and his will is right. past finding out!”

"How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways

I have been unavoidably led to anticipate some things, which properly belong to the next branch of the subject, under which we are to speak of man as the other party in the covenant, and to inquire in what light he should be viewed.

First, He must be considered as a subject of the Divine government, having no right to appoint his own service, and no choice respecting the mode of being made happy, and bound to acquiesce in the will of his Maker. The proposal of terms, demanded his unhesitating acceptance. This was his duty; he was free from constraint, but not from moral obligation. In this sense the covenant may be called a law, because it was accompanied with authority which could not be declined without open rebellion.

In the second place, We must consider him as not only bound to give his consent, but as willing, in consequence of the rectitude of his nature, and from this rectitude, possessed of the requisite ability for the fulfilment of the condition. He did not enter into the covenant by compulsion, but with perfect freedom, because, whatever seemed right to his Creator, seemed right also to him; and he entertained no doubt, that as the constitution was agreeable to justice, so it was calculated to advance the interests of himself and his posterity. He accepted the terms with joy, and was thankful to God, who dealt with him, not as an absolute Sovereign, but as a Benefactor and a Friend. That he was a proper person to be a party in this transaction, will, I presume, be readily acknowledged. None of his posterity would have been better qualified. He did not, indeed, enjoy the advantage of experience; but the want of it was more than compensated by the perfect knowledge of his duty, and the perfect harmony which subsisted between his will and affections, and the dictates of conscience. There was no ignorance or infirmity exposing him to the hazard of being misled or overcome, but his mind was full of light, and his heart of love.

But the character in which he ought to be chiefly considered, is that of a representative, or federal head, of those who were to spring from his loins. His being a federal head, is very different from his being a natural head. He was the natural head of the human race, as the first man, from whom all other men were to proceed, according to the law of generation; but this relation is not the ground on which his actions were imputable to his posterity. I am disposed to think that the reasonings of some Theologians on this subject are inaccurate, while they account for the present state of human nature upon the simple principle of transmission; maintaining, that as a tree propagates its kind, or produces a tree like itself, so Adam conveyed his own dispositions to his offspring. This is to account for a moral phenomenon by a physical law. Difficulties meet us in the doctrine of representation; but if it be admitted to be true, then imputation is seen to be consonant to justice. It is impossible, I think, to reconcile with justice the idea, that all men are involved in sin merely because their first father happened to be a sinner, just as children frequently exhibit the features of their parents. We cannot conceive that, in this case, any demerit could attach to his descendants, or that they could be punished except by arbitrary will. It appears more agreeable to reason to conceive that, if Adam had been only our natural head, he would have communicated the same nature to us which he received from his Creator, whatever might have befallen himself; because, on this supposition, we should have had no concern in his sin, any more than we are chargeable with the sins of our immediate parents. In the natural world, a corrupt tree may bring forth corrupt fruit, the scion may have all the bad qualities of the parent stock; but Rom. xi. 33.

in the moral world, individuals are originally independent, and stand or fall with one another only in consequence of some new constitution, which has given them a legal and moral identity. We say, therefore, that Adam was not only the natural, but the federal, head of his children.

Here we encounter opposition. That Adam was the federal head of his posterity, is denied by Pelagians and Socinians, who maintain that he acted for himself alone, and that the effects of his fall terminated upon himself. Arminians admit that the whole human race is injured by the first sin, but at the same time controvert the proposition, that Adam was their proper representative. All are expelled from paradise as well as Adam and Eve; women bring forth children with pain; men earn their bread by the sweat of their brows, and all are subjected to death. But death is not properly a punishment, for it cannot be that the innocent should be punished for the sin of another; it is a natural necessity of dying, derived from Adam, on whom this penalty was denounced. He could not procreate children, in respect of their condition, happier than himself. They are unavoidably exposed to the same evils, as a father who was once rich, and has been deprived of his property for his crimes, begets children who are poor, but who, if he had not sinned, would have inherited his wealth; not that the children suffer the punishment of their fathers, but experience the operation of a law of nature, according to which a person cannot transmit to others, good things which he does not himself possess. These are their views, as stated by Limborch, who further maintains, that Adam can be considered as the representative of his posterity, only in the same sense in which this may be affirmed of any head of a family, any progenitor of a race; and expressly denies that a covenant was made with him in our name.

Here the objections against considering Adam simply as our natural head, which were formerly mentioned, ought to be recollected. These men are willing to admit that, in consequence of the fall of our first parent, we are subjected to many temporal evils, and even that men are born less pure than he was, and with a certain inclination to sin; but they see an insuperable difficulty in the idea that he was the representative of his descendants, for how could he be such without their consent? It may be truly said that they strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel; for surely it is less repugnant to reason and justice, that we should suffer through Adam, because we were legally connected with him, and he acted in our name, than that we should suffer solely because we derive our being from him by generation, although we had no concern in his sin. In the one case, although we may not fully understand the principle on which he was constituted our representative, we perceive a legal ground on which guilt is imputed to us; but in the other, we cannot discover any just cause that any share of the fatal effects of his transgression should fall to our lot. It strengthens the argument, that, according to Arminians, not our physical but our moral state is deteriorated, for we are born less pure; which, if it has any meaning, must signify that we are at least in some degree polluted; and we have a natural inclination to sin, which, in spite of all evasions, must be itself sinful. In plain language, we have become depraved and miserable, without any good reason; our present state is not our crime, but our misfortune. They exclaim against our doctrine, as making God the author of sin, but the odious consequence flows more directly from their own. To pretend that, although death and other temporal evils have come upon us through the sin of Adam, yet these are not to be regarded as a punishment, is neither more nor less than to say,They must not be called a punishment, because this would not agree with our system. If we should concede that they are a punishment, we should be compelled to admit that the sin of the

* Limborchii Theol. Christ. lib. iii. cap. 3,

first man is imputed to his posterity, and that he was their federal head. We deny, therefore, that the labours and sorrows of the present life, the loss of such joys as are left to us at its close, and the dreadful agonies and terrors with which death is often attended, have the nature of a penalty.' In the same manner, a man may call black white, and bitter sweet, because it will serve his purpose; but he would be the veriest simpleton who should believe him. If our antagonists will change the meaning of words, they cannot alter the nature of things. Pain and death are evils, and when inflicted by the hand of a just God, must be punishments; for although the innocent may be harassed and destroyed by the arbitrary exercise of human power, none but the guilty suffer under His administration.

These observations will assist us in establishing the point under consideration. That Adam was the federal head of his posterity, we may confidently infer from the fact, that the effects of his sin extend to all his offspring without exception. It has been said, indeed, that in the record of the transaction, no mention is made of his posterity, and the words of the threatening are addressed exclusively to him. But there is little force in this objection. If we attend to the history of our first parents in paradise, we shall find, that several things were said to them, in which, although there is no explicit reference to their posterity, they are evidently comprehended. When God said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," no person supposes that the command, or rather the promise in the form of an injunction, was restricted to Adam and Eve, it being acknowledged on all hands, that it respected their descendants, and that the propagation of the human species ever since is the consequence of it. The words, "Behold I have given you the herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree on the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat," were not spoken to them alone, but were a gift of the productions of the soil to their successors in all ages. To come more closely to the subject, the threatening, "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," was addressed in the first instance to Adam alone, but certainly was not intended to be limited to him, as is evident from its execution upon his children. Hence the sentence pronounced upon Adam, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,"§ must be viewed as a sentence upon all who, in virtue of it, suffer death and dissolution in the grave. Again, no person will say, that the curse respected the original transgressor alone, although there is not a hint that it would light upon others. Every man who looks upon our fields, and observes the labour which is necessary to cultivate them; every man who toils from morning to night in order to procure subsistence for himself and his family, will be compelled by painful experience to acknowledge, that the denunciation retains its force in this distant age of the world. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.-In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground."]

These observations may fully satisfy us, that it is not a valid objection against the representative character of Adam, that he was addressed as an individual, and no direct notice is taken of his descendants. The extension of the effects of his fall to those who have sprung from him, in the long succession of almost six thousand years, is a proof which cannot be fairly resisted, that he did not fall alone. Upon any other hypothesis, we cannot make sense of such declarations as the following, and we have seen how contrary to sound reason and Scripture are the attempts to explain them away. "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners."¶ came upon all men to condemnation."**

"By the offence of one, judgment "By one man sin entered into the

world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."*"In Adain all died." When mention is made of the first and second Adam, and the one is called the figure of the other, there must be a resemblance between them; and in what does it consist? In every respect but one, they are dissimilar. "The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven." The first man entailed guilt and death as the fatal inheritance of his children; the Second Man communicates righteousness and life. The contrast is stated at considerable length by Paul, in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. But the first Adam was a figure of the second, if he was a public person, a federal head. On this supposition we perceive the resemblance; but it fails if there was no covenant with our great progenitor, and the words of Scripture convey a false idea. Jesus Christ, who was the Surety of sinners, might be with propriety called the Second Adam, if the first Adam was the representative of his seed; but if there is no legal relation between him and them, the appellation is not founded on truth.

I have endeavoured to prove the fact, but I do not pretend fully to explain it. President Edwards, in his book on Original Sin, which is an admirable work, and one of the ablest and most triumphant refutations of error which is to be found in our language, in answering the objection, that to deal with Adam and his posterity as one, was to act contrarily to truth, because they were not one but distinct, enters into a long dissertation upon the subject of identity. He shows that the identity of creatures is not an absolute, independent identity, like that of the Creator, who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, but a dependent identity founded on an arbitrary constitution. It is owing to this constitution, that an old tree is the same with the seedling which sprung from the soil some hundred years before, and that the human body, which undergoes innumerable changes, is the same in old age and in infancy. To the same cause we must attribute the identity of all created beings, for they do not exist now, because they existed the last moment, as if nature went on in its course mechanically, or by its intrinsic power; but their preservation is equivalent to a continued creation. In the same way we explain the identity of the soul, and its uninterrupted consciousness; it being impossible to assign any satisfactory reason, why a man is conscious that he is the being that he was forty years ago, but the divine constitution. The conclusion which he draws from these premises is, that the objection, which maintains that to consider Adam and his posterity as one was contrary to truth, is built upon a false hypothesis; because it is a divine constitution, which makes truth in all matters of identity. But, with the leave of this great man, the cases are not analogous. In the case of created beings in general, identity is their continued existence; but in the case before us, it is the conjunction of separate beings by a legal union, which affects their moral state and final destiny. It is evidently a different thing to prolong the existence of a creature, and give it a consciousness of being the same at successive periods, from the connecting of many individuals together, so as to identify their actions and interests. The one is a physical, and the other a moral union, and therefore the one does not serve in any degree to illustrate the other. The difficulty remains as it was. The question is not about the power, but about the justice of God, not what he could do, but what it was consistent with his character to do; and the result of this metaphysical inquiry into identity is to prove, what we understood as well before, that the oneness of Adam and his posterity was founded on the will of God. What we wish to know is, how this constitution can be reconciled with his righteousness and goodness; but it throws no light upon this subject to inform us, that the power which established identity in natural † 1 Cor. xv. 22.

Rom. v. 12.

+ Ib. 47.

things, so associated Adam and his seed that they were to stand or to fall together. When we are asking, whether it was right in God to do so, we cannot be satisfied by being told that he was able to do it. It is undoubtedly enough that God has willed any thing, because it is certain, that he never wills what is unwise or unjust; but when our reasonings end in this point, we have unquestionably failed, if we set out with a professed design to solve the objections of infidelity, and to settle the wavering judgment on the basis of con

viction.

The condition of the covenant was obedience to the law under which man was placed, and it is called the condition, because his right to the enjoyment of life was suspended upon it. The only precept mentioned in the narrative of Moses, is that which relates to the tree of knowledge. If he abstained from its fruit he should live, if he tasted it he should die. But if we consider, that the positive precept was given merely to make trial of Adam, we shall be convinced that his obedience was not limited to it, or, in other words, that it was not the only duty enjoined upon him. The moral law was not suspended, and this new precept substituted in its room, so that, in all other respects, he was for a time at liberty to do what he pleased. That law is immutable in its obligations, being founded on the nature and relations of God and man; and it is impossible, therefore, that a creature should, by any dispensation, be exempted from its authority for a single moment. It was written upon the heart of man at his creation, and remained there under this new arrangement, in characters as distinct and impressive as ever. But the precept concerning the tree of knowledge was properly the condition, because it was by it that man's respect to the authority which had enacted the whole law was to be tried. I shall not repeat what was formerly said concerning its fitness to answer the design. Adam was considered as a subject of the Divine government, and as a holy creature capable of performing any duty which his Maker should be pleased to enjoin. He possessed in full vigour the principle of obedience, and would not feel any duty to be burdensome, and still less one so easy in performance. It has been asked, Would the covenant have been broken by the transgression of any other precept of the law? We must answer in the affirmative, if the design of the positive precept was, to make trial of the obedience of Adam, for he would have been equally unworthy of happiness, and deserving of punishment, if he had renounced the authority of God in any other instance. The alienation of his heart from God would have been the same. The positive precept was not more sacred than the other precepts of the law. There is no sufficient ground for a positive affirmation; but it is possible, that this was the only precept in respect of which Adam was in danger of failing. As it was the proposed test of his obedience, it might be that here only he was left to himself. It is easy to conceive the Divine power to have guarded him against transgressing in any other matter. There is no absurdity in supposing that, while he was vulnerable in this point, he was defended every where else, against the assaults of the enemy; and that in this manner it was secured, that the precept relative to the tree of knowledge should prove, what it seems to have been intended to be, the only test of his allegiance to his Creator. This was the only particular about which there might arise a contest of his will with the will of God. I merely throw out this hint for consideration; but, if there is any truth in it, we get rid of the curious but useless inquiry, What would have been the consequence, if Adam had religiously abstained from the forbidden fruit, but had committed some other transgression?

In some systems, the condition of the covenant is said to have been perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience; but this statement is far from being accurate. I do not deny, that it required perfect obedience in the sense already explained. The whole law was concentrated in a single positive precept,