This sin of breaking the covenant of works is our sin in the whole compass and extent of it. We must look back to the state of innocence, and behold the human nature adorned with the glorious image of God in our father Adam, and us in his loins, taken into covenant with God, a covenant of life upon condition of perfect obedience, which we in him were able to give, and fenced with a threatening of death, which we were not liable to before we sinned. And we must consider, with sorrow of heart, how we broke that covenant in Adam; and, with bitter repentance, shame, and self-loathing, lament over the eating of that forbidden fruit, and all the ingredients of it, our horrid unbelief, pride, ambition, presumption, and bold curiosity, our monstrous ingratitude, &c. The fearful aggravations of it must accent our lamentation, that it was in the state of righteousness of our nature the fact was committed, how small and sorry an object was the covenant broken for, a thing though small yet sacred, the place where, the time when, and the direful effects and consequents of it on ourselves. And we must apply to the Head of the second covenant for our reparation, pardon, and reconciliation with God. Vain men who have never been deeply convinced of sin by the working of the Spirit on their hearts, but measure their religion more by their corrupt reason than God's word, will be apt to look on these things as idle tales, and to say in their hearts, Would to God we may mourn for our own sins, the sins that we ourselves have been guilty of. Alas, sirs, that sin, with all the ingredients and aggravations of it, as is said, is as really your own sin, as the lies ye have made with your own tongue, the profane oaths ye have sworn, &c., Rom. v. 12, 19, "By one man's sin, death entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." And if it be not forgiven you, through the atoning blood of Christ, it will sink you into hell; and we know no sins that are forgiven, but they are repented of expressly, if known, and virtually if unknown. We find David mourning over it, Psalm li. 5, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." And so ought all of us to mourn over it every day of our life, and have recourse to the blood of Jesus for pardon of it. And I shall shew, How Adam's sin, in breaking the Covenant of Works, is the sin of his Posterity. II. How Adam's sin of breaking the covenant of works is our sin, our breaking it. 1. It is really ours in itself. It is not ours in its effects only, as a father's sin in riotously spending his estate, reaches his whole family, reducing them to poverty and want. Though the effects of that riotous spending, the poverty, misery, and waut, be theirs; yet the riotous spending is the father's only. But so is it not in this case. It is true, the effects of it, the sinful and penal evils followng this sin, are ours; we see them, we feel them, and the most stu¡pid groan under them; but the sin itself is ours too. And, (1.) The guilt of it is ours, Rom. v. 18, "By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation;" that is, the guilt of sin, whereby the soul is bound over to God's wrath, by virtue of the sanction of the law. Thus that word is used frequently in the scripture, as appears from John iii. 18, "He that believeth not, is condemned already." Rom. viii. 1, "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus;" though it is often mistaken for what we call damnation, by which is understood the full execution of the law's sentence after death. So the guilt of the eating of the forbidden fruit lies on all men naturally as their guilt; though but one man's mouth tasted it, the guilt of the crime seizes all men. Every man is bound over to God's wrath for it, till the Lord Jesus, by an application of his blood to the soul, loose the cords of death. (2.) The fault of it is ours, Rom. v. ly, in Adam. The fault lies in its contrariety to the holy commandment; this made it a faulty deed, a criminal action, a sin against God; and as such it is ours. We in Adam transgressed the law, broke through the hedge, and so broke the covenant. If the fault were not ours, a holy God would never punish us for it: but certain it is, that he does punish the children of Adam for it, Rom. v. 14, "Death reigned from Adam to Moseg, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." It is true indeed, God may punish one that is not really faulty, for the fault of another, if he do voluntarily substitute himself in the room of the faulty, having a full power so to dispose of himself; and that was the case of Christ the Mediator; but that cannot be pretended to be our case with respect to Adam's sin. ང་ "All have sinned," name (3.) The stain and blot of it is ours. The whole nature of man was tainted with it, vitiated, and blackened, and, through defilement and loathsomeness thereby, rendered incapable of, and quite unfit for, communion with God, Gen. iii. 24. This sin defiled the whole mass of man's nature, from our father Adam going through all his posterity, like leaven through the whole lump, 1 Cor. xv. 22, "In Adam all die;" their souls die spiritually; his whole race, by this sin, became as dead carcases. Thus Adam's sin, in itself, is really ours. 2. It is ours in law-reckoning; God imputes it to us, charges it 1 upon us all once, in our natural state; though whenever a soul believes in Christ, it is disimputed to that soul, Rom. viii. 1, "There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." But, by a sentence passed in the court of heaven, all mankind are decerned sinners, transgressors of the law, guilty of the first sin, and therefore liable to death, the penalty of the covenant, Rom. v. 12, 19, "All have sinned.-By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." And for as much as the judgment of God is according to truth, the matter must stand in itself, as it is found in that law-reckoning; that is to say, because we are really sinners in Adam, therefore we are reckoned in law to be so. So that the imputation of Adam's sin to us, necessarily presupposes its being really ours. Proof of the Imputation of Adam's First Sin to his Posterity.. III. I shall evince the truth of the doctrine, and prove the imputation of Adam's first sin, the sin of breaking the covenant of works, by eating the forbidden fruit, to his posterity." 1. The scripture plainly teacheth, that all sinned in Adam, and were made sinners by his first sin, which was the breaking of the covenant of works, by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, Rom. v. 12, 19, both forecited. Where it is to be remarked, (1.) That the apostle speaks of the first sin in both texts; for as in the 19th verse, he calls it "that disobedience;" so in ver. 12, the or that sin, by way of eminency, as vers. 14, 15, in opposition to that obedience, by way of eminency, ver. 19, whereas, speaking of sin in general, ver. 13, he calls it simply sin. Besides, he speaks of that sin, by which death entered into the world; as by one man that sin entered into the world, and by that sin death; but it is evident, that it was by the first sin that death entered into the world; therefore all sinned in Adam in breaking the covenant of works. This also is clear from the scope of this chapter, which is to account for the justification of sinners by the obedience of Christ, which the apostle does by shewing that Christ died in our room and stead, vers. 7—11, and he sums up the whole matter in this conclusion; ver. 12, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;" and this conclusion he afterwards enlarges upon. The words, it is plain, must have something understood, to make up the sense; and I conceive it is this; "Wherefore it is even as by one man that sin entered into the world," &c. i. e. The matter of the justification of a sinner before God lies even as the condemnation and death of sinners by that sin of one man, &c. (2.) That the apostle determines all men to have sinned that sin. For that, or in whom* (as * In Greek to'q. The Mark ii. 5) all have sinned. But that this is the sense, however, the words be rendered, appears, if it is considered, [1.] That death entered into the world by that sin, and so passed on all men; but, according to the apostle, it could not pass on all men for that sin, but for that all were the sinners; for where death comes, sin must needs be before; by the rule of justice no man can die for a sin he is not guilty of. [2.] If all sinned, infants sinned too; but infants are not capable of having sinned otherwise than in Adam. apostle teaches very plainly, that infants are comprehended in these all, and that they sinned, ver. 14, "that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression," which clearly bears them to have sinned another way. (3.) By that sin we were constituted or made sinners, ver. 19, not by consent and approbation, nor by imitation, but by imputation, as was argued before; and consequently, since the judgment of God is according to truth, we sinned that sin. 2. All are under the guilt of that sin in Adam, till it be removed in justification by faith in Jesus Christ; they are, by virtue of that sin, bound over to death, and the eternal wrath of God. This the scripture teaches evidently, 1 Cor. xv. 22, "In Adam all die." But how can they die in him, if they did not sin in him? Rom. v. 12, "By one man-death passed upon all." Sin then behoved in the first place by him to pass on all; ver. 15, "Through the offence of one many be dead." That offence therefore behoved to be their offence, ver. 18, "By the offence of one, it was (viz. the offence) upon all men unto condemnation," i. e. the guilt of eternal wrath; but how could they be condemned by a holy and just God for an offence that was not their offence, it being undeniable that they did not substitute themselves, nor were they substituted by another, in the room of the offender? When the apostle tells us, that "there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus," Rom. viii. 1, does he not plainly teach us, (1.) That all who are not in Christ, are under condemnation, whoever they be, whether guilty of actual sin in their own persons or not, as infants and idiots? (2.) That even such as are now in Christ, were under condemnation, all along while they were not in him? Let men take a view of our guilty state in Adam, that wrath which by nature we stand adjudged to, Eph. ii. 3, which the scripture plainly teaches; and then consider the holy, just nature of God; they shall be obliged to own that we sinned in Adam, and that his sin is ours as well as his, and that that wrath on that account is just. But corrupt unsubdued nature firstframes to itself a notion of God's justice, according to its own principles, and then rejects this imputation as inconsistent there with, and then puts a sense on clear scripture texts agreeable to its preconceived notions. 3. The universal depravation and corruption of human nature is a glaring evidence of this. Man is now despoiled of his primitive glory and integrity, the image of God, the rectitude of his nature, with which he was created; and instead of it his whole nature is corrupted, there is in it a bent and propensity to evil. His mind is darkened, his will perverse, his affections altogether disorderly. He is born in this case, corruption is woven into his nature from the time he has a being in the womb; Job xiv. 4, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one." John iii. 6, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." Gen. vi. 5, "Every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually." Psalm li. 5, "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." There is a necessity of regeneration, without a man be born again he is ruined for ever, John iii. 3. He is naturally dead in sin, he must be raised from death, he is so marred that he must be new made, created to good works, else he will lie for ever void of spiritual life, utterly unable to do anything but sin, Eph. ii. 5, 10. Such a nature and such a frame of soul is a sin, a fountain of sin. But without question it is a misery too, and the greatest of miseries human nature is capable of, as setting men at the greatest distance from God the chief good. Therefore it must be concluded to be a punishment of sin too, and of some sin previous to it, which can be none else but Adam's first sin. And that sin must be our sin, the sin of all mankind, since it is punished at this fearful rate in us and all mankind. It is not possible to account for the justice of this dispensation otherwise. It was inconsistent with the nature of God to have created man in this case; yet thus we are from the time we have a being as men. Is this from the Creator otherwise than as a punishment of sin? Must it not be from ourselves, (Hos. xiii. 9, "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,") as the authors of our misery, by sinning against God, namely, sinning this sin, for no other can have place here? The law of natural generation without this will not salve the matter; for so justice would have required either the stopping of generation, or else that even corrupt Adam should not have generated corrupt children. It is within the compass of omnipotency though not the compass of created power, to bring a clean thing out of an unclean, as was done in the case of the man Christ; otherwise the greatest misery and punishment which might have been averted, is inflicted upon mankind without any fault of theirs; which is more than absurd. 4. Though men venture to deny sin in infants, who are without |