a point, I suppose, to which his commission did not extend, and of which perhaps we are not capable judges: and since this difficulty might in a great measure be avoided, by having recourse to the common usage of the eastern countries, which was, to clothe history in parables and similitudes, it seems not improbable that for this reason the history of the fall was put into the dress in which we now find it.

The serpent was remarkable for an insidious cunning, and therefore stood as a proper emblem of a deceiver; and yet, being one of the lowest of the creatures, the emblem gave no suspicion of any power concerned that might pretend to rival the Creator.

This method has not so obscured this history, but that we may with great certainty come to the knowlege of all that is necessary for us to know. Let us consider the history of Moses, as we should do any other ancient eastern history of like antiquity suppose, for instance, that this account of the fall had been preserved to us out of Sanchoniatho's Phoenician history; we should in that case be at a loss perhaps to account for every manner of representation, for every figure and expression in the story; but we should soon agree that all these difficulties were imputable to the manner and customs of his age and country, and should show more respect to so venerable a piece of antiquity than to charge it with want of sense, because we did not understand every minute circumWe should likewise agree that there were evidently four persons concerned in the story; the man, the woman, the person represented by the serpent, and God. Disagree we could not about their several parts. The serpent is evidently the tempter; the man and woman the offenders; God the judge of all three. The punishments inflicted on the man and woman have no obscurity in them; and as to the serpent's sentence, we should think it reasonable to give it such a sense as the whole series of the story requires.

stance.

It is no unreasonable thing surely to demand the same equity of you in interpreting the sense of Moses, as you would certainly use towards any other ancient writer. And if the same equity be allowed, this plain fact undeniably arises from the history-that man was tempted to disobedience and did

disobey, and forfeited all title to happiness and to life itself; that God judged him, and the deceiver likewise under the form of a serpent. We require no more, and will proceed on this fact to consider the prophecy before us.

The prophecy is part of the sentence passed on the deceiver; the words are these: I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel:' Gen. iii. 15. Christian writers apply this to our blessed Saviour, emphatically styled here the seed of the woman,' and who came in the fulness of time to bruise the serpent's head,' by destroying the works of the Devil, and restoring those to the liberty of the sons of God who were held under the bondage and captivity of sin. You will say, what unreasonable liberty of interpretation is this? Tell us by what rules of language the seed of the woman is made to denote one particular person, and by what art you discover the mystery of Christ's miraculous conception and birth in this common expression? Tell us, likewise, how bruising the serpent's head comes to signify the destroying the power of sin, and the redemption of mankind by Christ? It is no wonder to hear such questions from those who look no farther than to the third chapter of Genesis, to see the ground of the Christian application. As the prophecy stands there, nothing appears to point out this particular meaning; much less to confine the prophecy to it. But of this hereafter. Let us for the present lay aside all our own notions, and go back to that state and condition of things, which was at the time of the delivery of this prophecy; and see (if haply we may discover it) what God intended to discover at that time by this prophecy, and what we may reasonably suppose our first parents understood it to mean.

They were now in a state of sin, standing before God to receive sentence for their disobedience, and had reason to expect a full execution of the penalty threatened: in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.' But God came in mercy as well as judgment, purposing not only to punish, but to restore man. The judgment is awful and severe; the woman is doomed to sorrow in conception; the man to sorrow and travel all the days of his life; the ground is cursed for his sake; and

the end of the judgment is, 'dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.' Had they been left thus, they might have continued in their labor and sorrow for their appointed time, and at last returned to dust without any well-grounded hope or confidence in God: they must have looked on themselves as rejected by their Maker, delivered up to trouble and sorrow in this world, and as having no hope in any other. On this foot, I conceive, there could have been no religion left in the world; for a sense of religion without hope is a state of frenzy and distraction, void of all inducements to love and obedience, or any thing else that is praiseworthy. If therefore God intended to preserve them as objects of mercy, it was absolutely necessary to communicate so much hope to them as might be a rational foundation for their future endeavors to reconcile themselves to him by a better obedience. This seems to be the primary intention of this first divine prophecy; and it was necessary to the state of the world, and the condition of religion, which could not possibly have been supported without the communication of such hopes. The prophecy is excellently adapted to this purpose, and manifestly conveyed such hopes to our first parents. For let us consider in what sense we may suppose them to understand this prophecy. Now they must necessarily understand the prophecy, either according to the literal meaning of the words, or according to such meaning as the whole circumstance of the transaction, of which they are a part, does require. If we suppose them to understand the words literally, and that God meant them so to be understood, this passage must appear ridiculous. Do but imagine that you see God coming to judge the offenders; Adam and Eve before him in the utmost distress; that you hear God inflicting pains and sorrows and misery and death on the first of human race; and that in the midst of all this scene of woe and great calamity, you hear God foretelling, with great solemnity, a very trivial accident that should sometimes happen in the world: that serpents would be apt to bite men by the heels, and that men would be apt to revenge themselves by striking them on the head. What has this trifle to do with the loss of mankind, with the corruption of the natural and moral world, and the ruin of all the glory and happiness of the creation?

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Great comfort it was to Adam, doubtless, after telling him that his days should be short and full of misery, and his end without hope, to let him know that he should now and then knock a snake on the head, but not even that without paying dear for his poor victory, for the snake should often bite him by the heel. Adam surely could not understand the prophecy in this sense, though some of his sons have so understood it; a plain indication how much more some men are concerned to maintain a literal interpretation of Scripture than they are to make it speak common sense. Leaving this therefore as absolutely absurd and ridiculous, let us consider what meaning the circumstances of the transaction do necessarily fix to the words of this prophecy. Adam tempted by his wife, and she by the serpent, had fallen from their obedience, and were now in the presence of God expecting judgment. They knew full well at this juncture that their fall was the victory of the serpent, whom by experience they found to be an enemy to God and to man; to man, whom he had ruined by seducing him to sin; to God, the noblest work of whose creation he had defaced. It could not therefore but be some comfort to them to hear the serpent first condemned, and to see that, however he had prevailed against them, he had gained no victory over their Maker, who was able to assert his own honor and to punish this great author of iniquity. By this method of God's proceeding they were secured from thinking that there was any evil being equal to the Creator in power and dominion; an opinion which gained ground in aftertimes through prevalence of evil, and is, where it does prevail, destructive of all true religion. The condemnation therefore of the serpent was the maintenance of God's supremacy; and that it was so understood, we have, if I mistake not, a very ancient testimony in the book of Job: With God is strength and wisdom; the deceived and the deceiver are his;' that is, equally subjected to his command: Job xii. 16. The belief of God's supreme dominion, which is the foundation of all religion, being thus preserved, it was still necessary to give them such hopes as might make them capable of religion toward God. These hopes they could not but conceive, when they heard from the mouth of God that the serpent's victory was not a complete victory

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over even themselves; that they and their posterity should be enabled to contest his empire; and though they were to suffer much in the struggle, yet finally they should prevail and bruise the serpent's head, and deliver themselves from his power and dominion over them. What now could they conceive this conquest over the serpent to mean? Is it not natural to expect that we shall recover that by victory, which we lost by being defeated? They knew that the enemy had subdued them by sin; could they then conceive hopes of victory otherwise than by righteousness? They lost through sin the happiness of their creation; could they expect less from the return of righteousness than the recovery of the blessings forfeited? What else but this could they expect? For the certain knowlege they had of their loss when the serpent prevailed, could not but lead them to a clear knowlege of what they should regain by prevailing against the serpent. The language of this prophecy is indeed in part metaphorical, but it is a great mistake to think that all metaphors are of uncertain signification; for the design and scope of the speaker, with the circumstances attending, create a fixed and determinate sense. Were it otherwise, there would be no certainty in any language; all languages, the eastern more especially, abounding in metaphors.

Let us now look back to our subject, and see what application we are to make of this instance.

This prophecy was to our first parents but very obscure; it was, in the phrase of St. Peter, but a light shining in a dark place all that they could certainly conclude from it was, that their case was not desperate; that some remedy, that some deliverance from the evil they were under, would in time appear; but when, or where, or by what means, they could not understand their own sentence, which returned them back again to the dust of the earth, made it difficult to apprehend what this victory over the serpent should signify, or how they who were shortly to be dust and ashes, should be the better for it. But after all that can be urged on this head to set out the obscurity of this promise, I would ask one question: was not this promise or prophecy, though surrounded with all this obscurity, a foundation for religion, and trust and confidence towards God after the fall, in hopes of deliverance from the evils introduced by