sin in his creatures; he cannot infuse sin into the nature of man, nor take away his virtues by any divine act, or make him vicious*. This must therefore be only esteemed as a natural effect or consequent of inan's first sin, as I have shewn under questions III. and IX.

3. The soul's loss of the favour of God, is another part of spiritual death: The loss of the manifestations of God's love, of friendly converse with him, and any peculiar instances of his grace, may be included in the word spiritual death; 1 John iii. 14. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death: And perhaps this may be also included in that scriptural expression; Eph. ii. 1-3. because they who are dead in trespasses and sins are said to be children of wrath, or obnoxious to the divine anger. The words indignation and wrath, &c. in Rom. ii. 8. where the terms of the covenant of works are recited, seem to intimate that this may possibly be included in the word death, as a threatened part of the punishment, and reaches to the soul as well the body, and that even after its separation from the body as well as before. The favour of God was certainly forfeited in a legal manner, by the sin of the first man; this is a proper punishment for sin: For we cannot suppose that God, the righteous Governor of the world, will always treat a criminal as he does an innocent person; but will both threaten and manifest some tokens of his displeasure against him, in order to maintain his authority and government.

4. And not merely the punishment of loss, or the withdrawing of the sense of divine love, but the punishment of sense, as the schools call it, that is, actual pain, sorrow, signified by the words tribulation and anguish, may be impressed upon the soul by God himself, or by good or evil angels, as his ministers; and this is a proper legal penalty due to sin, and may be included in this spiritual death. In this sense the devil may be called the angel of death, or he who has the power of death; Heb. ii. 14. as well as that he has power sometimes to kill the body. Under this head we may partly include the fear or dread of all these evils, or of any of them.

These four things then may be included in spiritual death; the two first of them as the natural consequences or effects of sin foretold, and the two last as proper punishments threatened: And the dread of them is partly a natural effect as well as a punishment. Let us proceed now to the third distinction. of death, as it is explained by our chief authors who treat on divine things.

III. Eternal death consists in the misery both of soul and body, in the invisible world, and in a future state: Thus it is

* See question IX. section II.

generally explained by our writers, and has been often said to be included in the penaky due to the first sin. Let us here enquire into it: First, Let us consider it as it relates to the soul of man. The soul is an immaterial and thinking being, it has in itself no natural principles of dissolution; and therefore so far as we can judge, it must be immortal in its own nature: But who can say, whether the word death might not be fairly construed to extend to the utter destruction of the life of the soul as well as the body, if God the righteous Governor should please to seize the forfeiture? For man by sin had forfeited all that God had given him, that is, the life and existence of his soul, as well as his body: All is forfeited by sin into the hands of God; and why might not the threatening declare the right that even a God of goodness had to resume all back again, and utterly destroy and annihilate his creatures for ever*. There is not one place of scripture that occurs to me, where the word death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, necessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the soul, either to Adam the actual sinner, or to his posterity. I say, I do not remember any such text, but will not positively assert there is none.

But suppose this death means the utter destruction of soul as well as of the body, to be a penalty due to every sin, for the wages of sin is death; Rom. vi. 23. even the least sin or offence against God; yet where the sin of man hath any degrees of aggravation, perhaps the divine justice would not destroy the soul, but would continue the soul in its natural immortality and consciousness after the death of the body, to sustain farther punishments answerable to these aggravations: God may resume more or less of what man has forfeited by sin. And it is a point determined by our Saviour, that continuance in life and misery is a greater punishment than annihilation; for he says, It is better never to have been born, than to be punished as Judas the traitor shall be punished; Mat. xxvi. 24.

And since there is scarce any actual sin but what has some aggravations, either greater or less, perhaps there is no actual sinner, but has deserved some continuance of his soul in its existence, consciousness and misery. And on this account the death threatened by the covenant of works, especially to the actual and personal transgressor, may perhaps, include in it that indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, which is due to every immortal soul that actually doth amiss, wara ψυχην ανθρώπει κατεργαζομενα το κακον, every soul that worketh evil; Rom. ii. 8, 9. For as I shewed before, the apostle seems to

* It is granted that God, considered merely as a sovereign and as just, might resume all from his creature, though he be without sin; but we can hardly think a Gud of goodness would do it, till sin had made a forfeiture.

speak there of justification and condemnation, by a law or covenant of works.

But whether the great God would have actually continued the soul of Adam the first sinner, in a state of existence after death, and in a long immortality, to punish his actual offence, if he had not given him a new covenant, that is, a covenant of grace and salvation, this is not plainly revealed nor determined in scripture. It is certain that the wages, or due recompence of sin is death, whether it mean an utter destruction of soul and body, or else bodily death with a state of misery for the soul after the body is dead. The whole of our life and being and comfort in soul and body, is forfeited by sin, and God may resume more or less, as his wisdom shall direct, in order to punish the guilty according to the greater or less aggravations or demerits of their crimes*.

Secondly, The other part of eternal death, or eternal misery, consists in the raising the body up again from the dead, and rejoining it to the soul, in order to be made eternally miserable together with the soul, or rather to be an everlasting instrument of the soul's misery and torment. But that this resurrection of the body to a state of misery, is threatened in the bible for the punishment of Adam's first sin, is what I cannot prove, nor do I know in what text of scripture to find it. The law of innocency threatens death; but as the promise of life made to innocency was immortality and eternal life without need of a resurrection; Rom. ii. 7. so the threatening of death to sin did not, that I can find, imply a resurrection. It was not said in Gen. ii. 17. Thou shalt surely die, and shalt rise again

to new sorrows.

There are several places of scripture wherein the resurrection is rather attributed to Christ, and to his undertaking in a covenant of grace, besides that remarkable one; 1 Cor. xv. 21. "As by man came death, so by man came the resurrection of the dead:" But I know not of any one line in the word of God that provides a miserable resurrection as the punishment threatened to the offence of Adam. It is very probable therefore, that the resurrection of the body was introduced by Christ, the second Adam upon another foot, namely, upon the gospelproposal of mercy to all mankind in the promise made to Adam after his fall, which has been usually called the first

*It is granted, that the first man standing under such a law and covenant as is before explained, bath by sin forfeited all that he had, both life and being with all the blessings of it, for himself and his posterity into the hands of his Maker, so far as the rectoral wisdom or justice of God please to resume them yet it is justly doubted whether the great God would inflict any penalties beyond death, or any punishment in a future world, on those who have no personal sin, but lie only under the sentence of Adam's imputed sin. This will be debated in the sixteenth question.

gospel, or an epitome of the gospel of Christ: And whosoever should refuse this grace, or abuse it by actual impenitence and indulgence of sin, should suffer punishment in soul and body for ever. This is called the second death; Rev. xxi. 8. So that as the gospel or covenant of grace has proIvided hope and salvation by Jesus, the Mediator, for all that would accept of it, whether under the Patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian dispensation; so those who continue impenitent, and will not return to God according to this new covenant, are exposed to double punishment under the government of the Mediator and he will raise them from the dead to receive the reward of their obstinacy and impenitence, their violation of the law of God, and their neglect of all the means and hopes of grace.

QUEST. XII.-What doth the Holy Scripture reveal concerning the Recovery of Mankind from the Sin and Misery of that Estate into which they were brought by the disobedience of Adam? And how far does this Recovery reach, both with Regard to the Persons recovered, and with Regard to the Degrees of their Recovery ?

Perhaps this great and important enquiry may be answered by the following propositions and reasonings :

I. Adam the first man having sinned against God, and brought such a dishonour on the law and authority of his Maker, and tainted his seed with sin, he has thereby exposed himself and his posterity, that is, the whole race of mankind to death: But God, who is rich in mercy, gave him a promise of a Redeemer or Saviour; Gen. iii. 15. who should be the seed of the woman, and should break the head of the serpent; that is, destroy the works of the devil, and deliver men from that mischief and misery into which sin had plunged them, through the temptation of the devil, who lay hid in the serpent.

II. God's own and only begotten Son Jesus Christ, who before the world was with God, who was one with the Father and was God, was himself appointed by the Father, to become the Saviour of mankind, that all those might be recovered by pardoning grace to the favour of God, and raised at last to eternal life, who should repent of sin, and trust in the mercy of God, according to the several degrees of the discovery of it, which should be made in different nations and ages of the world, from the days of Adam to the days of christianity.

III. For this end God appointed this his Son, at a certain.

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period of time to take flesh and blood upon him, and to become a man, and to be born of a womun, that he might become the seed of the woman, according to his early promise made to fallen man; Gen. iii. 15.

IV. God ordained and sent his Son to preach this gospel of repentance, faith and pardon, more clearly than ever before, and appointed him to obey his law perfectly, and to suffer the sorrows of life and death itself, instead of sinful man who broke his law, that by his perfect obedience and by his sharp sufferings, he might shew how greatly God hated sin, and might vindicate that honour of the law and majesty of God, which the sin of man had violated, and procure for men a discharge from those evils which he sustained, and obtain full salvation for sinful men. The great God, the Lord of heaven and earth, did not think it becoming his dignity and his majesty, to pass by such grievous offences, without some glorious and terrible demonstration of his own holiness, and his abhorrence of sin, even while he designed to save the sinners: His justice, that is, his rectoral wisdom, did not see it proper to exercise his mercy toward criminals, without some vindication of the wisdom and holiness of his broken law, some reparation of his honour, and some recompence to the authority of his government, which had been injured by our sins: Nor would he receive the offending creature into his favour without such a Mediator, as could not only plead for the offender, but could make atonement for his offence. It would be too tedious to enter into the proof of this atonement here. Many and sufficient defences of it are written, and the epistles of St. Paul, Peter, and John, are so express in this doctrine, that one would think it needs no farther proof. This is set in a convincing light in two treatises, viz. Of Jesus the Mediator; and The Redeemer and Sanctifier*.

V. Nor is it at all improper, or unbecoming the dignity or justice of God, or the state of man, that God should set up one man, even his own Son, to be the second Adam, or a head of life and salvation for multitudes, since it is evident that one. man, or the first Adam, was the head or spring of sin, misery and death to multitudes. Both under the covenant of works and under the covenant of grace, the blessed God is pleased to transact his affairs with men in and by a single person, who was appointed a head and representative of many thousands. And doubtless there were most important reasons for this conduct of God.

VI. But since this appointment of salvation by Jesus Christ,

I say, the covenant of grace does not abolish the law of works, in the gene. Pal terms of it, viz. He that sins shall die; though indeed the particular prohibition of eating of the tree of knowledge grows useless entirely upon Adam's expulsion from the garden, and his everlasting absence from all the fruit there, which was no more in his power to eat.