in His eternal purpose, plan that wondrous and mysterious scheme of holiness and of love, which He, alone, could conceive, and, alone, could execute; whereby, the law of righteousness was upheld in all its holiness; whereby, man was fully justified; whereby, the GODHEAD was glorified. And thus, as God's eternal and holy law of righteousness concluded all men under sin; while the sacrifice of Christ to that righteousness, fully justified man, and, so, included the whole human race in this scheme, thus based in love and in holiness; as it is the body of flesh, in which the spirit of man, is, for a season, incarcerated, which, in its nature and influences, incapacitates man from obeying the law of righteousness; and, as all positive or negative disobedience to that law, constitutes unrighteousness; and, as all unrighteousness is sin; and as sin, if unexpiated, is inconsistent with the enjoyment of eternal life in heaven; so, is the law of righteousness represented, throughout the Scriptures, as introducing sin and death; so, is the animal body, the μax, represented as "a body of sin," as a body, in its very Rom.vi.6. nature, opposed to the law of righteous

d

ness, and, consequently, sinful. And, as the

H

Creator has been pleased to keep up a continued succession of animated existences on this earth, and has ordained certain fixed laws which regulate animal propagation, whereby each successive being, so introduced upon earth, is made to spring from pre-existing beings, according to their kind; so that the whole human race may be traced up to Adam and his wife;-as we derive, from, or rather through, our first parents, our corruptible bodies of flesh, (man being merely an agent of God in the mysterious scheme of animal generation,) so, are we said to inherit, from Adam, sin and death; so, is he, the representative, as well as the progenitor, of the human race, and, emphatically, called man, (or Adam, this being the original word denoting man), charged, as it were, with all the deficiencies and infirmities of our animal nature; so, is all that can be imputed of unrighteousness in the whole race of Adam, or man, charged to the account of the first individual man, or Adam.

,, е

The law of righteousness is said to have introduced sin, because, "by the law is the • Rom. iii. knowledge of sin; for, were there no law, there could not be sin; "for without the law f-vii. 8. sin is dead;" sin being the violation of law.

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And sin is said to have introduced death, that is, the loss of eternal life in heaven, because eternal life in heaven is inconsistent with sin, with unexpiated sin. And, as the law of righteousness introduced sin; so is it also said to have introduced death; since, by the deeds of the law, shall no flesh be justified in the sight of GOD. The body of flesh is s Rom. iii. called a "body of sin," because it, necessarily, incapacitates man from obeying the law. of righteousness, And, as that body actually undergoes animal death (which is the figure under which is represented the loss of eternal life in heaven); and as it is identified with sin, and sin with death (spiritual death); so is the animal death, or dissolution, of the body, confounded, in language and idea, with spiritual death; and the law of righteousness is regarded as having also introduced animal death; whereas, this belongs to the very nature of an animal body. And, as the first man transmitted his likeness, his animal form, his animal mode of being, to all his descendants; and, as, in the figurative narrative in Genesis, the first man is represented as having acquired "the knowledge of good and evil," by which comes the knowledge of sin; and, as GOD is represented, in that narrative, as

telling Adam, that in the day on which he acquired that knowledge he should die; and, as Adam did, as regarded his animal body, ultimately, die; so, is the introduction of sin and death attributed to the first man; and so, are we, his descendants, said to derive sin and death from him. Adam was made a sinner, was convicted of sin, by his "knowledge of good and evil;" this was the groundwork of his guiltiness before God; but, as full provision had already been made for all unrighteousness by the sacrifice of Christ; that guiltiness had been fully provided for, and was already expiated in the sight of GOD; therefore, GoD, typically, covered his spiritual nakedness; and the guilt of Adam was entirely removed. GOD did not allow "the knowledge of good and evil," the knowledge of the law of righteousness, to prove fatal to the eternal interests of the destined progenitor of the human race. Nor, did the animal body of Adam undergo death in consequence of his having acquired that "knowledge;" for the death connected with that "knowledge was spiritual death; and the death of the μ xov, was an event, dependent upon, and connected with, and arising out of, the very condition of its structure; and, more

over, that natural event did not occur "in the day" on which he is represented as having acquired that “knowledge;" for it did not take place within eight hundred years subsequently to that "day."

The knowledge of the law of righteousness carries with it the obligation to act up to that law; and, on a being cognizant of its requirements, yet incapable of fulfilling them, it, necessarily, entails sin; whereas, if he were ignorant of the existence of that law and of its provisions, although he might, still, violate those provisions, he would be guiltless; inasmuch as his ignorance would constitute innocence. And accordingly, infant man, whose faculties are, as yet, undeveloped, who has not any knowledge of good and evil," is accounted sinless. And, thus, the "little ones" and "children" of the Israelites, who, in the day of the rebellion of their fathers in that wilderness which represented this world, "had no knowledge between good and evil;" Deut.i.39. were admitted into that land which was a figure of heaven; for " of such is the kingdom of heaven." k

From a perusal of the figurative narrative in Genesis, it might seem that man, as he came from the hands of His maker, was in

h Rom. ix. 11.

k Matt. xix.

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