By the which words we are taught that as in Adam all men universally sinned, so in Adam all men universally received the reward of sin; that is to say, became mortal and subject unto death, having in themselves nothing but everlasting damnation both of body and soul. They became, as David saith, corrupt and abominable; they went all out of the way, there was none that did good, no not one. O what a miserable and woful state was this, that the sin of one man should condemn and destroy all men; that nothing in all the world might be looked for, but only pangs of death and pains of hell! had it been any marvel if mankind had been utterly driven to desperation, being thus fallen from life to death, from salvation to destruction, from heaven to hell?"

They must indeed, my friend, have been "driven to desperation," if God, in his infinite mercy, had not revealed a remedy co-extensive in its results with the catastrophe which had taken place. But such a remedy was immediately revealed and even paradise, and the probation of the first Adam there, had been so contrived, in anticipation of the event, as to illustrate that remedy.

The importance of the third chapter of Genesis, in the scheme of Christian Theology, is so great, that it is the only clew to the subsequent parts of Divine Revelation. Without a speculative knowledge of the fact therein narrated, the Bible

must be unintelligible; and without an experimental perception of the effects which the catastrophe therein described has produced in ourselves, "the glorious Gospel of the blessed God" cannot be estimated aright. Therein “we have an historical solution of that great question which philosophy can never solve, Whence came evil?† Evil was introduced, according to this history, by the self-will of the creature, arrogating to itself independance on the will of God, taking upon itself to judge of the utility of the restraints laid upon it; and choosing, like a God, its own means of happiness. This was the introduction of moral evil; and moral evil, by the appointment of the Creator, drew after it physical. Thus the race of man, by the disobedience of the first pair was involved in calamity, from which it could no otherwise be extricated, than by the immediate act of the God who had been offended.

"Our first parents were drawn into a violation of the prohibition laid upon them, by the acts of a seducer. The woman was approached by a serpent, who opened a conversation with her, by asking her, Whether it was really true, that God permitted them not to eat of every tree of the garden?' The manner in which the question

* Horsley's Biblical Criticism. Vol. I. p. 12.

† Ποθεν το Κακον ;

was put implied that any restriction, in the use of the fruits of the garden, seemed so harsh and unnatural to the proposer of the question, that he could not believe any such had been imposed; and he made the inquiry of Eve to satisfy his doubts. When she told him they had the free enjoyment of all the fruits of the garden, except that of a single tree which was forbidden, with a warning that if they touched it they should surely die; the serpent told her that such effect would not follow the eating of the forbidden fruit; that, on the contrary, their faculties would be immediately quickened and enlarged, and ye shall be as Gods, knowing Good and Evil:' And this, he said, God, who had laid them under the prohibition, knew. The woman was persuaded to make the fatal experiment, and the man was enticed by his wife to follow her example.

"According to this account of the delinquency of our first parents, it began in infidelity, and amounted to nothing less than an apostacy from God, to join with a being evidently at variance with him, who suggested to them a mistrust of God's goodness, and taught them to disregard his threatenings.

The

"After the commission of the crime Jehovah came down to examine the delinquents. fact was confessed: the man had nothing to plead but the persuasions of his wife; the woman, the seduction of the serpent; and the serpent

attempted no defence. On him the Judge pronounced an unqualified curse. The woman and the man were informed of circumstances of deterioration, that were immediately to take place in their condition; and the man was told that, after a life of hardship and toil, he should return to the dust from whence he had been taken. Hope, nevertheless, of a final restoration was held out to them, in an intimation contained in the terms of the curse upon the serpent, that, after a long enmity between him and the human race, his entire defeat would be accomplished by THE SEED OF THE WOMAN. This was certainly but a reserved and obscure intimation of the Saviour. But the promise was very fully opened and explained by subsequent communications, and by the immediate institution of a form of worship, which consisted in symbolical rites referring to the method of redemption by the blood and merits of the Incarnate Saviour. Of these symbolical rites, animal sacrifice was a remarkable feature: and the early mention of such sacrifices is a proof of the very early institution of that symbolical worship, in which they were so essential a part.

"The history of the fall is the basis of the whole religion of the fallen creature; and it is the principle of unity, which makes one consistent whole of the various revelations and religious institutions of different ages. The patriarchal

revelations; the call of Abraham; the mark set upon his family; the promises to him, his son, and grandson; the deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptian servitude; the Mosaic dispensation; the lessons of the Hebrew prophets; are, all, only different parts of one grand scheme for the restoration of man, by the gradual discipline of revealed religion, and by the merits of the Redeemer, from the ruin of the fall. The fall is the fact which is the basis of the whole superstructure, and unites the various parts; which, without reference to man's disobedience, and to a restoration by God's mercy in a manner consistent with his justice, have no agreement or consistency the one with the other. Insomuch that it is difficult to conceive, that any can in good earnest believe the Gospel, who can find no vestige, in this third chapter of Genesis, of a seducing devil, or a redeeming Saviour.

"It is indeed very remarkable that in this History of the Fall, the Seducer is never mentioned by any other name than that of the Serpent; nor is any intimation given, according to any of the versions, that a creature of another order lurked under the disguise of the Serpent-form: and this may seem to afford no light objection to the literal acceptation of the history which we would uphold, and on which all our deductions from it depend. For if the serpent be an allegorical serpent, why may not every thing else, in