be confidered as a type of the righteoufnefs of our Lord Jefus Chrift, and his great love and wonderful condefcenfion, in working out that righte oufness by a three and thirty years toil on earth? And viewed in this light, it prefents us not with fanciful, but real and interesting truths; viz. that as these were probably the fkins of beafts flain for facrifice, (animal-food being not yet granted,) these beafts fhadowed forth the bruised body of our Saviour, offered in facrifice on the accursed tree, as a ranfom for finners, and for the fake of which, they are delivered from going down to the pit," Job xxxiii. 24. And their fkins which were made into coats, to cover the naked bodies of the fallen pair, the holy and obedient life of Christ, by which, a righteoufnels is wrought out, to cover the naked fouls of all believing in him.-I have called their coats disgraceful badges, and indeed what are thofe very garments we are fo apt to pride ourselves in, but indications of our fall from God, and our shame and nakedness thereby? And what can more loudly fpeak the degenerate, and stupified state of man, than that he should glory in his fhame; and having loft his original righteoufnefs, fhould endeavour to fupply (by adorning his body,) the glory that is departed from his foul. 12th, As Adam's disobedience merited infinitely worse than was inflicted on him, he was fo far from having caufe to complain of cruelty or injuftice in the fentence paffed upon him, that he could not but acknowledge in the most fignificant expreflions of gratitude, the clemency of his maker and fovereign, the mercy of his judge, and rejoice, greatly rejoice, in the falvation of the Saviour prepared, and more than hinted at in the ferpent's curfe and doom; and by the intervention of whom, he for the prefent obtained a reprieve from the death his fin deferved, and received a promife of compleat deliverance. It being befide my prefent purpose to lay open, and infift upon the due defert of Adam's tranf greflion, which otherwise might be easily proved, as I truft it is in my fermons on that fubject, could be nothing less than an intire, and eternal exclufion from the prefence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power, 2 Theff. i. 9. which banishment would have conftituted that part of the mifery of the damned confifting in the pana damni, i. e. the punishment of lofs; which would neceffarily have been attended, with a keen and bitter reflection of ingratitude and folly, under the inceffant clamours, and tormenting accufations of a guilty confcience. Thefe, together with the fire which never fhall be quenched, Mark ix. 44, faid to be prepared for the devil and his angels, would have conftituted, what fome have called the pena fenfus, or the punishment of fenfe. Such is the dreadful, and wretched habitation prepared for the wicked, Job xviii. 21. and fuch must have been the dwelling of fallen Adam, had the curfe in its rigour and feverity, been executed upon him. 13th, This fin of Adam, did not only affect himself, but all his pofterity have caufe to lament it; feeing matter of fact makes it evident, that they alfo at the greateft diftance from him in the line of ordinary generation are affected by it. That ftate of mortality we all are fubjected to, is no other than the neceffary, and natural refult of his fin and disobedience; he being the common root and fountain of all his pofterity. If, in the ordinary course of generation, like, begets like, fuch as he was who begat, fuch muft they be who are begotten of him; but the former is true, and manifeft in all nature, therefore the latter. Hence, what Adam was, not in his perfect, but lapsed state, such muft they neceffarily be who fpring from him; feeing in this ftate he began to propagate his race. Was the image of God defaced in the parent? Such must be the cafe of the child begotten by him; was the body of the former fentenced to mortality, with all the imperfections, pains and diseases, peculiar to a mortal ftate? Such would neceffarily be the bodies of the latter, as begotten by him; the proof of which lamentable truth, is matter of fact. But mortality, with all its wretched, and infeparable concomitants, is a punishment inflicted, and to confift with juftice muft infer previous guilt; therefore all the pofterity of Adam being fubjected to fuffer, are fuppofed guilty. The above truth will receive no inconfiderable light and confirmation by attending to the account Mofes has given of this matter. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made be bim, Gen. v. 1. Here we have Adam prefented to our view in a perfect and upright ftate, as newly com ing from the hands of the all-wife artist, and bear, ing the image of his own spotless purity, in re spect to the moral rectitude of his intellectual powers; and fo exactly correfponding with the great idea of his maker, that he pronounced him as placed at the head of the terreftrial creation to be very good; but in the third verfe of the fame chapter, we are informed that Adam begat in bis own likeness; which draught if viewed in the mirrour of God's most holy law, or compared with the fair, and perfect original, will be difcovered to be deficient in all thofe lively and judicious touches, wherein fimilitude confifted, and fcarcely to bear any resemblance to that image first stamped upon it. And it is evident, Mofes intended a contraft in the firft and third verfes, that comparing man as he came out of the hands of his maker, with what he was, now fallen by fin and disobedience, we might learn the true state of things in a lapsed world; the great evil of fin, and our ruined condition thereby; otherwise, Moses had faid, to the amount of nothing, that he begat in his own likenefs, if he defigned not to inform his readers that his own likeness, or the likeness of himself in the third verse, refering to Adam, might be confidered as opposed to the likeness of God, in verfe 1ft, in which Adam was firft created. As we therefore partake of mortal bodies, fubject to disease, and death, we carry with us a fufficient proof of our original; nor had Cain himself a more visible mark of the divine difpleasure upon him, than we bear in our bodies fentenced by a right and irrevocable decree to return to their primitive duft. 14th, Mortality is the effect of fin, for by fin fame death, Rom. v. 12. as we then are mortal crea |