think it is exceeding natural to suppose, that as Adam had given her the first name from the manner of her creation, so he gave her the new name from redemption, and as it were new creation, through a Redeemer of her seed. And it is equally probable that he should give her this name from that which comforted him, with respect to the curse that God had pronounced on him and the earth, as Lamech named Noah, Gen. v. 29. Saying, this same shall comfort us concerning our work, and toil of our 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. (See Gen. iii. 15-20.) Now as to the consequence which I infer from Adam 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 tempting the womanit is, 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 indeed any calamity at all, brought upon their posterity by Satan's malice in that temptation, if instead of that, all the consequent death and sorrow was the fruit of God's fatherly love? an instance of his free and sovereign favour? And if multitudes of Eve's posterity are saved from either spiritual or temporal death by a Redeemer, one 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 his posterity 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: I. 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, accord ing 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 by one transgression, without waiting 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 shall 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.-Besides, II. If the words had implied that Adam should die that very day (within twenty four or twelve hours) or that moment in which 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 favour 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 beauty and vigour, 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 scripturelanguage, 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. 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 till 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 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 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. T. against Adam being supposed to be a federal head for his posterity, that it gives him greater honour 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 shew that there is no weight in this objection. For the benefit of Christ's merit 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 saved from the infinitely dreadful effects of Adam's sin, and many from immense guilt, pollution, and misery, by personal sins. They are also brought to a holy and a happy state through infinite obstacles; and 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-dis * Page 120, &c. S. pensation, 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, extraordinary, and glorious season, often spoken of, none can tell. And the honour 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 him after his fall, founded on the foregoing threatening; and consider the curse denouncon the ground for his sake, for his sorrow, and that of his posterity; 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's 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--as the head of the human species-and had respect to his posterity, as included in him. And it must appear that this history is given by divine direction, in the beginning of the first written revelation, in order 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 devered in a plain account of things, which easily and naturally exhibits them to our understandings. CHAP. II. Observations on other Parts of the holy Scriptures, chiefly in the 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 altogether become filthy: There is none that doeth good; no, not one. The like we have again, Psal. liii. 2, 3.—Dr. T. 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 human 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, 10-12. to prove the universal corruption of mankind; but yet in the same chapter he supposes the same persons spoken of as wicked may become righteous, through the righteousness and grace of God. 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 congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, 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 worst men in Israel by this name? Why he should choose thus to disgrace mankind, 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 |