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would punish them at that rate. He puts her in hope of escaping punishment. Thus Satan resisted, flies; but where one method fails he will try another, and, through hopes of impunity entertained in one's heart, he often gains his purpose.

5. He proceeds as one that wished well to her and her husband, and pretends to shew how they might both arrive at a high pitch of happiness speedily: even to be as gods, and that in knowledge or intellectual delights; insinuating withal, that, by the very name of the tree, the truth of what he said might appear. For (said the serpent)"God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." Thus the liar and murderer still ruins men, pretending to make them happy, while he carries on their destruction.

6. Lastly, She being ensnared, he makes use of her to tempt her husband, and prevails, Gen. iii. 6, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise; she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." And thus he often conveys his temptations to us, by those whose interest in us and affection to us, we doubt not, and whom therefore we suspect not; and so he rends men with wedges of their own timber, making one a suare to another.

God left Man to the Freedom of his own Will.

Secondly, God left man to the freedom of his own will in this matter. He was not the cause of his fall; he moved him not, nor could he move him to it; James iii. 13, " For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." Such is the holiness of his nature. He gave him a power to stand if he would, and he took not away from him any grace given; but, for his trial, left him to his freedom of will, with which he was created. God made him good and righteous, and the natural set of his will was to good only, Eccl. vii. 26. But it was liable to change, yet only to change by himself; he could only be made evil or sinful by his own choice.

If it be asked, why man was not set beyond the possibility of change. It is to be remembered, that absolute immutability is the peculiar prerogative of God himself, and every creature, in as far as it is a creature, is incapable of being so immutable. Yet the creature may be in some sense made immutable, that is, so as it shall not be possible for it actually to fall from its goodness, though there is still a changeableness in its nature. Now, if man had been created without so much as a remote power in himself to change himself, he had not been a free agent; but God might have so established him, as

that he could not actually have fallen; yet that would have been owing to confirming grace. The which why the Lord did not bestow on him, it belongs not to us to define; only he was no debtor to him for it.

Man abused the Freedom of his Will.

Thirdly, Man abused his own liberty or freedom of will, and complied with the temptation, and so broke the covenant. He only himself was the true and proper cause of his own falling; not God, for he can never be the author of sin; not the devil, nor Eve, for they could only tempt and entice, but not force him. It was his own choice, he did it freely without coaction or compulsion; and he could have stood if he would. And thus was the fatal step made, whereby the covenant was broken.

How the Covenant of Works was Broken.

III. I shall consider how the covenant of works was broken by this fatal step. We may take up this in three things.

1. The command was violated. The covenant required perfect obedience, but it was not given; perpetual obedience, but man did soon come to a stand in the course of obedience, and went no further. Here he disobeyed, here he shook off the yoke, here he sinned against his God. Thus the condition of the covenant of works was broken.

2. The right and title to the promised benefit by that covenant was undermined. The promised life was lost, man had no more any pretensions to it; he could no more plead the reward, which was to be given him in hand; and the prospect of the reward, which before his disobedience he had in hope, was entirely cut off. Thus failing in his performance of the condition of the covenant, he rendered the promise of the covenant null and void, as if it had never been made.

3. He fell under the penalty of the covenant, became liable to death in its utmost extent. As he had no more ado with the promise, the threatening now bound him to bear the wrath threatened for the satisfaction of divine justice. The blessing of the covenant being lost, the curse of it seized him, and he was bound with the cords of death; the which was let out as a flood, at that breach which was made in the covenant, and overflowed.

(1.) The soul of man, so that it died spiritually, losing the image of God, and losing the favour of God. Man turning from God as his chief end, the image of God in his soul was defaced, Gen v. 1, 3, His saving knowledge was lost; witness the cover of fig-leaves which

our first parents prepared for covering of their nakedness, and their pretending to hide themselves from the presence of God, Gen. iii. 7. The righteousness of his will was lost; witness their aversion to God, hiding themselves from him, their excusing of their sin, transferring of their guilt, the man laying the blame on the woman, the woman on the serpent; nay, Adam not obscurely reflected on God himself. The holiness and regularity of their affections went off; they were filled with disorder, confusion, and shame. They lost God's favour, were seized with horror of conscience, Gen. iii. 8, were driven out of paradise, like a divorced woman out of the house of her husband, declared incapable of communion with God, and debarred from the tree of life, the seal of the covenant.

(2.) The body of man became mortal, death working within it and without it, from that moment the covenant was broken. He was condemned to toil and weariness for life, and then to return to the dust at length, the frame and constitution of man's body having become deadly from the moment of his breaking the covenant. And sorrow and pain in breeding and bringing forth of children, was laid on the female sex, as a particular mark of displeasure with the first sin; and the ground was cursed for man's sake, because of the dependance of the life of man upon it..

(3.) Lastly, Soul and body were subjected and bound over to eternal death in hell. For this was comprehended in the threatening of the covenant of works, as has been already shewn.

Thus was the covenant of works broken. Yet man was not, and could not thereby be freed from that covenant; still he was bound to obedience, according to the command of it; and to satisfaction, according to the threatening. Only God was no more obliged to fulfil his promise, since it was conditional, and the condition was broken.

Application of the Doctrine of the Breach of the Covenant of Works.

USE I. Here is a memorial which we have need ever to carry about with us, while we live in this world; A memorial,

1. Of the nothingness of the creature, when left to itself. God left some of the angels to themselves and they turned devils; he left innocent Adam to himself, and he turned apostate. O the need of continual supplies of grace! There was no bent and inclination to evil naturally in them; but in us there is a natural propensity to turn from God. What need have we then to cry, "Lead us not into temptation?" What need of continual dependence upon the Lord ? 2. Of the hopelessness of salvation by works. That was the way

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which man was first set on, and that is the way which man naturally
is set to follow unto this day. But what hope can there be that
way?
Adam was able to work for life, having sufficient strength
laid to his hand, and yet he miscarried in it; how can it prosper in
our hands, who are without strength, and whose work-arm is broken;
he had less to do than we have now, only perfect obedience was re-
quired of him at first; but of us now is required not only perfect
obedience, but satisfaction for sin done. We have more work and
less strength than Adam had. When he fell a-working for heaven,
which work was marred in his hand, it may justly make us to despair
of salvation that way. He could not stand, how shall we that are
fallen raise up ourselves? How unlikely is it that self-destroyers
shall be their own saviours?

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USE II. Here is a watchword which we ought never to forget.

1. Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The devil still goes about seeking whom he may devour. No state, while ye are here, can secure you from temptation. Though ye be in a state of friendship with God, he will attack you. No place, though a paradise can protect you. He has malice enough to drive you to the greatest sins; subtilty and long experience to manage the temptation so as it may best take. Do not parley with temptation, listening to the tempter may bring on doubting, doubting will bring on disbelieving, and disbelieving will bring on full compliance. O therefore watch!

2. Take heed of forgetting the covenant of your God. When men lose the sense of the bond of the covenant, they cannot long forbear the breaking of it. We see this in Adam our father, and we may see it daily in men's personal covenants, and the national covenants these lands are under the bonds of. The impression of them is worn off, and so the duties of them are cast behind men's backs. No wonder that this is the sin of the land, and of particular persons, seeing we are all children of the great covenant transgressor, Adam.

USE III. Lastly, Here is a demonstration of the absolute necessity of being united to the second Adam, who kept the second covenant, and thereby fulfilled the demands of the first covenant. See your absolute need of him; prize him, and flee to him by faith, behold him with an eye of faith who has repaired the breach. The first Adam broke the first covenant, by eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree; Christ has repaired the breach by hanging on a tree and bearing the curse for his people. Adam's preposterons love to his wife made him sin; Christ's love to his spouse made him suffer and satisfy. In a garden Adam sinned, and therefore in a garden Christ was buried. Eating ruined man, and by eating he is saved

again. By eating the forbidden fruit all died; and by eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood by faith, the soul gets life again, John vi. 57. O then have recourse to Christ; and thus shall you he saved from the ruins of the fall and have an interest in the covenant made with Christ, the condition of which being already fulfilled by him, can never be broken, or they who are once in it ever fall out of it again.

PART III.

OF THE IMPUTATION OF ADAM'S FIRST SIN TO HIS POSTERITY.

ROMANS V. 19,

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

YE have heard of the making of the original contract betwixt God and man, the covenant of works; as also of the breaking of it by our father Adam. This text shews our concern in the breach of that covenant; and it is necessary we be sensible of it, that we be not eternally ruined thereby, but, being convinced of that debt lying on our head, may flee to and make use of the great Surety for removing it from us.

In this chapter, ver. 14, the apostle shews Adam to have been a figure or type of Christ; and from ver. 12, and downwards, he institutes a comparison betwixt these two, the common heads and representatives of mankind, though Christ's representation is not so extensive as Adam's; but each of them represented his seed; Adam his natural seed, and Christ all his spiritual elect seed. Adam by his disobedience broke the first covenant; Christ by his obedience to the death fulfilled the second covenant. The disobedience of the one brings condemnation and death on those that are his; the obedience of the other brings justification and life to all that are his. The reason of both is given in the text; namely, that by the one all his are made sinners, and sinners are justly condemned and die; by the other all his are made righteous, and the righteous must, according to the covenant, be justified and live.

So the text is a comparison made betwixt the effect of Adam's disobedience, and the effect of Christ's obedience. The clauses are quite contrary the one to the other, as light and darkness; and so VOL. XI.

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