find the hearts of our hearers more deeply affected under a sense of their depravity; the truths of the gofpel more cordially embraced, and the Lord Jesus Christ in the chariot of his gospel, would meet with a much more hearty welcome amongst his wretched and indigent creatures.

Is it not for want of this, that many think themselves to be rich, and increased with goods, while in reality they are wretched, poor, miferable, blind and naked? Will any but the diseased come to Christ for a cure ? If we would be able minifters of the new testament, we must labour to make the people sensible, of what was tranfacted in the garden of Eden, and stands upon facred record in the old. That you who hear me this day, may be reminded of your fallen condition; and from thence be led to look for fuccour and falvation to the great repairer of the breach; I must beg the favour of you to take a walk with me into yonder garden; it is indeed a place, a garden of pleasure; to compare with which, all that art improved, or nature now can boaft, would be mean and contemptible; it is a garden planted by God himself, it is Eden. We have here prefented to our view, Adam in his perfect state, and the adorable creator of all things covenanting with his new made creature; his grant was large, and loudly declared the goodness of his God; of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; his prohibition was small, by which he might understand, that obedience was all the creator fought from his creature; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt furely die.

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From

From these words, I propose to prove to you the following things :

First, That corporal death, or the death of Adam's body was a consequence of his fin.

Second, That the death threatened in the text, was corporal, spiritual, and eternal.

Third, That the penalty was inflicted according to threatening that day.

Fourth, That all the posterity of Adam, are guilty through his tranfgreffion.

Fifth, That there can be no salvation or deliverance from this curse, but by Chrift.

I am ashamed to amuse you, and obtrude upon your attention this first head of my discourse; which would feem to me altogether as unnecessary, and affronting to your natural understandings, as if I should go about to demonftrate to you that the whole is greater than any of it's parts, or that it is day-light when the mid-day fun shines full in your face; did not the Socinians with an air of boldness peculiar to themselves, and an art of perverfion never practised but by men of these principles, deny the substance of it. Should they deny that many children die in their infancy, and who could not be guilty of actual fins; matter of fact would every day rise up in judgment against them, and condemn their assertion as false in the face of the world; and to allow that such infants die in confequence of Adam's fin, would clash with their favourite notion of original purity, before which Diana, nothing must stand, that force or fraud can overturn; therefore it must be maintained at all events, that death is common to us,

not

not as sinners, but as men, and that infants die, not because they are the children of a fallen parent, but a perfect.

When the all-wife creator, is represented in the facred account of this affair, as covenanting with his creature, this was appointed as the test of his obedience, of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; and the penalty to be inflicted in consequence of disobedience, was fet before him in these words, for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt furely die, (Moth tamuth) dying, thou shalt die; the ingemination, or repetition of the word in the original, indicates the certainty of dying; and wherein this did confift, must either be known to Adam, or the fanction would lose its force. But the supposition cannot be admitted without absurdity, that, because Adam had not feen any image of death amongst any of the creatures, (death as yet not having entered into the world) therefore, he must be a stranger to what it meant; feeing, Adam was now in honor, stood upright and fearless in the presence of his maker, and possessed a penetration of judgment (I think it is undoubted) far superior to any of his pofterity. In the preceding chapter, ver. 29th, 30th, we find the munificent creator conferring upon the beloved image of himself, a right and title to every herb of the field, and every plant of the ground; and God said, behold I have given you every herb bearing feed, which is upon the face of all the earth; and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding feed; to you it shall be for meat. This grant, Adam had in common with the beasts of the earth; and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every

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every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is LIFE, I have given every green herb for meat. Now to suppose that Adam was a stranger to death, as confifting in a negation, or deprivation of that life he saw the beasts of the earth enjoy in common with himself; must be to suppose him wanting of that understanding, whereby he could difcern betwixt a beast and a tree, or himfelf and an herb of the field.

It cannot be supposed, that whatever conceptions Adam had of spiritual death, as contained. in the threatening, that he did not comprehend in his idea, the death of the body also, as he would necessarily understand and suppose his crea tor as speaking to him in words to this import,

For my own glory and pleasure I have created thee, and called thee into being by the word " of my power; I have formed for thee a body, " from the dust of the ground, and have ani

mated it with a living foul. I have endued thee "with a fuperior faculty, by which thou standeft diftinguisht from all earth-born creatures, and art capable of contemplating thy own happiness, and the bounteous liberality of thy bene"factor. I have planted this garden for thine " abode, and have plenteously provided for thy table, every thing necessary to support thy earthly frame, and render thy being intirely "comfortable; freely take of every herb and tree, eat, live, and enjoy the blessing of thy being, as the reward of thy obedience, and "commenfurate unto it. But know assuredly, " that if thou art disobedient, thou shalt forfeit

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thy title to all these favours; the herb of the " field which I have now appointed, and endued

" with a power to perpetuate thy existence; shall, deprived of this life-giving quality, minister mortality to thy dying body; while the communicated rays of my spirit, intercepted and

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cut off, shall leave thy beclouded foul in dark"ness and distress." Now in this representation of the passage, (which seems to me natural and easy) it appears impossible that Adam should overlook the circumstance of corporal death, as contained in this threatening; in my opinion it would be far less absurd to suppose, that he had an eye to nothing else.

2d. That bodily death, was a consequence of man's disobedience, appears from the execution of the fentence, chap. 3d, ver. 19th, with which is closed the folemn trial of the unhappy offenders, now doomed to the death they had deserved (except in hope of a deliverer.) The whole of this transaction begun at ver. 8th. carries something in it stupendiously folemn, and strikingly awful. Satan had now betrayed them into fin, and fin had plunged them into ruin; fearful and amazed they flee, when none pursues, and would be glad to find an asylum in the thickest gloom of impenetrable darkness, to hide their guilty heads from their offended God. But where shall a finner flee from his prefence, or whither shall the guilty go from his spirit? The voice of the Lord God summons them to the bar; to which, though with the greatest reluctance, they are constrained to come. The fact appears too full against them to be denied, and the evidence too firm and strong, to be baffled in the inquifition; but mark the effect of fin; what they cannot deny, they attempt to extenuate and lessen, and instead of taking to them