Preliminary from sensation, and whose minds cannot, but by much discipline, advance from sense to science, a long series of revelations might be necessary to give them at first just notions of God and his attributes, and to enable them to perceive the relation between the effect and its cause, so as to infer by the powers of their own reason the existence of the Creator from the presence of his creatures.

Such revelations, however, could be satisfactory only to those who immediately received them. Whenever the Deity has been pleased by supernatural means to communicate any information to man, we may be sure that he has taken effectual care to satisfy the person so highly favoured that his understanding was not under the influence of any illusion; but such a person could not communicate to another the knowledge which he had thus received by any other means than an address to his rational faculties. No man can be required to believe, no man indeed can believe, without proof, that another, who has no more faculties either of sensation or intellect than himself, has obtained information from a source to which he has no possible access. An appeal to miracles would in this case serve no purpose; for we must believe in the existence, power, wisdom, and justice of God, before a miracle can be admitted as evidence of anything but the power of him by whom it is performed. See MIRACLE.

It is therefore undeniable that there are some principles of theology which may be called natural; for though it is in the highest degree probable that the parents of mankind received all their theological knowledge by supernatural means, it is yet obvious that some parts of that knowledge must have been capable of a proof purely rational, otherwise not a single religious truth could have been conveyed through the succeeding generations of the human race but by the immediate inspiration of each individual. We indeed admit many propositions as certainly true, upon the sole authority of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and we receive these scriptures with gratitude as the lively oracles of God; but it is self-evident that we could not do either the one or the other, were we not convinced by natural means that God exists, that he is a being of goodness, justice, and power, and that he inspired with divine wisdom the penmen of these sacred volumes. Now, though it is very possible that no man or body of men, left to themselves from infancy in a desert world, would ever have made a theological discovery; yet whatever propositions relating to the being and attributes of the first cause and the duty of man, can be demonstrated by human reason, independent of written revelation, may be called natural theology, and are of the utmost importance, as being to us the first principles of all religion. Natural theology, in this sense of the word, is the foundation of the Christian revelation; for without a previous knowledge of it, we could have no evidence that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are indeed the word of God.

Our young divine, therefore, in the regular order of his studies ought to make himself master of natural theology before he enter upon the important task of searching the scriptures. On this subject many books have been published in our own and other languages; but perhaps there is none more worthy of attention than the Religion of Nature delineated, by Mr Wollaston (B). It is a work of great merit, and bears ample testimony to its author's learning and acuteness; yet we think it ought to be read with caution. Mr Wollaston's theory of moral obligation is fanciful, and groundless; and commend whilst we readily acknowledge that he demonstrates many truths with elegance and perspicuity, we cannot deny that he attempts a proof of others, for which we believe no other evidence can be brought than the declarations of Christ and his apostles in the holy scriptures. To supply the defects of his theory of morals, we would recommend to the student an attentive perusal of Cumberland on the Law of Nature, and Paley's Elements of Moral Philosophy. A learned author† affirms of Cumberland, that "he excels all men in fixing..."

NUMEN, ET VIM DEORUM; deinde aliquo tempore, patefactis terre faucibus, ex illis abditis evadere in hæc loca, quæ nos incolumis, atque exire potuissent: cum repente terram, et maria, cælumque vidissent: nubium magnitudinem, ventorumque vim cognovissent, adspexissentque solem, ejusque tum magnitudinem, pulchritudinemque, tum etiam efficietiam cognovissent, quod diem effeceret, tota cælo luce diffusa: cum autem terrasnox opacasset, tum cælum totum cernerent astris distinctum et ornatum, lunæque luminem varietatem tum crecentis, tum senescens, corumque omnium ortus et occasus, atque in omni æternitate ratos, immutabilesque cursus: hæc cum viderent, PROFECTO ET ESSE DEOS, et HÆC TANTA OPERA DEORUM ESSE arbitrarentur." De Nat. Deorum, lib. ii. § 37.

From this passage it is evident, that the Stagyrite, though he considered the motions of the heavenly bodies, the ebbing and flowing of the sea, and the other phenomena of nature, as affording a complete proof of the being and providence of God, did not however suppose that from these phenomena an untaught barbarian would discover this fundamental principle of religion. On the contrary, he expressly affirms, that before a man can feel the force of the evidence which they give of this important truth, he must have heard of the existence and power of God.

(B) It may not be improper to inform the reader, that Mr Wollaston, the author of the Religion of Nature, was a different man from Mr Woolston, who blasphemed the miracles of our Saviour. The former was a clergyman of great piety, and of such moderate ambition as to refuse one of the highest preferments in the church of England when it was offered to him; the latter was a clergymen likewise, but remarkable only for gloomy infidelity, and a perverse desire to deprive the wretched of every source of comfort. In the mind of the former, philosophy and devotion were happily united; in the mind of the latter, there was neither devotion nor science. Yet these writers have been frequently confounded; sometimes through inadvertence from the similarity of their names; and sometimes, we are afraid, designedly, from a weak and bigotted abhorrence of every system of religion that pretends to have its foundation in reason and in the nature of things. Preliminary the true grounds of moral obligation, out of which natural law and natural religion both arise; and we have ourselves never read a work in which the various duties which a man owes to his Maker, himself, and his fellow-creatures, are more accurately stated or placed on a surer basis than in the moral treatise of the archdeacon of Carlisle.

As Wollaston demonstrates with great perspicuity, the being and many of the attributes of God, it may perhaps appear superfluous to recommend any other book on that subject. The present age, however, having among other wonderful phenomena, witnessed a revival of Atheism, we would advise our student to read with much attention Cudworth's Intellectual System, and to read it rather in Mosheim's Latin translation than in the author's original English. It is well known that Cudworth wrote his incomparable work in confutation of Hobbes's philosophy; but instead of confining himself to the whimsies of his antagonist, which were in a little time to sink into oblivion, he took a much wider range, and traced atheism through all the mazes of antiquity, exposing the weakness of every argument by which such an absurdity had ever been maintained. In exhausting the metaphysical questions agitated among the Greeks concerning the being and perfections of God, he has not only given us a complete history of ancient learning, as far as it relates to these inquiries, but has in fact anticipated most of the sophisms of our modern atheists, who are by no means such discoverers as they are supposed to be by their illiterate admirers.

The student having made himself master of natural theology, and carefully endeavoured to ascertain its limits, is now prepared to enter on the important task of searching the scriptures. In doing this, he ought to divest himself as much as possible of the prejudices of education in behalf of a particular system of faith, and sit down to the study of the sacred volume as of a work to which he is an entire stranger. He ought first to read it as a moral history of facts and doctrines, beginning with the books of Moses, and proceeding through the rest, not in the order in which they are commonly published, but in that in which there is reason to believe they were written (see Scriptures). If he be master of the Hebrew and Greek languages, he will doubtless prefer the original text to any version; and in this perusal we would advise him to consult no commentator, because his object at present is not to study the doctrines contained in the bible, but merely to discover what are the subjects of which it treats. Many histories of the bible have been written; and were we acquainted with a good one, we should recommend it as a clue to direct the young divine's progress through the various books which compose the sacred volume. Stackhouse's history has been much applauded by some, and as much censured by others. It is not a work of which we can express any high degree of approbation; but if read with attention, it may no doubt be useful as a guide to the series of facts recorded in the scriptures. Between the Old and New Testaments there is a great chasm in the history of the Jewish nation; but it is supplied in a very able and satisfactory manner by Dr Prideaux, whose Old and New Testament connected is one of the most valuable historical works in our own or any other language. Shuckford's Sacred and Profane History of the World connected is likewise a work of merit, and may be read with advantage as throwing light on many passages of the Old Testament: but this author is not entitled to the same confidence with Prideaux, as his learning was not so great, and his partialities seem to have been greater.

In thus making himself master of the history of the Old and New Testaments, the student will unavoidably acquire some general notion of the various doctrines which they contain. These it will now be his business to study more particularly, to ascertain the precise meaning of each, and to distinguish such as relate to the whole human race, from those in which Abraham and his posterity were alone interested. He must therefore travel over the sacred volume a second time; and still we would advise him to travel without a guide. From Walton's Polyglot Bible, and the large collection called Critici sacri, he may indeed derive much assistance in his endeavours to ascertain the sense of a difficult text; but we think he will do well to make little use of commentators and expositors, and still less of system-builders, till he has formed some opinions of his own respecting the leading doctrines of the Jewish and Christian religions.

"Impressed (says an able writer) with an awful sense of the importance of the sacred volume, the philosophical divine will shake off the bias of prejudices however formed, of opinions however sanctioned, and of passions however constitutional, and bring to the study of it the advantage of a pure and impartial mind. Instead of wasting all his labour upon a number of minute and less significant particulars, and of refining away plain and obvious sense by the subtleties of a narrow and corrosive mind, his first object will be to institute a theological inquiry into the general design of the written word, and from principles fully contained and fairly understood, to illustrate the true nature and genius of the religious dispensation in all its parts. He will mark the difference between the first and second covenants, and observe the connection that subsists between them. He will trace the temporary economy of the Old Testament, and weigh the nature and intent of the partial covenant with the Jews; observing with astonishment how it was made introductory of better things to come: and he will follow it through the law and the prophets in its wonderful evolutions, till he see this vast and preparatory machine of providence crowned and completed in the eternal gospel. This New Testament, the last and best part of the religious dispensation, he will pursue through the sacred pages of that gospel with redoubled attention; contemplating the divine foundation on which it claims to be built, the supernatural means by which it was executed, and the immortal end which it has in view."

In the course of this inquiry into the import of the sacred volume, the student will pay particular attention to the circumstances of the age and country in which its various writers respectively lived, and to the nature of the different styles, analogical and parabolical, in which it is written. He will likewise keep in mind that God, whom it claims for its author, is the parent of truth, and that all his actions and dispensations must be consistent with one another. He will therefore compare the different passages of the Old and New Testaments which relate to the same doctrine, or to the same event, reasonably concluding that the bible must be the best interpreter of itself; and though the opinions which he thus forms forms may often be erroneous, they will seldom be dangerous errors, and may easily be corrected by mature reflection, or by consulting approved authors who have treated before him of the various points which have been the subject of his studies. Of this mode of proceeding one good consequence will be, that, having from the sacred scriptures formed a system of theology for himself, he will afterwards study the systems of other men without any violent prejudices for or against them; he will be so much attached to his own opinions as not to relinquish them in obedience to mere human authority, at the same time that he will be ready to give them up when convinced that they are not well-founded; and if he have read the scriptures attentively, he will have acquired such a love of truth as to embrace her wherever she may be found.

As we have supposed that every man, after having formed a theological system of his own, will consult the systems of others, it may perhaps be expected that we should here recommend those which, in our opinion, are most worthy of his attention. To do this, however, would, we apprehend, be an interference with the rights of private judgment. But lest we should be suspected of wishing to bias the mind of the young student toward the short system which we are obliged to give, we shall just observe, that by the divines of what is called the Arminian school, Episcopius's Theologia Institutiones, Limborch's Theologia Christiana, and Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity, have long been held in the highest esteem; whilst the followers of Calvin have preferred the Institutiones of their master, Turretine's Institutio Theologica Elenctica, and Gill's Body of Divinity. This last work has many merits and many defects. Its style is coarse and tedious; and the author embraces every opportunity of introducing the discriminating tenets of his sect; but his book is fraught with profound learning, breathes the spirit of piety, and may be read with advantage by every divine who has previously formed the outlines of a system for himself.

As the Jewish and Christian dispensations are closely linked together, being only part of one great whole, it is impossible to have an adequate notion of the latter without understanding the design of the former. Now, though the Mosaic religion is nowhere to be learned but in the Old Testament, it may be convenient for our student, after he has formed his own opinions of it from that sacred source, to know what has been written on the subject by others. For illustrating the ritual law, a learned prelate warmly recommends the Doctor Dubitantium of Maimonides, and Spencer's book entitled De Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus. Both works have undoubtedly great merit; but our young divine will do well to read along with them Hermanni Witsii Ægyptiaca, and Dr Woodward's Discourse on the Worship of the Ancient Egyptians, where some of Spencer's notions are shortly and ably refuted. On the other parts of this dispensation, such as the nature of its civil government; the rewards and punishments peculiar to it (c); its extraordinary administration by appointed agents, endowed with supernatural powers, and Directions with the gifts of miracles and prophecy; the double sense in which the latter is sometimes involved; and the language consequent on its nature and use—the reader will find much erudition and ingenuity displayed in the second part of Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated. That work is entitled to a serious perusal; for it displays great learning and genius, and, we believe, the heaviest censures have fallen on it from those by whom it was never read.

Having proceeded thus far in the course, the student's Inquiry to next business should be to inquire seriously what evidence there is that the doctrines which he has so carefully studied were indeed revealed in times past by God. He must already have perceived, in the nature and tendency of the doctrines themselves, strong marks of their origin being more than human; but he must likewise have met with many difficulties, and he must prepare himself to repel the attacks of unbelievers. Here he will find opportunities of exerting the utmost powers of his reasoning faculties, and of employing in the service of religion all the stores he may have amassed of human learning. The scriptures pretend to have been written by several men who lived in different ages of the world; but the latest of them in an age very remote from the present. His first business therefore must be to prove the authenticity of these books, by tracing them up by historical evidence to the several writers whose names they bear. But it is not enough to prove them authentic. They profess to have been written by men divinely inspired, and of course infallible in what they wrote. He must therefore inquire into the truth of this inspiration. The Bible contains a number of truths doctrinal and moral, which are called mysteries, and asserted to be the immediate dictates of God himself. To evince this great point to man, a number of supernatural tests and evidences are inseparably connected with those mysteries; so that if the former be true, the latter must be so likewise. He must therefore examine these tests and evidences, to establish the divinity of the Holy Scriptures; and in this part of his course he will find much assistance from many writers whose defences of the truth and divinity of the Christian religion do honour to human nature.

The first step towards the embracing of any truth is to get fairly rid of the objections which are made to it; and the general objections made by deistical writers to the Christian revelation are by no writer more completely removed than by Bishop Butler, in his celebrated work entitled The Analogy of Religion natural and revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature. This book therefore the student should read with attention and meditate on with patience; but as it does not furnish a positive proof of the divinity of our religion, he should pass from it to Grotius de Veritate Religiosis Christianæ, and Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae. Both these works are excellent; and the latter, which may be considered

(c) On this subject the reader will find many excellent observations in Bishop Bull's Harmonia Apostolica, with its several defences, and in a small book of Dr Wells's, entitled A Help for the Right Understanding of the several Divine Laws and Covenants, whereby man has been obliged through the several ages of the world to guide himself in order to salvation. Preliminary considered as an improvement of the former, is perhaps Directions, the fullest and ablest defence of revelation in general that is to be found in any language. In this part of the united kingdom it is now indeed scarcely mentioned, or mentioned with indifference; but half a century ago the English divines thought it a subject of triumph, and styled its author their incomparable Stillingfleet.

Other works, however, may be read with great advantage, and none with greater than Paley's *Evidences of the Christian Religion*, and Leslie's *Short Method with the Deists*; which last work, in the compass of a very few pages, contains proofs of the divinity of the Jewish and Christian revelations, to which the celebrated Dr Middleton confessed (D), that for 20 years he had laboured in vain to fabricate a specious answer (E).

Having satisfied himself of the truth of revelation in general, it may be worth the young divine's while to provide a defence of the Christian religion against the objections of modern Judaism. In this part of his studies he will need no other instruction than what he may reap from Limborch's work entitled *De Veritate Religiosis Christianae amica colatio cum erudito Judeo*.

"In that disputation, which was held with Orobius, he will find all that the stretch of human parts on the one hand, or science on the other, can produce to varnish error or unravel sophistry. All the papers of Orobius in defence of Judaism, as opposed to Christianity, are printed at large, with Limborch's answers, section by section; and the subtlest sophisms of a very superior genius are ably and satisfactorily detected and exposed by the strong, profound, and clear reasoning, of this renowned remonstrant." See Orobius and Limborch.

The various controversies subsisting between the several denominations of Christians, about points which separate them into different churches, ought next to be studied in the order of the course; for nothing is unimportant which divides the followers of that Master whose favourite precept was love. It has indeed been long fashionable to decry polemical divinity as useless, if not a pernicious study; but it is not impossible that this fashion has had its origin in ignorance, and that it tends to perpetuate those schisms which it professes to lament. We are, however, far from recommending to the young divine a perusal of the works of the several combatants on each side of a disputed question, till he has fitted himself for judging between them by a long course of preparatory study; and the only preparation which can fit him for this purpose is an impartial study of ecclesiastical history. He who has with accuracy traced the progress of our holy religion from the days of the apostles to the present time, and marked the introduction of new doctrines, and the rise of the various sects into which the Christian world is divided, is furnished with a criterion within himself by which to judge of the importance and truth of the many contested doctrines; whilst he who, without this preparation, shall read a multitude of books on any religious controversy, will be in danger of becoming a convert to his last author, if that author possess any tolerable share of art and ingenuity.

There are many histories of the Christian church which possess great merit, but we are acquainted with none which appears to us wholly impartial. Mosheim's *Historia Ecclesiastica* is perhaps the most perfect compend (F); and one of its greatest excellencies is, that on every subject the best contemporary writers are referred to for fuller information. These indeed should often be consulted, not only to supply the defects necessarily resulting from the narrowness of the limits which the author, with great propriety, prescribed to himself; but also to correct his partial obliquities; for with all his merits, and they were many and great, he is certainly not free from the influence of prejudice. Indeed there is no coming at the true history of the primitive church, but by studying the works of the primitive writers; and the principal works of the first four centuries will amply reward the labour of perusing them (G). The rise and progress of the reformation in general, the most important period of church-history, may be best learned from Sleidan's book *De Statu Religionis et Republicae, Caroli V. Caesaris, Commentarii*; the History of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland from Knox and Spotswood; and that of the Church of England from the much applauded work of Bishop Burnet.

After this course of ecclesiastical history, the young divine may read with advantage the most important controversies which have agitated the Christian world. To enumerate these controversies, and to point out the ablest authors who have written on each, would be a tedious, and perhaps not a very profitable task. On one controversy, however, we are induced to recommend a very masterly work, which is Chillingworth's book against Knott, entitled *The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation*; in which the school jargon of that Jesuit is admirably exposed, and the long dispute between

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(D) This piece of information we had from the late Dr Berkeley, prebendary of Canterbury, who had it from Archbishop Secker, to whom the confession was made.

(E) To these defences of revelation we might have added the collection of sermons preached at Boyle's lecture from 1691 to 1732, published in three volumes folio, 1739; the works of Leland; Bishop Newton's Dissertations on Prophecy; and above all, Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History, with the Supplement to it. But there would be no end of recommending eminent writers on this subject. We have mentioned such as we most approve among those with whom we are best acquainted; but we must, once for all, caution the reader against supposing that we approve of every thing to be found in any work except the sacred Scriptures.

(F) The bishop of Landaff, in the catalogue of books published at the end of his Theological Tracts, recommends several other ecclesiastical histories as works of great merit; such as Dupin's, Echard's, Gregory's, and Formey's, together with Paul Ernesti Jablonski Institutiones Historiae Christianae, published at Frankfort in three volumes, 1754-67.

(G) For a proof of this position, and for a just estimate of the value of the Fathers, as they are called, see the introduction to Warburton's Julian, and Kett's Sermons at Bampton's Lectures. PART I. OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.

Sect. I. Of the Being and Attributes of God.

HE who cometh to God, says an ancient divine, deeply read in the philosophy of his age, must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him. This is a truth as undeniable as that a man cannot concern himself about a nonentity. The existence of God is indeed the foundation of all religion, and the first principle of the science which is the subject of this article. It is likewise a principle which must command the assent of every man who has any notion of the relation between effects and their causes, and whose curiosity has ever been excited by the phenomena of nature. This great and important truth we have elsewhere endeavoured to demonstrate (see Metaphysics, Part III. Chap. vi.) but it may be proved by arguments less abstracted than the nature of that article required us to use. Of these we shall give one or two, which we hope will be level to every ordinary capacity; while, at the same time, we earnestly recommend to the young divine a diligent study of those books on Being and the subject which we have mentioned in the preceding directions.

We see that the human race, and every other species of animals, is at present propagated by the cooperation of two parents; but has this process continued from eternity? A moment's reflection will convince us that it has not. Let us take any one man alive, and let us suppose his father and mother dead, and himself the only person at present existing: how came he into the world? It will be said he was produced mechanically or chemically by the conjunction of his parents, and that his parents were produced in the same manner by theirs. Let this then be supposed; it must surely be granted, that when this man was born, an addition was made to the series of the human race. But a series which can be enlarged may likewise be diminished; and by tracing it backwards, we must at some period, however remote, reach its beginning. There must therefore have been a first pair of the human race, who were not propagated by the conjunction of parents. How did these come into the world?

Anaximander tells us*, that the first men and all animals were bred in warm moisture, inclosed in crustaceous skins like crab-fish or lobsters; and that when they arrived at a proper age, their shelly prisons growing dry, broke, and made way for their liberty. Empedocles informs us, that mother Earth at first brought forth vast numbers of legs, and arms, and heads, &c. which approaching each other, arranging themselves properly, and being cemented together, started up at once full grown men.

Surely those sages, or their followers, should have been able to tell us why the earth has not in any climate this power of potting forth vegetable men or the parts of men at present. If this universal parent be eternal and self-existent, it must be incapable of decay or the smallest change in any of its qualities; if it be not eternal, we shall be obliged to find a cause for its existence, or at least for its form and all its powers. But such a cause may have produced the first human pair, and undoubtedly did produce them, without making them spring as plants from the soil. Indeed the growth of plants themselves clearly evinces a cause superior to any vegetative power which can be supposed inherent in the earth. No plant can be propagated but from seed or slips from the parent stock; but when one contemplates the regular process of vegetation, the existence of every plant implies the prior existence of a parent seed, and the existence of every seed the prior existence of a parent plant. Which then of these, the oak or the acorn, was the first, and whence was its existence derived? Not from the earth; for we have the evidence of universal experience that the earth never produces a tree but from seed, nor seed but from a tree. There must therefore be some superior power which formed the first seed or the first tree, planted it in the earth, and gave to it those powers of vegetation by which the species has been propagated to this day.

Thus clearly do the processes of generation and vegetation indicate a power superior to those which are usually called the powers of nature. The same thing appears no less evident from the laws of attraction and repulsion, which plainly prevail through the whole system of matter, and hold together the stupendous structure. Experiment shows that very few particles of the most solid body are in actual contact with each other (see Being and Optics, No. 63—68. Physics, No. 23.) and that there are considerable interstices between the particles of every elastic fluid, is obvious to the smallest reflection. Yet the particles of solid bodies strongly cohere, whilst those of elastic fluids repel each other. How are these phenomena accounted for? To say that the former is the effect of attraction and the latter of repulsion, is only to say that two individual phenomena are subject to those laws which prevail through the whole of the classes under which they are respectively arranged; whilst the question at issue is concerning the origin of the laws themselves, the power which makes the particles of gold cohere, and those of air repel each other. Power without substance is inconceivable; and by a law of human thought, no man can believe a being to operate but where it is in some manner or other actually present: but the particles of gold adhere, and the particles of air keep at a distance from each other, by powers exerted where no matter is present. There must therefore be some substance endowed with power which is not material.

Of this substance or being the power is evidently immense. The earth and other planets are carried round the sun with a velocity which human imagination can scarcely conceive. That this motion is not produced by the agency of these vast bodies on one another, or by the interposition of any material fluid, has been shown elsewhere (see Metaphysics, No. 196—200., and Optics, No. 672); and since it is a law of our best philosophy, that we are not to multiply substances without necessity, we must infer that the same Being which formed the first animals and vegetables, endowing them with powers to propagate their respective kinds, is likewise the cause of all the phenomena of nature, such as cohesion, repulsion, elasticity and motion, even the motions of the heavenly bodies themselves.

If this powerful Being be self-existent, intelligent, and independent in his actions and volitions, he is an original or first cause, and that Being whom we denominate God. If he be not self-existent and independent, there must be a cause in the order of nature prior and superior to Him, which is either itself the first cause, or a link in that series of causes and effects, which, however vast we suppose it, must be traced ultimately to some one Being, who is self-existent, and has in himself the power of beginning motion, independent of everything but his own intelligence and volition. In vain have atheists alleged, that the series may ascend infinitely, and for that reason have no first mover or cause. An infinite series of successive beings involves an absurdity and contradiction (see Metaphysics, No. 288.): but not to insist on this at present, we shall only beg leave to consider such a series as a whole, and see what effect consequence will flow from the supposition. That we may with logical propriety consider it in this light, is incontrovertible; for the birth of each individual of the human race shows that it is made up of parts; but parts imply a whole as necessarily as an attribute implies its subject. As in this supposed series there is no cause which is not likewise an effect, nor any body moving another which was not itself moved by a third, the whole is undeniably equivalent to an infinite effect, or an infinite body moved: but if a finite effect must necessarily have proceeded from a cause, and a finite body Being in motion must have been put into that state by a most powerful cause; is there a human mind which can conceive an infinite effect to have proceeded from no cause, or an infinite body in motion to have been moved by nothing? No, surely! An infinite effect, were such a thing possible, would compel us to admit an infinite cause, and an infinite body in motion a mover of infinite power.

This great cause is God, whose wisdom, power, and goodness, all nature loudly proclaims. That the phenomena which we daily see evince the existence of one such Being, has just been shown; and that we have no reason to infer the existence of more than one, is very evident. For, not to lay more stress than it will bear on that role of Newton's, which forbids us to multiply substances without necessity, such a harmony prevails through the whole visible universe, as plainly shows it to be under the government of one intelligence. That on this globe the several elements serve for nourishment to plants, plants to the inferior animals, and animals to man; that the other planets of our system are probably inhabited, and their inhabitants nourished in the same or a similar manner; that the sun is so placed as to give light and heat to all, and by the law of gravitation to bind the whole planets into one system with itself—are truths so obvious and so universally acknowledged, as to supersede the necessity of establishing them by proof. The fair inference therefore is, that the solar system and all its parts are under the government of one intelligence, which directs all its motions and all the changes which take place among its parts for some wise purposes. To suppose it under the government of two or more intelligences would be highly unreasonable; for if these intelligences had equal power, equal wisdom, and the same designs, one of them would evidently be superfluous; and if they had equal power and contrary designs, they could not be the parents of that harmony which we clearly perceive to prevail in the system.

But the Being capable of regulating the movements of so vast a machine, may well be supposed to possess infinite power, and to be capable of superintending the motions of the universe. That the widely extended system of nature is but one system, of which the several parts are united by many bonds of mutual connection, has been shown elsewhere (see Physics), and appears daily more and more evident from our progress in physical discoveries; and therefore it is in the highest degree unreasonable to suppose that it has more than one author, or one supreme governor.

As the unity of design apparent in the works of creation plainly proves the unity of their Author, so do the immensity of the whole, and the admirable adjustment of the several parts to one another, demonstrate His power and His wisdom. On this subject the following beautiful reflections by Mr Wollaston are deserving of the most serious attention.

"In order (says that able writer) to prove to anyone the grandness of this fabric of the world, one needs only to bid him consider the sun, with that insupportable glory and lustre that surrounds it; to demonstrate its vast distance, magnitude, and heat; to represent to him the chorus of planets moving periodically, by uniform laws, in their several orbits about it; guarded some of them by secondary planets, and as it were emulating the state of the sun, and probably all possessed by proper inhabitants; to remind him of those surprising visits which the comets make to us, and the large trains being and of uncommon splendour which attend them, the far country from which they come, and the curiosity and horror which they excite not only among us, but in the inhabitants of other planets, who may also be up to see the entry and progress of these ministers of fate; to direct his eye and contemplation through those azure fields and vast regions above him up to the fixed stars, that radiant numberless host of heaven; and to make him understand how unlikely a thing it is that they should be placed there only to adorn and bespangle a canopy over our heads; to convince him that they are rather so many other suns, with their several systems of planets about them; to show him by the help of glasses still more and more of these fixed lights, and to beget in him an apprehension of their inconceivable numbers, and those immense spaces that lie beyond our reach and even our imagination: One needs but to do this (continues our author), and explain to him such things as are now known almost to every body; and by it to show, that if the world be not infinite, it is infinite simul, and undoubtedly the work of an Infinite Architect.

"But if we would take a view of all the particulars contained within that astonishing compass which we have thus hastily run over, how would wonders multiply upon us? Every corner, every part of the world, is as it were made up of other worlds. If we look upon this our earth, what scope does it furnish for admiration? The great variety of mountains, hills, valleys, plains, rivers, seas, trees, and plants! The many tribes of different animals with which it is stocked; the multifarious inventions and works of one of these, i.e., of us men; with the wonderful instincts of others, guiding them uniformly to what is best for themselves, in situations where neither sense nor reason could direct them. And yet when all these (heaven and earth) are surveyed as nicely as they can be by the help of our unassisted senses and of telescopes, we may discover by the assistance of good microscopes, in very small parts of matter, as many new wonders as those already discovered, new kingdoms of animals, with new and curious architecture. So that as our senses and even conception fainted before in the vast journeys we took in considering the expanse of the universe, they here again fail us in our researches into the principles and minute parts of which it is composed. Both the beginnings and the ends of things, the least and the greatest, all conspire to baffle us; and which way soever we prosecute our inquiries, we still meet with fresh subjects of amazement, and fresh reasons to believe that there are indefinitely more and more behind, that will forever escape our eaguest pursuits and deepest penetration.

"In this vast assemblage, and amidst all the multifarious motions by which the several processes of generation and corruption, and the other phenomena of nature, are carried on, we cannot but observe that there are stated methods, as so many forms of proceeding, to which things punctually and religiously adhere. The same causes circumstanced in the same manner produce always the same effects; all the species of animals among us are made according to one general idea; and so are those of plants also, and even of minerals. No new species are brought forth or have arisen anywhere; and the old are preserved and continued by the old ways.

"It appears, lastly, beyond dispute, that in the part..." Being and model of the world there is a contrivance for accomplishing certain ends. The sun is placed near the centre of our system, for the more convenient dispensing of his benign influences to the planets moving about him; the place of the earth's equator intersects that of her orbit, and makes a proper angle with it, in order to diversify the year, and create an useful variety of seasons; and many other things of this kind will be always observed, and though a thousand times repeated, be meditated upon with pleasure by good men and true philosophers. Who can observe the vapours to ascend, especially from the sea, meet above in clouds, and fall again after condensation, without being convinced that this is a kind of distillation, in order to clear the water of its grosser salts, and then by rains and dews to supply the fountains and rivers with fresh and wholesome liquor; to nourish the vegetables below by showers, which descend in drops as from a watering pot upon a garden? Who can view the structure of a plant or animal, the indefinite number of its fibres and fine vessels, the formation of larger vessels, and the several members out of them, with the apt disposition of all these; the means contrived for the reception and distribution of nutriment; the effect this nutriment has in extending the vessels, bringing the vegetable or animal to its full growth and expansion, continuing the motion of the several fluids, repairing the decays of the body, and preserving life? Who can take notice of the several faculties of animals, their arts of saving and providing for themselves, or the ways in which they are provided for; the uses of plants to animals, and of some animals to others, particularly to mankind; the care taken that the several species should be propagated, without confusion, from their proper seeds; the strong inclination planted in animals for that purpose, the love of their young and the like.—Who (says our author) can observe all this, and not see a design in such regular pieces, so nicely wrought and so admirably preserved? If there were but one animal in existence, and it could not be doubted but that his eyes were formed that he might see with them, his ears that he might hear with them, and his feet to be instruments by which he might remove himself from place to place; if design and contrivance can be much less doubted, when the same things are repeated in the individuals of all the tribes of animals; if the like observations be made with respect to vegetables and other things; and if all these classes of things, and much more the individuals comprehended under them, be inconceivably numerous, as most unquestionably they are—one cannot but be convinced, from what so plainly runs through the nobler parts of the visible world, that not only they, but other things, even those that seem to be less noble, have their ends likewise, though not always perceived by capacities limited like ours. And since we cannot, with the Epicureans of old, suppose the parts of matter to have contrived among themselves this wonderful form of a world, to have taken by agreement each its respective post, and then to have pursued in conjunction constant ends by certain methods and measures concerted, there must be some other Being, whose wisdom and power are equal to such a mighty work as is the structure and preservation of the world. There must be some Almighty Mind who modelled and preserves it; lays the causes of things so deep; prescribes them such uniform and steady laws; destines and adapts them to certain purposes; and makes one thing to fit and answer another, so as to produce one harmonious whole. Yes,

These are thy glorious works, Parent of good! Almighty, thine this universal frame, Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!

How wondrous in wisdom and in power!"

But the goodness of God is not less conspicuous in his works than His power or His wisdom. Contrivance proves design, and the predominant tendency of the contrivances indicates the disposition of the designer.

"The world (says an elegant and judicious writer *) abounds with contrivances, and all the contrivances in it with which we are acquainted are directed to beneficial purposes. Evil no doubt exists; but it is never that we can perceive the object of contrivance. Teeth are contrived to eat, not to ache; their aching now and then is incidental to the contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it; but it is not its object. This is a distinction which well deserves to be attended to. In describing implements of husbandry, one would hardly say of a sickle that it is made to cut the reaper's fingers, though from the construction of the instrument, and the manner of using it, this mischief often happens. But if he had occasion to describe instruments of torture or execution, this, he would say, is to extend the sinews; this to dislocate the joints; this to break the bones; this to scorch the soles of the feet. Here pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No anatomist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to produce pain and disease; or, in explaining the parts of the human body, ever said, this is to irritate, this to inflame, this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys, this gland to secrete the humour which forms the gout. If by chance he came to a part of which he knows not the use, the most that he can say is, that to him it appears to be useless; no one ever suspects that it is put there to inconvenience, to annoy, or to torment. If God had wished our misery, he might have made sure of his purpose, by forming our senses to be as many sores and pains to us as they are now instruments of gratification and enjoyment; or, by placing us among objects so ill suited to our perceptions as to have continually offended us, instead of ministering to our refreshment and delight. He might have made, for instance, every thing we tasted bitter, every thing we saw loathsome, every thing we touched a sting, every smell a stench, and every sound a discord."

Instead of this, all our sensations, except such as are excited by what is dangerous to our health, are pleasures to us: The view of a landscape is pleasant; the taste of nourishing food is pleasant; sounds not too loud are agreeable, while musical sounds are exquisite; and scarcely any smells, except such are excited by effluvia obviously pernicious to the brain, are disagreeable; while some of them, if not too long indulged, are delightful. Our lives are preserved and the species is continued by obeying the impulse of appetites; of which the gratification is exquisite when not repeated too frequently, to answer the purposes of the Author of our being. Since, then, God has called forth his consum- But it is not from sensation only that we may infer the benevolence of the deity: He has formed us with minds capable of intellectual improvement, and he has implanted in the breast of every man a very strong desire of adding to his knowledge. This addition, it is true, cannot be made without labour; and at first the requisite labour is to most people irksome: but a very short progress in any study converts what was irksome into a pleasure of the most exalted kind; and he who by study, however intense, enlarges his ideas, experiences a complacency, which, though not so poignant perhaps as the pleasures of the sensualist, is such as endears him to himself, and is what he would not exchange for anything else which this world has to bestow, except the still sweeter complacency arising from the consciousness of having discharged his duty.

That the practice of virtue is attended with a peculiar pleasure of the purest kind, is a fact which no man has ever questioned, though the immediate source of that pleasure has been the subject of many disputes. He who attributes it to a moral sense, which instinctively points out to every man his duty, and on the performance of it rewards him with a sentiment of self-approbation, must of necessity acknowledge benevolence to be one of the attributes of that Being who has so constituted the human mind. That to protect the innocent, relieve the distressed, and do to others as we would in like circumstances wish to be done by, fills the breast, previous to all reflection, with a holy joy, as the commission of any crime tears it with remorse, cannot indeed be controverted. Many, however, contend, that this joy and this remorse spring not from any moral instinct implanted in the mind, but are the consequence of early and deep-rooted associations of the practice of virtue with the hope of future happiness, and of vice with the dread of future misery. On the respective merits of these two theories we shall not now decide, but only observe, that they both lead with equal certainty to the benevolence of the Deity, who made us capable of forming associations, and subjected those associations to fixed laws. This being the case, the moral sense, with all its instantaneous effects, affords not a more convincing proof of his goodness, than that principle in our nature by which remote circumstances become so linked together, that the one circumstance never occurs without bringing the other also into view. It is thus that the pleasing complacency, which was perhaps first excited by the hopes of future happiness, comes in time to be so associated with the consciousness of virtuous conduct, the only thing entitled to reward, that a man never performs a meritorious action without experiencing the most exquisite joy diffused through his mind, though his attention at that instant may not be directed either to heaven or futurity. Were we obliged, before we could experience this joy, to estimate by reason the merit of every individual action, and trace its connection to heaven and future happiness through a long train of intermediate reasoning, we should be in a great measure deprived of the present reward of virtue; and therefore this associating principle contributes much to our happiness. But the benevolence of a Being, who seems thus anxious to furnish us with both sensual and intellectual enjoyments, and who has made our duty our greatest pleasure, cannot be questioned; and therefore we must infer, that the Author of Nature wishes the happiness of the whole sensible and intelligent creation.

To such reasoning as this in support of the Divine Objections. Benevolence many objections have been made. Some of them appear at first sight plausible, and are apt to stagger the faith of him who has bestowed no time on the study of that branch of general science which is called physics (see Physics). To omit these altogether in such an article as this might be construed into neglect; while it is certain that there is in them nothing worthy the attention of that man who is qualified either to estimate their force, or to understand the arguments by which they have often been repelled.

It has been asked, Why, if the Author of Nature be a benevolent Being, are we necessarily subject to pain, diseases, and death? The scientific physiologist replies, Because from these evils Omnipotence itself could not in our present state exempt us, but by a constant series of miracles. He who admits miracles, knows likewise answered, that mankind were originally in a state in which they were not subject to death; and that they fell under its dominion through the fault of their common progenitors. But the fall and restoration of man is the great subject of revealed religion; and at present we are discussing the question like philosophers who have no other data on which to proceed than the phenomena of nature. Now we know, that as all matter is divisible, every system composed of it must necessarily be liable to decay and dissolution; and our material system would decay and be dissolved long before it could serve the purposes of nature, were there not methods contrived with admirable wisdom for repairing the waste occasioned by perpetual friction. The body is furnished with different fluids, which continually circulate through it in proper channels, and leave in their way what is necessary to repair the solids. These again are supplied by food ab extra; and to the whole processes of digestion, circulation, and nutrition, the air we breathe is absolutely necessary. But as the air is a very heterogeneous fluid, and subject to violent and sudden changes, it is obvious that these changes must affect the blood, and by consequence the whole frame of the human body. The air indeed in process of time consumes even marble itself; and therefore we cannot wonder that as it is in one state the parent of health, it should in another be the source of disease to such creatures as man and other terrestrial animals. Nor could these consequences be avoided without introducing others much more deplorable. The world is governed by general laws, without which there could be among men neither arts nor sciences; and though laws different from those by which the system is at present governed might perhaps have been established, there is not the smallest reason to imagine that they could on the whole have been better, or attended with fewer inconveniences. As long as we have material and solid bodies capable of motion, liable to resistance from other solid bodies, supported by food, Being subject to the agency of the air, and divisible, they must necessarily be liable to pain, disease, corruption, and death, and that too by the very influence of those laws which preserve the order and harmony of the universe. Thus gravitation is a general law so good and so necessary, that were it for a moment suspended, the world would instantly fall to pieces; and yet by means of this law the man must inevitably be crushed to death on whom a tower shall chance to tumble. Again, the attraction of cohesion is a general law, without which it does not appear that any corporeal system could possibly exist: it is by this law too, or a modification of it, that the glands and lacteals of the human body extract from the blood such particles as are necessary to nourish the solids; and yet it is by means of the very same modification of the very same law that a man is liable to be poisoned.

Although the human body could not have been preserved from dangers and dissolution but by introducing evils greater on the whole than those to which it is now liable, why, it has sometimes been asked, is every disorder to which it is subject attended with sickness or with pain? and why is such a horror of death implanted in our breasts, seeing that by the laws of nature death is inevitable? We answer, That sickness, pain, and the dread of death, serve the very best purposes. Could a man be put to death, or have his limbs broken without feeling pain, the human race had long ago been extinct. Felt we no uneasiness in a fever, we should be insensible of the disease, and die before we suspected our health to be impaired. The horror which generally accompanies our reflections on death tends to make us more careful of life, and prevents us from quitting this world rashly when our affairs prosper not according to our wishes. It is likewise an indication that our existence does not terminate in this world; for our dread is seldom excited by the prospect of the pain which we may suffer when dying, but by our anxiety concerning what we may be doomed to suffer or enjoy in the next stage of our existence; and this anxiety tends more perhaps than anything else to make us live while we are here in such a manner as to ensure our happiness hereafter.

Thus from every view that we can take of the works and laws of God, and even from considering the objections which have sometimes been made to them, we are compelled to acknowledge the benevolence of their Author. We must not, however, suppose the Divine benevolence to be a fond affection like that which is called benevolence among men. All human affections and passions originate in our dependence and wants; and it has been doubted whether any of them be at first disinterested (see Passion): but he to whom existence is essential cannot be dependent; he who is the Author of every thing can feel no want. The Divine benevolence therefore must be wholly disinterested, and of course free from those partialities originating in self-love, which are alloys in the most sublime of human virtues. The most benevolent man on earth, though he wishes the happiness of every fellow-creature, has still, from the ties of blood, the endearments of friendship, or, perhaps from a regard to his own interest, some particular favourites whom, on a competition with others, he would certainly prefer. But the equal Lord of all can have no particular favourites. His benevolence is therefore coincident with justice; or, that which is called divine justice, is only benevolence exerting itself in a particular manner for the propagation of general felicity. When God prescribes laws for regulating the conduct of his intelligent creatures, it is not because he can reap any benefit from their obedience to those laws, but because such obedience is necessary to their own happiness; and when he punishes the transgressor, it is not because in his nature there is any disposition to which the prospect of such punishment can afford gratification, but because in the government of free agents punishment is necessary to reform the criminal, and to intimidate others from committing the like crimes.

The essence of this self-existent, all-powerful, infinitely wise, and perfectly good Being, is to us wholly incomprehensible. That it is not matter, is shown by the process of argumentation by which we have proved it to exist: but what it is we know not, and it would be impious presumption to inquire. It is sufficient for all the purposes of religion to know that God is somehow or other present to every part of his work; that existence and every possible perfection is essential to him; and that he wishes the happiness of all his creatures. From these truths we might proceed to illustrate the perpetual superintendence of his providence, both general and particular, over every the minutest part of the universe: but that subject has been discussed in a separate article to which, therefore, we refer the reader. (See Providence). We shall only observe at present, that the manner in which animals are propagated affords as complete a proof of the constant superintendence of divine power and wisdom, as it does of the immediate exertion of these faculties in the formation of the parent pair of each species. For were propagation carried on by necessary and mechanical laws, it is obvious, that in every age there would be generated, in each species of animals, the very same proportion of males to females that there was in the age preceding. On the other hand, if generation depend on fortuitous mechanism, it is not conceivably but that, since the beginning of the world, several species of animals should in some age have generated nothing but males, and others nothing but females; and that of course many species would have been long since extinct. As neither of these cases has ever happened, the preservation of the various species of animals, by keeping up constantly in the world a due, though not always the same, proportion between the sexes of male and female, is a complete proof of the superintendence of Divine providence, and of that saying of the apostle, that it is “in God we live, move, and have our being.”

Sect. II. Of the Duties and Sanctions of Natural Religion.

From the short view that we have taken of the divine perfections, it is evidently our duty to reverence in our minds the self-existent Being to whom they belong. This is indeed not only a duty, but a duty of which no man who contemplates these perfections, and believes them to be real, can possibly avoid the performance. He who thinks irreverently of the Author of nature, can never have considered seriously the power, the wisdom, and the goodness, displayed in his works; for whoever has a tolerable notion of these must be convinced, that he who performed them has no imperfection; that his power can accomplish every thing which involves not a contradiction; that his knowledge is intuitive, and free from the possibility of error; and that his goodness extends to all without partiality and without any alloy of selfish design. This conviction must make every man on whose mind it is impressed ready to prostrate himself in the dust before the Author of his being; who, though infinitely exalted above him, is the source of all his enjoyments, constantly watches over him with paternal care, and protects him from numberless dangers. The sense of so many benefits must excite in his mind a sentiment of the liveliest gratitude to him from whom they are received, and an ardent wish for their continuance.

While silent gratitude and devotion thus glow in the breast of the contemplative man, he will be careful not to form even a mental image of that all-perfect Being to whom they are directed. He knows that God is not material; that he exists in a manner altogether incomprehensible; that to frame an image of him would be to assign limits to what is infinite; and that to attempt to form a positive conception of him would be impiously to compare himself with his Maker.

The man who has any tolerable notion of the perfections of the Supreme Being will never speak lightly of him, or make use of his name at all but on great and solemn occasions. He knows that the terms of all languages are inadequate and improper, when applied directly to him who has no equal, and to whom nothing can be compared; and therefore he will employ these terms with caution. When he speaks of his mercy and compassion, he will not consider them as feelings wringing the heart like the mercy and compassion experienced by man, but as rays of pure and disinterested benevolence. When he thinks of the stupendous system of nature, and hears it, perhaps, said that God formed it for his own glory, he will reflect that God is so infinitely exalted above all his creatures, and so perfect in himself, that he can neither take pleasure in their applause, nor receive any accession of any kind from the existence of ten thousand worlds. The immense fabric of nature therefore only displays the glory or perfections of its Author to us and to other creatures who have not faculties to comprehend him in himself.

When the contemplative man talks of serving God, he does not dream that his services can increase the divine felicity; but means only that it is his duty to obey the divine laws. Even the pronoun He, when it refers to God, cannot be of the same import as when it refers to man; and by the philosophical divine it will seldom be used but with a mental allusion to this obvious distinction.

As the man who daily venerates the Author of his being will not speak of him on trivial occasions, so will he be still further from calling upon him to witness impertinences and falsehood (see Oath). He will never mention his name but with a pause, that he may have time to reflect in silence on his numberless perfections, and on the immense distance between himself and the Being of whom he is speaking. The slightest reflection will convince him that the world with all that it contains depends every moment on that God who formed it; and this conviction will compel him to wish for the divine protection of himself and his friends from all dangers and misfortunes. Such a wish is in effect a prayer, and will always be accompanied with adoration, confession, and thanksgiving (see Prayer). But adoration, duties and confessions, supplication, and thanksgiving, constitute sanctions what is called worship, and therefore the worship of Natural God is a natural duty. It is the addressing of ourselves as his dependants to him as the supreme cause and governor of the world, with acknowledgements of what we enjoy, and petitions for what we really want, or be known to be convenient for us. As if, ex gr. I should in some humble and composed manner (says Mr Wollaston) pray to that "Almighty Being, upon whom depends the existence of the world, and by whose providence I have been preserved to this moment, and enjoyed many undeserved advantages, that he would graciously accept my grateful sense and acknowledgements of all his beneficence towards me; that he would deliver me from the evil consequences of all my transgressions and follies; that he would endue me with such dispositions and powers as may carry me innocently and safely through all future trials, and may enable me on all occasions to behave myself conformably to the laws of reason piously and wisely; that He would suffer no being to injure me, no misfortunes to befall me, nor me to hurt myself by any error or misconduct of my own: that he would vouchsafe me clear and distinct perceptions of things; with so much health and prosperity as may be good for me; that I may at least pass my time in peace, with contentment and tranquillity of mind; and that having faithfully discharged my duty to my family and friends, and endeavoured to improve myself in virtuous habits and useful knowledge, I may at last make a decent and happy exit, and find myself in some better state."

That an untaught savage would be prompted by instinct to address the Supreme Being in such terms as this, we are so far from thinking that to us it appears not probable that such a savage, in a state of solitude, would be led by instinct to suppose the existence of that Being. But as soon as the being and attributes of God were, by whatever means, made known to man, every sentiment expressed in this prayer must necessarily have been generated in his mind; for not to be sensible that we derive our existence and all our enjoyments from God, is in effect to deny his being or his providence; and not to feel a wish that he would give us what we want, is to deny either his goodness or his power.

The worship of God therefore is a natural duty resulting from the contemplation of his attributes and a sense of our own dependence. But the reasoning which has led us to this conclusion respects only private devotion; for it is a question of much greater difficulty, and far enough from being yet determined, whether public worship be a duty of that religion he worship which can with any propriety be termed natural. Mr Wollaston indeed positively affirms that it is, and endeavours to prove his position by the following arguments.

"A man (says he) may be considered as a member of some society; and as such he ought to worship God for it, if he has the opportunity of doing it, if there be proper prayers used publicly to which he may resort, and if his health, &c. permit. Or the society may be considered as one body, that has common interests and concerns, and as such is obliged to worship the Deity, and offer one prayer. Besides, there are many who know not of themselves..." Duties and themselves how to pray; perhaps cannot so much as read. These must be taken as they are; and consequently some time and place appointed where they may have suitable prayers read to them, and be guided in their devotions. And further, towards the keeping mankind in order, it is necessary there should be some religion professed, and even established, which cannot be without public worship. And were it not for that sense of virtue which is principally preserved (so far as it is preserved) by national forms and habits of religion, men would soon lose it all, run wild, prey upon one another, and do what else the worst of savages do.

These are in themselves just observations, and would come with great force and propriety from the tongue or pen of a Christian preacher, who is taught by revelation that the Master whom he serves has commanded his followers "not to forsake the assembling of themselves together," and has promised, "that if two of them shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of his Father who is in heaven." As urged by such a man, and on such grounds, they would serve to show the fitness of the divine command, and to point out the benefits which a religious obedience to it might give us reason to expect. But the author is here professing to treat of natural religion, and to state the duties which result from the mere relation which subsists between man as a creature and God as his creator and constant preserver. Now, though we readily admit the benefits of public worship as experienced under the Christian dispensation, we do not perceive anything in this reasoning which could lead a pious theist to expect the same benefit previous to all experience. When the author thought of national forms and establishments of religion, he certainly lost sight of his proper subject; and, as such writers are too apt to do, comprehended under the religion of nature what belongs only to that which is revealed. Natural religion, in the proper sense of the words, admits of no particular forms, and of no legal establishment. Private devotion is obviously one of its duties, because sentiments of adoration, confession, supplication, and thanksgiving, necessarily spring up in the breast of every man who has just notions of God and of himself; but it is not so obvious that such notions would induce any body of men to meet at stated times for the purpose of expressing their devotional sentiments in public. Mankind are indeed social beings, and naturally communicate their sentiments to each other; but we cannot conceive what should at first have led them to think that public worship at stated times would be acceptable to the self-existent Author of the universe. In case of a famine, or any other calamity in which the whole tribe was equally involved, they might speak of it to each other, inquire into its cause, and in the extremity of their distress join perhaps in one fervent petition, that God would remove it. In the same manner they might be prompted to pour forth occasional ejaculations of public gratitude for public mercies; but it does not follow from these incidental occurrences that they would be led to institute times and places and forms of national worship, as if they believed the omniscient Deity more ready to hear them in public than in private. That the appointment of such times and forms and places is beneficial to society, experience teaches us; and therefore it is the duty, and has been the practice, of the supreme magistrate, in every age and in every civilized country, to provide for the maintenance of the national worship. But this practice has taken its rise, not from the deductions of reason, but of nature either from direct revelation, as among the Jews and Christians; or from tradition, which had its origin in some early revelations, as among the more enlightened Pagans of ancient and modern times.

We hope none of our readers will imagine that we mean, in any degree, to call in question the fitness or the duty of public worship. This is far from our intention; but while we are convinced of the importance and necessity of this duty, we do not apprehend that we lessen its dignity, or detract from the weight of almost universal practice, by endeavouring to derive that practice from its true source, which appears to us to be not human reason, but divine revelation.

But whatever doubts may be entertained with respect to the origin of public worship, there can be none as to the foundation of moral virtue. Reason clearly perceives it to be the will of our Maker, that each individual of the human race should treat every other individual as, in similar circumstances, he would expect to be treated himself. It is thus only that the greatest sum of human happiness can be produced (see Moral Philosophy, No. 17, and 135); for were all men temperate, sober, just in their dealings, faithful to their promises, charitable to the poor, &c., it is obvious that no miseries would be felt on earth, but the few which, by the laws of corporeal nature, unavoidably result from the union of our minds with systems of matter. But the design of God in forming sentient beings was to communicate to them some portion, or rather some resemblance, of that felicity which is essential to himself; and therefore every action which in its natural tendency co-operates with this design must be agreeable to him, as every action of a contrary tendency must be disagreeable.

From this reasoning it follows, that we are obliged not only to be just and beneficent to one another, but also to abstain from all unnecessary cruelty to inferior animals. That we have a right to tame cattle, and employ them for the purposes of agriculture and other arts where strength is required, is a position which we believe has seldom been controverted. But if it is the intention of God to communicate a portion of happiness to all his creatures endowed with sense, it is obvious that we sin against him when we subject even the horse or the ass to greater labour than he is able to perform; and this sin is aggravated when from avarice we give not the animal a sufficient quantity of food to support him under the exertions which we compel him to make. That it is our duty to defend ourselves and our property from the ravages of beasts of prey, and that we may even exterminate such beasts from the country in which we live, are truths which cannot be questioned; but it has been the opinion of men, eminent for wisdom and learning, that we have no right to kill an ox or a sheep for food, but in consequence of the divine permission to Noah recorded in the ninth chapter of the book of Genesis. Whether this opinion be well or ill founded we shall not positively determine, though the arguments on which it rests are of such a nature as the reasoners of the present day would perhaps find it no easy task to answer; but it cannot admit of a doubt, that, in killing such animals, we are, in duty to their Creator and ours, bound to put them to the least possible pain. If this be granted, it is still more evident be any proof of that doctrine's being the deduction of Duties and human reasoning. The popular belief of Paganism, both ancient and modern, is so fantastic and absurd, that it could never have been rationally inferred from what nature teaches of God and the soul. In the Elysium of the Greek and Roman poets, departed spirits were visible to mortal eyes; and must therefore have been clothed with some material vehicle of sufficient density to reflect the rays of light, though not to resist the human touch. In the mythology of the northern nations, as deceased heroes are represented as eating and drinking, they could not be considered as entirely divested of matter; and in every popular creed of idolatry, future rewards were supposed to be conferred, not for private virtue, but for public violence, on heroes and conquerors and the destroyers of nations. Surely no admirer of what is now called natural religion will pretend that these are part of its doctrines; they are evidently the remains of some primeval tradition obscured and corrupted in its long progress through ages and nations.

The philosophers of Greece and Rome employed much time and great talents in disquisitions concerning the human soul and the probability of a future state; and if the genuine conclusions of natural religion on this subject are anywhere to be found, one would naturally look for them in the writings of those men whose genius and virtues did honour to human nature. Yet it is a fact, that the philosophers held such notions concerning the substance of the soul and its state after death as could afford no rational support to suffering virtue, (see Metaphysics, Part III, chap. 4.) Socrates is indeed an exception. Confining himself to the study of ethics, that excellent person inferred by the common moral arguments (see Moral Philosophy, N° 232—246,) that the reality of a future state of rewards and punishments is in the highest degree probable. He was not, however, at all times absolutely convinced of this important truth; for a little before his death he said to some who were about him, "I am now about to leave this world, and ye are still to continue in it; which of us have the better part allotted us, God only knows." And again, Plato in the end of his most admired discourse concerning the Apology, immortality of the soul, delivered at a time when he must have been serious, he said to his friends who came to pay their last visit, "I would have you to know that I have great hopes that I am now going into the company of good men; yet I would not be too peremptory and confident concerning it."

Next to Socrates, Cicero was perhaps the most respectable of all the philosophers of antiquity; and he seems to have studied this great question with uncommon care; yet what were his conclusions? After retailing the opinions of various sages of Greece, and showing that some held the soul to be the heart; others, the blood in the heart; some the brain; others, the breath; one, that it was harmony; another, that it was number; one, that it was nothing at all; and another, that it was a certain quintessence without a name, but which might properly be called ulysseus—he gravely adds, "Harum sententiarum quo vera sit, Deus aliquis videtit: quae verisimillima, magna questio est." He then proceeds to give his own opinion; which was, that the soul was part of God.

To us who know by other evidence that the soul is immortal, and that there will be a future state in which all... PART II. OF REVEALED THEOLOGY.

In every civilized country the popular system of theology has claimed its origin from divine revelation. The Pagans of antiquity had their augurs and oracles; the Chinese have their inspired teachers Confucius and Fohi; the Hindoos have their sacred books derived from Brahma; the followers of Mahomet have their Koran dictated by an angel; and the Jews and Christians have the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, which they believe to have been written by holy men of old, who spake and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

That the claims of ancient Paganism to a theology derived from heaven, as well as the similar claims of the Chinese, Hindoos, and Mahometans, are ill founded, has been shown in various articles of this work, (see CHINA, HINDOSTAN, MAHOMETANISM, MYTHOLOGY, and POLYTHEISM); whilst under the words RELIGION, REVELATION, and SCRIPTURE, we have sufficiently proved the divine inspiration of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and of course the divine origin of Jewish and Christian theology. There indeed are not two systems of theology, but parts of one system which was gradually revealed as men were able to receive it; and therefore both scriptures must be studied by the Christian divine.

There is nothing in the sacred volume which is not of importance to understand; for the whole proceeds from the fountain of truth; but some of its doctrines are much more important than others, as relating immediately to man's everlasting happiness; and these it has been customary to arrange and digest into regular systems, called bodies or institutes of Christian theology. Could these artificial systems be formed with perfect impartiality, they would undoubtedly be useful, for the Bible contains many historical details, but remotely related to salvation; and even of its most important truths, it requires more time and attention than the majority of Christians have to bestow, to discover the mutual connection and dependence.

Artificial systems of theology are commonly divided into two great parts, the theoretic and the practical; revealed and theological. his various dispensations to man, and the duties thence incumbent on Christians. In doing this, we shall follow the order of the divine dispensations as we find them recorded in the Old and New Testaments, dwelling longest on those which appear to us of most general importance. But as we take it for granted that every reader of this article will have previously read the whole sacred volume, we shall not scruple to illustrate dogmas contained in the Old Testament by texts taken from the New, or to illustrate doctrines peculiar to the Christian religion by the testimony of Jewish prophets.

Sect. I. Of God and his Attributes.

In every system of theology the first truths to be believed are those which relate to the being and attributes of God. The Jewish lawgiver, therefore, who records the earliest revelations that were made to man, begins his history with a display of the power and wisdom of God in the creation of the world. He does not inform truth to his countrymen, and expect them to believe, on the authority of his divine commission, that God exists; for he well knew that the being of God must be admitted, and just notions entertained of his attributes, before man can be required to pay any regard to miracles which afford the only evidence of a primary revelation. "In the beginning (says he) God created the heavens and the earth." Here the being of God is assumed as a truth universally received; but the sentence, short as it is, reveals another, which, as we shall afterwards shew, human reason could never have discovered.

There is nothing which the scriptures more frequently or more earnestly inculcate than the unity of the divine nature. The texts asserting this great and fundamental truth are almost numberless. "Unto thee (says Moses to his countrymen)" it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord is God; there is none else beside him. Know therefore that the Lord he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath; there is none else." And again, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord;" or, as it is expressed in the original, "Jehovah our God is one Jehovah;" one Being to whom existence is essential, who could not have a beginning and cannot have an end. In the prophecies of Isaiah, God is introduced as repeatedly declaring, "I am Jehovah, and there is none else; there is no God besides me: that they may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none beside me: I am Jehovah, and there is none else: Is there a God besides me? Yea there is no God; I know not any." In perfect harmony with these declarations of Moses and the prophets, our Saviour, addressing himself to his Father, says, "This is life eternal, that they might know me: John xvii. There, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent;" and St Paul, who derived his doctrine from his divine Master, affirms, that "an idol is nothing in the world; and that there is none other God but one."

The unity of the divine nature, which, from the order and harmony of the world, appears probable to human reason, these texts of revelation put beyond a doubt. Hence the first precept of the Jewish law, and, according to their own writers, the foundation of their whole religion, was, "Thou shalt have none other gods before Me." Hence, too, the reason of that strict command to Jews and Christians to give divine worship to none but God: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve;" because he is God alone. Him only must we fear, because he alone hath infinite power; in him alone must we trust, because "he only is our rock and our salvation;" and to him alone must we direct our devotions, because "he only knoweth the hearts of the children of men."

The word אֱלֹהִים does not indicate a plurality of gods. In the opinion, however, of many eminent divines, it denotes, by its junction with the singular verb, a plurality of persons in the one Godhead; and some few have contended, that by means of this peculiar construction, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity may be proved from the first chapter of the book of Genesis. To this latter opinion we can by no means give our assent. That there are three distinct persons in the one divine nature may be inferred with sufficient evidence from a multitude of passages in the Old and New Testaments diligently compared together; but it would perhaps be rash to rest the proof of so sublime a mystery on any single text of holy scripture, and would certainly be so to rest it on the text in question. That Moses was acquainted with this doctrine, we may reasonably conclude from his so frequently making a plural name of God to agree with a verb in the singular number; but had we not possessed the brighter light of the New Testament to guide us, we should never have thought of drawing such an inference. For supposing the word אֱלֹהִים to denote clearly a plurality of persons, how could we have known that the number is neither more or less than three, had it not been ascertained to us by subsequent revelations?

There are indeed various passages in the Old Testament, of the phraseology of which no rational account can be given, but that they indicate more than one person in the Godhead. Such are those texts already noticed; "and the Lord God said, let us make man in our own image, after our likeness;" and "the Lord God said, behold the man is become like one of us." To these may be added the following, which are to us perfectly unintelligible on any other supposition; and "the Lord God said, let us go down, and there confound their language;" "If I be a Master (in the Hebrew adonim, masters), where is my fear?" "The fear of the Lord (Jehovah) is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy (in the Hebrew holy ones) is understanding." "Remember thy Creator (Hebrew, thy Creators) in the days of thy youth." "And now the Lord God and his Spirit hath sent me;" "Seek ye out of the book of the Lord and read; for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them."

That these texts imply a plurality of divine persons, seems to us incontrovertible. When Moses represents God as saying, let us make man, the majesty of the plural number had not been adopted by earthly sovereigns; and it is obvious that the Supreme Being could not, as has been supposed, call on angels to make man; for in different places of scripture creation is attributed to God alone. Hence it is that Solomon speaks of Creators in the plural number, though he means only the one Supreme Being, and exhorts men to remember them in the days of their youth. In the passage first quoted from Isaiah, there is a distinction made between the Lord God and his Spirit; and in the other, three divine persons are introduced, viz. the Speaker, the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord. It does not, however, appear evident from these passages, or from any other that we recollect in the Old Testament, that the persons in Deity are three and no more; but no sober Christian will harbour a doubt but that the precise number was by some means or other made known to the ancient Hebrews; for inquiries leading to it would be naturally suggested by the form in which the high priest was commanded to bless the people. "The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."

The form of Christian baptism establishes the truth of a Trinity of the doctrine of the Trinity beyond all reasonable ground of dispute. "Go (says our blessed Saviour) and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." What was it the apostles were to teach all nations? Was it not to turn from their vanities to the living God; to renounce their idols and false gods, and so to be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost? What now must occur to the Gentile nations on this occasion, but that, instead of all their deities, to whom they had before bowed down, they were in future to serve, worship, and adore, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as the only true and living God? To suppose that God and two creatures are here joined together in the solemn rite by which men were to be admitted into a new religion, which directly condemns all creature-worship, would be so unreasonable, that we are persuaded such a supposition never was made by any converted Polytheist of antiquity. The nations were to be baptized in the name of three persons, in the same manner, and therefore, doubtless, in the same sense. It is not said in the name of God and his two faithful servants; nor in the name of God, and Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which might have suggested a thought that one only of the three is God; but in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Whatever honour, reverence, or regard, is paid to the first person in this solemn rite, the same is paid to all three. Is he acknowledged as the object of worship? So are the other two likewise. Is he God and Lord over us? So are they. Are we enrolled as subjects, servants, and soldiers, under him? So are we equally under all. Are we hereby regenerated and made the temple of the Father? So are we likewise of the Son and Holy Ghost. "We will come (says our Saviour) and make our abode with him."

If those who believe the inspiration of the scriptures could require any further proof that the Godhead comprehends a trinity of persons in one nature, we might urge the apostolical form of benediction; "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." Would St Paul, or any other man of common sense, have in the same sentence, and in the most solemn manner, recommended his Corinthian converts to the love of God, and to the grace and communion of two creatures? We should think it very absurd to recommend a man at once to the favour of a king and a beggar. But how, it will be asked, can three divine persons be but one and the same God? This is a question which has been often put, but which, we believe, no created being can fully answer. The divine nature and its manner of existence is, to us, wholly incomprehensible; and we might with greater reason attempt to weigh the mountains in scales, than by our limited faculties to fathom the depths of infinity. The Supreme Being is present in power to every portion of space, and yet it is demonstrable, that in his essence he is not extended (see Metaphysics, No. 309, 310). Both these truths, his inextension and omnipresence, are fundamental principles in what is called natural religion; and when taken together they form, in the opinion of most people, a mystery as incomprehensible as that of the Trinity in unity. Indeed there is nothing of which it is more difficult to form a distinct notion than unity simple, and absolutely indivisible. Though the Trinity in unity, therefore, were no Christian doctrine, mysteries must still be believed; for they are as inseparable from the religion of nature as from that of revelation; and atheism involves the most incomprehensible of all mysteries, even the beginning of existence without a cause. We must indeed form the best notions that we can of this and all other mysteries; for if we have no notions whatever of a Trinity in unity, we can neither believe nor disbelieve that doctrine. It is however to be remembered, that all our notions of God are more or less analogical; that they must be expressed in words which, literally interpreted, are applicable only to man; and that propositions understood in this literal sense may involve an apparent contradiction, from which the truth meant to be expressed by them would be seen to be false, had we direct and adequate conceptions of the divine nature. On this account it is to be wished that men treating of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, had always expressed themselves in scripture language, and never aimed at being wise above what is written; but since they have acted otherwise, we must, in justice to our readers, animadvert on one or two statements of this doctrine, which we have reason to believe are earnestly contended for by some who consider themselves as the only orthodox.

In the scriptures, the three persons are denominated by the terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or by God, the Word, who is also declared to be God, and the Spirit of God. If each be truly God, it is obvious that they must all have the same divine nature, just as every man has the same human nature with every other man; and if there be but one God, it is equally obvious that they must be of the same individual substance or essence, which no three men can possibly be. In this there is a difficulty; but, as will be seen by and by, there is no contradiction. The very terms Father and Son imply such a relation between the two persons so denominated, as that though they are of the same substance, possessed of the same attributes, and equally God, just as a human father and his son are equally men, yet the second must be personally subordinate to the first. In like manner, the Holy Ghost, who is called the Spirit of God, and is said to proceed from the Father, and to be sent by the Son, must be conceived as God and subordinate to both, much in the same way as a son is his Attitude, subordinate to his parents, though possessed of equal or even of superior powers. That this is the true doctrine, appears to us undeniable from the words of our Saviour himself, who, in a prayer addressed to his Father, styles him * by way of pre-eminence, "the only true God," as John being the fountain or origin of the Godhead from which the Son and the Holy Ghost derive their true divinity. In like manner, St Paul, when opposing the polytheism of the Greeks, says expressly †, that "to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in, or for, him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him."

That the primitive fathers of the Christian church maintained this subordination of the second and third persons of the blessed Trinity to the first, has been evinced with complete evidence by Bishop Bull. We shall transcribe two quotations from him, and refer the reader for fuller satisfaction to sect. 4. of his Defensio fidei Nicaeae. The first shall be a passage cited from Novation, in which the learned prelate assures us the sense of all the ancients is expressed. "Quia quid est Filius, non ex se est, quia nec innatus est; sed ex patre est, quia genitus est; sive dum verbum est, sive dum virtus est, sive dum sapientia est, sive dum lux est, sive dum Filius est, ex quicquid huium est, non alium est quam ex Patre, Patri suo originem suam debent." The next is from Athanasius, who has never been accused of holding low opinions respecting the second person of the holy Trinity. This father, in his fifth discourse against the Arians, says, ἐν τῷ πατρὶ τὸν λόγον ἐν τῷ πατρὶ τῷ ἀγαπητῷ, ἐν τῷ πατρὶ τῷ ἀγαπητῷ. Ὁ λόγος ἦν ἐν τῷ πατρὶ τῷ ἀγαπητῷ, ἐν τῷ πατρὶ τῷ ἀγαπητῷ, ἐν τῷ πατρὶ τῷ ἀγαπητῷ, according to John, the Word was in this first principle, and the Word was God. For God is the principle; and because the Word is from the principle, therefore the Word is God. Agreeably to this doctrine, the Nicene fathers, in the creed which they published for the use of the universal church, style the only begotten Son, God or God, &c., &c.

Regardless however of antiquity, and of the plain sense of scripture, some modern divines of great learning some maintain, that the three persons in Deity are all substantial, co-eternal, co-ordinate, without derivation, subordination, or dependence, of any sort, as to nature or essence; while others affirm, that the second and third persons derive from the first their personality, but not their nature. We shall consider these opinions as different, though, from the obscurity of the language in which we have always seen them expressed, we cannot be certain but they may be one and the same. The maintainers of the former opinion hold, that the three persons called Elohim in the Old Testament, naturally independent on each other, entered into an agreement before the creation of the world, that one of them should in the fulness of time assume human nature, for the purpose of redeeming mankind from that misery into which it was foreseen that they would fall. This antemundane agreement, they add, constitutes the whole of that paternal and filial relation which subsists between the first and second persons whom we denominate Father and Son; and they hold, that the Son is said to be begotten before all worlds, to indicate that He who was before all worlds was begotten, or to be begotten, into the office of redeemer; or, more decisively, to signify that he undertook that office before the creation, and assumed to himself some appearance or figure of the reality in which he was to execute it; and he is called only begotten, because he alone was begotten into the office of redeemer.

To many of our readers we doubt not but this will appear a very extraordinary doctrine, and not easy to be reconciled with the unity of God. It is however sufficiently overturned by two sentences of holy scripture, about the meaning of which there can be no dispute.

"In this (says St John) was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." Taking the word son in its usual acceptation, this was certainly a wonderful degree of love in the Father of mercies to send into the world on our account a person so near related to him as an only son; but if we substitute this novel interpretation of the words only begotten son in their stead, the apostle's reasoning will lose all its force. St John will then be made to say,

"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent a divine person equal to himself, and no way related to him, but who had before the creation covenanted to come into the world, that we might live through him." Is this a proof of the love of the person here called God? Again, the inspired author of the epistle to the Hebrews, treating of our Saviour's priesthood, says, among other things expressive of his humiliation, that "though he was a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered."

If the word son be here understood in its proper sense, this verse displays in a very striking manner the condescension of our divine Redeemer, who, though he was no less a person than the proper Son of God by nature, yet vouchsafed to learn obedience by the things which he suffered; but if we substitute this metaphorical sonship in place of the natural, the reasoning of the author will be very extraordinary.

"Though this divine personage agreed before all worlds to suffer death for the redemption of man, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." What sense is there in this argument? Is it a proof of condescension to fulfil one's engagement? Surely, if the meaning of the word son, when applied to the second person of the blessed Trinity, were what is here supposed, the inspired writer's argument would have been more to the purpose for which it is brought, had it run thus: "Though he was not a son, i.e., though he had made no previous agreement, yet condescended he to learn," &c.

The other opinion, which supposes the Son and the Holy Ghost to derive from the Father their personality, but not their nature, is to us wholly unintelligible; for personality cannot exist, or be conceived in a state of separation from all natures, any more than a quality can exist in a state of separation from all substances. The former of these opinions we are unable to reconcile with the unity of God; the latter is clothed in words that have no meaning. Both as far as we can understand them, are palpable polytheism; more palpable indeed than that of the Grecian philosophers, who though they worshipped gods many, and lords many, yet all held one God supreme over the rest. See Polytheism, No. 32.

But if the Son and the Holy Ghost derive their nature as well as their personality from the Father, will it not follow that they must be posterior to him in time, since every effect is posterior to its cause? No; this consequence seems to follow only by reasoning too closely from one nature to another, when there is between the two but a very distant analogy. It is indeed true, that as in the order of nature to his son; but were it essential to a man to be a father, so that he could not exist otherwise than in that relation, it is obvious that his son would be coeval with himself, though still as proceeding from him, he would be posterior in the order of nature. This is the case with all necessary causes and effects. The visible sun is the immediate and necessary cause of light and heat, either as emitting the rays from his own substance, or as exciting the agency of a fluid diffused for that purpose through the whole system. Light and heat, therefore, must be as old as the sun; and had he existed from eternity, they would have existed from eternity with him, though still, as his effects, they would have been behind him in the order of nature. Hence it is, that as we must speak analogically of the Divine nature, and when treating of mind, even the Supreme mind, make use of words literally applicable only to the modifications of matter, the Nicene fathers illustrate the eternal generation of the second person of the blessed Trinity by this procession of light from the corporeal sun, calling him God of God, light of light.

Another comparison has been made use of to enable us to form some notion, however inadequate, how three Divine persons can subsist in the same substance, and thereby constitute but one God. Moses informs us, that man was made after the image of God. That this relates to the soul more than to the body of man, has been granted by all but a few gross anthropomorphites; but it has been well observed *, that the soul, though in itself one indivisible and unextended substance, is conceived as consisting of three principal faculties, the understanding, the memory, and the will. Of these, though they are all coeval in time, and equally essential to a rational soul, the understanding is in the order of nature obviously the first, and the memory the second; for things must be perceived before they can be remembered; and they must be remembered and compared together before they can excite volitions, from being some agreeable, and others disagreeable. The memory therefore may be said to spring from the understanding, and the will from both; and as these three faculties are conceived to constitute one soul, so may three Divine persons partaking of the same individual nature or essence constitute one God.

These parallels or analogies are by no means brought forward as proofs of the Trinity, of which the evidence ought to be gathered wholly from the word of God; but the Grecian they serve perhaps to help our labouring minds to form the justest notions of that mystery which it is possible for us to form in the present state of our existence; and they seem to rescue the doctrine sufficiently from the charge of contradiction, which has been so often urged against it by Unitarian writers. To the last analogy we are aware it has often been objected, that the soul may as well be said to consist of ten or twenty faculties as of three, since the passions are equally essential to it with the understanding, the memory, and the will, and are as different from one another as these three faculties are. This, however, is probably a mistake; for the best philosophy seems to teach us, that the passions are not innate; that a man might exist through a long life a stranger to many of them; and that there are probably no two minds in which are generated all the passions (see Passion); but understanding, memory, and will, are absolutely and equally necessary to every rational being. But whatever be in this, if the human mind can be conceived to be one indivisible substance, consisting of different faculties, whether many or few, why should it be thought an impossibility for the infinite and eternal nature of God to be communicated to three persons acting different parts in the creation and government of the world, and in the great scheme of man's redemption.

To the doctrine of the Trinity many objections have been made, as it implies the divinity of the Son and the Holy Ghost; of whom the former assumed our nature, and in it died for the redemption of man. These we shall notice when we come to examine the revelations more peculiarly Christian; but there is one objection which, as it respects the doctrine in general, may be properly noticed here. It is said that the first Christians borrowed the notion of a Triune God from the later Platonists; and that we hear not of a Trinity in the church till converts were made from the school of Alexandria. But if this be the case, we may properly ask, whence had those Platonists the doctrine themselves? It is not surely so simple or so obvious as to be likely to have occurred to the reasoning mind of a Pagan philosopher; or if it be, why do Unitarians suppose it to involve a contradiction? Plato indeed taught a doctrine in some respects similar to that of the Christian Trinity, and so did Pythagoras, with many other philosophers of Greece and the East (see Platonism, Polytheism, and Pythagoras); but though these sages appear to have been on some occasions extremely credulous, and on others to have indulged themselves in the most mysterious speculations, there is no room to suppose that they were naturally weaker men than ourselves, or that they were capable of inculcating as truths what they perceived to involve a contradiction. The Platonic and Pythagorean trinities never could have occurred to the mind of him who merely from the works of creation endeavoured to discover the being and attributes of the Creator; and therefore as those philosophers travelled into Egypt and the East in quest of knowledge, it appears to us in the highest degree probable, that they picked up this mysterious and sublime doctrine in those regions where it had been handed down as a dogma from the remotest ages, and where we know that science was not taught systematically, but detailed in collections of sententious maxims and traditionary opinions. If this be so, we cannot doubt but that the Pagan trinities had their origin in some primeval revelation. Nothing else indeed can account for the general prevalence of a doctrine so remote from human imagination, and of which we find vestiges in the sacred books of almost every civilized people of antiquity. The corrupt state in which it is viewed in the writings of Plato and others, is the natural consequence of its descent through a long course of oral tradition; and then falling into the hands of men who bent every opinion as much as possible to a conformity with their own speculations. The trinity of Platonism therefore, instead of being an objection, lends, in our opinion, no feeble support to the Christian doctrine, since it affords almost a complete proof of that doctrine's having made part of the first revelations communicated to man.

Having thus discovered that the one God comprehends three persons, let us now inquire what this triune God exerted when he created the heaven and the earth. That by the heaven and the earth is here meant the whole universe, visible and invisible, is known to every person acquainted with the phraseology of Scripture; and we need inform no man conversant with English writers, that by creation, in its proper sense, is meant bringing into being or making that to exist which existed not before. It must, however, be acknowledged, that the Hebrew word does not always imply the production of substance, but very often the forming of particular organized bodies out of pre-existing matter. Thus when it is said* that "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind," and again, "that he created man male and female;" though the word is used on both occasions, we are not to conceive that the bodies of the first human pair, and of these animals, were brought into being from nonentity, but only that they were formed by a proper organization being given to pre-existent matter. But when Moses says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," he cannot be supposed to mean, that "in the beginning, God only gave form to matter already existing of itself;" for in the very next verse we are assured that after this act of creation was over, "the earth was still without form and void," or, in other words, in a chaotic state.

That the Jews, before the coming of our Saviour, understood their lawgiver to teach a proper creation, is plain from that passage in the second book of the Maccabees, in which a mother, to persuade her son to suffer the cruellest tortures rather than forsake the law of his God, uses the following argument: "I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not." To the same purpose the inspired author of the epistle to the Hebrews, when magnifying the excellence of faith, says, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear;" where, as Bishop Pearson has ably proved†, the phrase is equivalent to σοφίαν ἐκ στόχου, in the quotation from the Maccabees.

The very first verse, therefore, of the book of Genesis informs us of a most important truth, which all the uninspired wisdom of antiquity could not discover. It assures us, that as nothing exists by chance, so nothing is necessarily existing but the three divine persons in the one Godhead. Every thing else, whether material or immaterial, derives its substance, as well as its form or qualities, from the fiat of that self-existent Being, "who was, and is, and is to come."

It does not, however, follow from this verse, or from any other passage in the sacred Scriptures, that the whole universe was called into existence at the same instant; neither is it by any means evident that the chaos of at once our world was brought into being on the first of those six days during which it was gradually reduced into form. From a passage‡ in the book of Job, in which we are told by God himself, that when the "foundation of the earth..." earth was laid the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy," it appears extremely probable that worlds had been created, formed, and inhabited, long before our earth had any existence. Nor is this opinion at all contrary to what Moses says of the creation of the stars; for though they are mentioned in the same verse with the sun and moon, yet the manner in which, according to the original, they are introduced, by no means indicates that all the stars were formed at the same time with the luminaries of our system. Most of them have been created long before, and some of them since, our world was brought into being; for that clause (ver. 16.) "he made the stars also," is in the Hebrew no more than "and the stars;" the words he made being inserted by the translators. The word verse therefore ought to be rendered thus, "and God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light with the stars to rule the night;" where nothing is intimated with respect to the time when the stars were formed, any more than in that verse of the Psalms *, which exhorts us to give thanks to God who made the moon and stars to rule by night; for his mercy endureth "for ever." The first verse of the book of Genesis informs us that all things spiritual and corporeal derive their existence from God; but it is nowhere said that all matter was created at the same time.

That the whole corporeal universe may have been created at once must be granted; but if so, we have reason to believe that this earth, with the sun and all the planets of the system, were suffered to remain for ages in a state of chaos, "without form and void;" because it appears from other scriptures, that worlds of intelligent creatures existed, and even that some angels had fallen from a state of happiness prior to the era of the Mosaic cosmogony. That the sun and the other planets revolving round him were formed at the same time with the earth, cannot indeed be questioned; for it is not only probable in itself from the known laws of nature, but is expressly affirmed by the sacred historian, who relates the formation of the sun and moon in the order in which it took place; but there is one difficulty which has furnished ignorance with something like an objection to the divine legation of the Hebrew lawgiver, and which we shall notice.

Moses informs us, that on the first day after the production of the chaos, the element of light was created; and yet within a few sentences he declares, that the sun, the fountain of light, was not made till the fourth day. How are these two passages to be reconciled? We answer, That they may be reconciled many ways. Moses wrote for the use of a whole people, and not for the amusement or instruction of a few astronomers; and in this view his language is sufficiently proper, even though we suppose the formation of the sun and the other planets to have been carried on at the same time, and in the same progressive manner, with the formation of this earth. The voice which called light into existence would separate the fiery and luminous particles of the chaos from those which were opaque, and, on this hypothesis, consolidate them in one globe, diffusing an obscure light through the planetary system; but if the earth's atmosphere continued till the fourth day loaded with vapours, as from the narrative of Moses it appears to have done, the sun could not till that day have been seen from the earth, and may therefore, in popular language, be said with sufficient propriety to have been formed on the fifth day, as it was then made to appear. (See CREATION, No. 13.) But though this solution of the difficulty serves to remove the objection, and to secure the credit of the sacred historian, candour compels us to confess that it appears not to be the true solution.

The difficulty itself arises entirely from supposing the sun to be the sole fountain of light; but the truth of this opinion is not self-evident, nor has it ever been established by satisfactory proof. It is indeed to a mind divested of undue deference to great names, and considering the matter with impartiality, an opinion extremely improbable. The light of a candle placed on an eminence may in a dark night be seen in every direction at the distance of at least three miles. But if this small body be rendered visible by means of rays emitted from itself, the flame of a candle, which cannot be supposed more than an inch in diameter, must, during every instant that it continues to burn, throw from its own substance luminous matter sufficient to fill a spherical space of six miles in diameter. This phenomenon, if real, is certainly surprising; but if we pursue the reflection a little farther, our wonder will be greatly increased. The matter which, when converted into flame, is an inch in diameter, is not, when of the consistence of cotton and tallow, of the dimensions of the 20th part of an inch; and therefore, on the common hypothesis, the 20th part of an inch of tallow may be so rarefied as to fill a space of 1,130,976 cubic miles! a rarefaction which to us appears altogether incredible. We have indeed heard much of the divisibility of matter ad infinitum; and think we understand what are usually called demonstrations of the truth of that proposition; but these demonstrations prove not the actual divisibility of real solid substances, but only that on trial we shall find no end of the ideal process of dividing and subdividing imaginary extension.

On the whole, therefore, we are much more inclined to believe that the matter of light is an extremely subtile fluid, diffused through the corporeal universe, and only excited to agency by the sun and other fiery bodies, than that it consists of streams continually issuing from the substance of these bodies. It is indeed an opinion pretty generally received, and certainly not improbable in itself, that light and electricity are one and the same substance (see ELECTRICITY-INDEX); but we know that the electrical fluid, though pervading the whole of corporeal nature, and, as experiments show, capable of acting with great violence, yet lies dormant and unperceived till its agency be excited by some foreign cause. Just so it may be with the matter of light. That substance may be "diffused from one end of the creation" to the other. It may traverse the whole universe, form a communication between the most remote spheres, penetrate into the inmost recesses of the earth, and only wait to be put in a proper motion to communicate visible sensations to the eye. Light is to the organ of sight what the air is to the organ of hearing. Air is the medium which, vibrating on the ear, causes the sensation of sound; but it equally exists round us at all times, though there be no sonorous body to put it in motion. In like manner, light may be equally extended at all times, by night as well as by day, from the most distant fixed stars to this earth, though it then only strikes our eyes so as to excite visible sensations when impelled by the sun or some other mass. Nor let any one imagine that this hypothesis interferes with any of the known laws of optics; for if the rays of light be impelled in straight lines, and in the same direction in which they are supposed to be emitted, the phenomena of vision must necessarily be the same.

Moses therefore was probably a more accurate philosopher than he is sometimes supposed to be. The element of light was doubtless created, as he informs us, on the first day; but whether it was then put in that state in which it is the medium of vision, we cannot know, and we need not inquire, since there was neither man nor inferior animal with organs fitted to receive its impressions. For the first three days it may have been used only as a powerful instrument to reduce into order the jarring chaos. Or if it was from the beginning capable of communicating visible sensations, and dividing the day from the night, its agency must have been immediately excited by the Divine power till the fourth day, when the sun was formed, and endowed with proper qualities for instrumentally discharging that office. This was indeed miraculous, as being contrary to the present laws of nature: but the whole creation was miraculous; and we surely need not hesitate to admit a less miracle where we are under the necessity of admitting a greater. The power which called light and all other things into existence, could give them their proper motions by ten thousand different means; and to attempt to solve the difficulties of creation by philosophic theories respecting the laws of nature, is to trifle with the common sense of mankind: it is to consider as subservient to a law that very power by whose continued exertion the law is established.

Having thus proved that the universe derives its being, as well as the form and adjustment of its several parts, from the one supreme and self-existent God, let us here pause, and reflect on the sublime conceptions which such astonishing works are fitted to give us of the divine perfections.

And, in the first place, how strongly do the works of creation impress on our minds a conviction of the infinite power of their Author? He spoke, and the universe started into being; he commanded, and it stood fast. How mighty is the arm which "stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth; which removeth the mountains and they know it not; which overturneth them in his anger; which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble!" How powerful the word which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not; and which scaleth up the stars;" which sustaineth numberless worlds of amazing bulk suspended in the regions of empty space, and directs their various and inconceivably rapid motions with the utmost regularity! "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who hath created all these things?" By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering. He stretcheth out the North over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out the heavens with a span; and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure; and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. Behold! the nations are as a drop of the bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. All nations God and before him are as nothing, and they are counted to him his Attrib- less than nothing, and vanity. To whom then will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto him?"

As the works of creation are the effects of God's power, they likewise in the most eminent manner display His wisdom. This was so apparent to Cicero, even from the partial knowledge in astronomy which his time afforded, that he declared those who could assert the contrary void of all understanding. But if that great master of reason had been acquainted with the modern discoveries in astronomy, which exhibit numberless worlds scattered through space, and each of immense magnitude; had he known that the sun is placed in the centre of our system, and that to diversify the seasons the planets move round him with exquisite regularity; could he have conceived that the distinction between light and darkness is produced by the diurnal rotation of the earth on its own axis, instead of that disproportionate whirling of the whole heavens which the ancient astronomers were forced to suppose; had he known of the wonderful motions of the comets, and considered how such eccentric bodies have been preserved from falling upon some of the planets in the same system, and the several systems from falling upon each other; had he taken into the account that there are yet greater things than these, and "that we have seen but a few of God's works;"—that virtuous Pagan would have been ready to exclaim in the words of the Psalmist, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches."

That creation is the offspring of unmixed goodness, and good has been already shown with sufficient evidence (see Metaphysics, No. 312, and No. 29, of this article); and from the vast number of creatures on our earth endowed with life and sense, and a capability of happiness, and the infinitely greater number which probably inhabit the planets of this and other systems, we may infer that the goodness of God is as boundless as his power, and that "as is his majesty, so is his mercy." Out of his own fulness hath he brought into being numberless worlds, replenished with myriads of myriads of creatures, furnished with various powers and organs, capacities and instincts; and out of his own fulness he continually and plentifully supplies them all with everything necessary to make their existence comfortable. "The eyes of all wait upon him, and he giveth them their meat in due season. He openeth his hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing; he loveth righteousness and judgment; the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. He watereth the ridges thereof abundantly; he settleth the furrows thereof; he maketh it soft with showers, and blesseth the springing thereof. He crowneth the year with his goodness; and his paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness; and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered with corn; they shout with joy, they also sing." Surely the Author of so much happiness must be essential goodness; and we must conclude with St John, that "God is love."

These attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness, so conspicuously God and his Attributes.

The Trinity; for Moses declares that the heaven and the earth were created, not by one person, but by the Elohim.

The second person in the Trinity, indeed, or second person, appears to have been the immediate Creator; for St John assures us*, that "all things were made by him, and that without him was not any thing made that was made."

Some Arian writers of great learning (and we believe the late Dr Price was of the number) have asserted, that a being who was created himself may be endowed by the Omnipotent God with the power of creating other beings; and as they hold the λόγος or word, to be a creature, they contend that he was employed by the Supreme Deity to create, not the whole universe, but only this earth, or at the utmost the solar system.

"The old argument (says one of them), that no being inferior to the great Omnipotent can create a world, is so childish as to deserve no answer. Why may not God communicate the power of making worlds to any being whom he may choose to honour with so glorious a prerogative? I have no doubt but such a power may be communicated to many good men during the progress of their existence; and to say that it may not, is not only to limit the power of God, but to contradict acknowledged analogies."

We are far from being inclined to limit the power of God. He can certainly do whatever involves not a direct contradiction; and therefore, though we know nothing analogous to the power of creating worlds, yet as we perceive not any contradiction implied in the notion of that power being communicated, we shall admit that such a communication may be possible, though we think it in the highest degree improbable. But surely no man will contend that the whole universe was brought into existence by any creature; because that creature himself, however highly exalted, is necessarily comprehended in the notion of the universe.

Now St Paul expressly affirms†, that, by the second person in the blessed Trinity, "were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." Indeed the Hebrew Scriptures in more places than one‡ expressly declare that this earth, and of course the whole solar system, was formed, as well as created, not by an inferior being, but by the true God, even Jehovah alone; and in the New Testament§, the Gentiles are said to be without excuse for not glorifying him as God, "because his eternal power and Godhead are clearly seen from the creation of the world." But if it were natural to suppose that the power of creating worlds has been, or ever will be, communicated to beings inferior to the great Omnipotent, this reasoning of the apostle's would be founded on false principles, and the sentence which he passed on the Heathen would be contrary to justice.

But though it be thus evident that the λόγος was the immediate Creator of the universe, we are not to suppose that it was without the concurrence of the other two persons. The Father, who may be said to be the fountain of the Divinity itself, was certainly concerned in the creation of the world, and is therefore in the apostle's creed denominated the "Father Almighty Maker of heaven and earth;" and that the Holy Ghost or third person is likewise a Creator, we have the express testimony of two inspired writers: "By the word of the Lord (says the Psalmist) were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath (Hebrew, Spirit) of his mouth." And Job declares, that the "Spirit of God made him, and that the breath of the Almighty gave him life." Indeed these three divine persons are so intimately united, that what is done by one must be done by all, as they have but one and the same will. This is the reason assigned by Origen* for our paying divine worship to each; ἐπισκευάζονται τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῖς τρισὶ, πᾶσα τῇ ἀληθείᾳ καὶ τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ, καὶ τῷ σταυρῷ καὶ τῇ τριάδι τῆς θεολογίας, "we worship the Father of truth, and the Son the truth itself, being two things as to hypostasis, but one in agreement, consent, and sameness of will." Nor is their union a mere agreement in will only; it is a physical or essential union: so that what is done by one must necessarily be done by the others also, according to that of our Saviour, "I am in the Father and the Father in me: The Father who dwelleth in me, he doth the works."

Sect. II. Of the Original State of Man, and the first Covenant of Eternal Life which God vouchsafed to make with him.

In the Mosaic account of the creation, every attentive reader must be struck with the manner in which the supreme Being is represented as making man: "And Genesis God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth; and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."

This is a very remarkable passage, and contains much important information. It indicates a plurality of persons in the Godhead, describes the nature of man as he came at first from the hands of his Creator, and furnishes data from which we may infer what were the duties required of him in that primeval state, and what were the rewards to which obedience would entitle him.

Of the plurality of Divine persons, and their essential union, we have treated in the preceding section; and now proceed to inquire into the specific nature of the first man. This must be implied in the image of God, in in which he is said to have been created; for it is by that phrase alone that he is characterized, and his pre-eminence marked over the other animals. Now this image or likeness must have been found either in his body alone, his soul alone, or in both united. That it could not be in his body alone, is obvious; for the infinite and omnipotent God is allowed by all men to be without body, parts, or passions, and therefore to be such as nothing corporeal can possibly resemble.

If this likeness is to be found in the human soul, it comes to be a question in what faculty or power of the soul it consists. Some have contended, that man is the only creature on this earth who is animated by a principle essentially different from matter; and hence they have inferred, that he is said to have been formed in the Divine image, on account of the immateriality of that vital principle which was infused into his body when the "Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." That this account of the animation of the body of man indicates a superiority of the human soul to the vital principle of all other animals, cannot, we think, be questioned; but it does not therefore follow, that the human soul is the only immaterial principle of life which animates any terrestrial creature. It has been shown elsewhere (see Metaphysics, No. 235), that the power of sensation, attended with individual consciousness, as it appears to be in all the higher species of animals, cannot result from any organic structure, or be the quality of a compound extended being. The vital principle in such animals therefore must be immaterial as well as the human soul; but as the word immaterial denotes only a negative notion, the souls of men and brutes, though both immaterial, may yet be substances essentially different. This being the case, it is plain that the Divine image in which man was formed, and by which he is distinguished from the brute creation, cannot consist in the mere circumstance of his mind being a substance different from matter, but in some positive quality which distinguishes him from every other creature on this globe.

About this characteristic quality various opinions have been formed. Some have supposed that the image of God in Adam appeared in that rectitude, righteousness, and holiness, in which he was made; for God made man upright (Eccles. vii. 2.), a holy and righteous creature; which holiness and righteousness were in their kind perfect; his understanding was free from all error and mistakes; his will biased to that which is good; his affections flowed in a right channel towards their proper objects; there were no sinful motions and evil thoughts in his heart, nor any propensity or inclination to that which is evil; and the whole of his conduct and behaviour was according to the will of God. And this righteousness (say they) was natural, and not personal and acquired. It was not obtained by the exercise of his free-will, but was created with him, and belonged to his mind, as a natural faculty or instinct. They therefore call it original righteousness, and suppose that it was lost in the fall.

To this doctrine may objections have been made. It has been said that righteousness consisting in right actions proceeding from proper principles, could not be created with Adam and make a part of his nature; because nothing which is produced in a man without his knowledge and consent can be in him either virtue or vice. Adam, it is added, was unquestionably placed in a state of trial, which proves that he had righteous habits to acquire; whereas the doctrine under consideration, affirming his original righteousness to have been perfect, and therefore incapable of improvement, is inconsistent with a state of trial. That his understanding was free from all errors and mistakes, has been thought a blasphemous position, as it attributes to man one of the incommunicable perfections of the Deity. It is likewise believed to be contrary to fact; for either his understanding was bewildered in error, or his affections flowed towards an improper object, when he suffered himself at the persuasion of his wife to transgress the express law of his Creator. The objector expresses his wonder at its having ever been supposed that the whole of Adam's conduct and behaviour was according to the will of God, when it is so notorious that he yielded to the first temptation with which, as far as we know, he was assailed in paradise.

Convinced by these and other arguments, that the image of God in which man was created could not consist in original righteousness, or in exemption from all possibility of error, many learned men, and Bishop Bull among others, have supposed, that by the image of God is to be understood certain gifts and powers supernaturally infused by the Holy Spirit into the minds of our first parents, to guide them in the ways of piety and virtue. This opinion they rest chiefly upon the authority of Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, and other fathers of the primitive church; but Bishop Bull they think, at the same time, that it is countenanced by and some several passages in the New Testament. Thus when St. Paul says, "And it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit;" they understand the whole passage as relating to the creation of man, and not as drawing a comparison between Adam and Christ, to show the great superiority of the latter over the former. In support of this interpretation they observe, that the apostle immediately adds, "howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual;" an addition which they think was altogether needless, if by the quickening Spirit he had referred to the incarnation of Christ, which had happened in the very age in which he was writing. They are therefore of opinion, that the body of Adam, after being formed of the dust of the ground, was first animated by a vital principle endowed with the faculties of reason and sensation, which entitled the whole man to the appellation of a living soul. After this they suppose certain graces of the Holy Spirit to have been infused into him, by which he was made a quickening spirit, or formed in the image of God; and that it was in consequence of this succession of powers communicated to the same person, that the apostle said, "Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural."

We need hardly observe, that with respect to a question of this kind the authority of Tatian and the other fathers quoted is nothing. Those men had no better means of discovering the true sense of the scriptures of the Old Testament than we have; and their ignorance of the language in which these scriptures are written, added to some metaphysical notions respecting the soul, which too many of them had derived from the school of Plato, rendered them very ill qualified to interpret the writings of Moses. Were authority to be admitted, we should consider that of Bishop Bull and his modern followers as of greater weight than the authority of all the ancients to whom they appeal. But authority cannot be admitted; and the reasoning of this learned and excellent man from the text of St Paul is surely very inconclusive. It makes two persons of Adam; a first, when he was a natural man composed of a body and a reasonable soul; a second, when he was endowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and by them formed in the image of God! In the verse following too, the apostle expressly calls the second man, of whom he had been speaking, "the Lord from heaven;" but this appellation we apprehend to be too high for Adam in the state of greatest perfection in which he ever existed. That our first parents were endowed with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, we are strongly inclined to believe for reasons which shall be given by and by; but as these gifts were adventitious to their nature, they could not be that image in which God made man.

Since man was made in the image of God, that phrase, whatever be its precise import, must denote something peculiar and at the same time essential to human nature; but the only two qualities at once natural and peculiar to man are his shape and his reason. As none but an anthropomorphite will say that it was Adam's shape which reflected this image of his Creator, it has been concluded that it was the faculty of reason which made the resemblance. To give strength to this argument it is observed, that when God says, "let us make man in our image," he immediately adds, "and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth;" but as many of the cattle have much greater bodily strength than man, this dominion could not be maintained but by the faculty of reason bestowed upon him and withheld from them.

If the image of God was impressed only on the mind of man, this reason seems to be conclusive; but it has been well observed, that it was the whole man, and not the soul alone, or the body alone, that is said to have been formed in the divine image; even as the whole man, soul and body, is the seat of the new and spiritual image of God in regeneration and sanctification. "The very God of peace (says the apostle) sanctify you wholly; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." It is worthy of notice, too, that the reason assigned for the prohibition of murder to Noah and his sons after the deluge, is, that man was made in the image of God. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man." These texts seem to indicate, that whatever be meant by the image of God, it was stamped equally on the soul and on the body. In vain is it said that man cannot resemble God in shape. This is true, but it is little to the purpose; for man does not resemble God in his reasoning faculty more than in his form. It would be idolatry to suppose the supreme majesty of heaven and earth to have a body or a shape; and it would be little short of idolatry to imagine that he is obliged to compare ideas and notions together; to advance from particular truths to general propositions; and to acquire acknowledge, as we do, by the tedious processes of inductive and syllogistic reasoning. There can therefore be no direct image of God either in the soul or in the body of man; and the phrase really seems to import nothing more than those powers or qualities True by which man was fitted to exercise dominion over the part of the inferior creation; as if it had been said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, that they may have dominion, &c." But the erect form of man contributes in some degree, as well as his rational powers, to enable him to maintain his authority over the brute creation; for it has been observed by travellers, that the fiercest beast of prey, unless ready to perish by hunger, shrinks back from a steady look of the human face divine.

By some *, however, who have admitted the probability of this interpretation, another has been devised for its being said that man was formed in the image of God. All the members of Christ's body, say they, were written and delineated in the book of God's purposes and decrees, and had an ideal existence from eternity in the divine mind; and therefore the body of Adam might be said to be formed after the image of God, because it was made according to that idea. But to this reasoning objections may be urged, which we know not how to answer. All things that ever were or ever shall be, the bodies of us who live at present as well as the bodies of those who lived 5000 years ago, have from eternity had an ideal existence in the Divine mind; nor in this sense can one be said to be prior to another. It could not therefore be after the idea of the identical body of Christ that the body of Adam was formed; for in the Divine mind ideas of both bodies were present together from eternity, and each body was formed after the ideal archetype of itself. It may be added likewise, that the body of Christ was not God, nor the idea of that body the idea of God. Adam therefore could not with propriety be said to have been formed in the image of God, if by that phrase nothing more were intended than the resemblance between his body and the body of Christ. These objections to this interpretation appear to us unanswerable; but we mean not to dictate to our readers. Every man will adopt that opinion which he thinks supported by the best arguments; but it is obvious, that whatever more may be meant by the image of God in which man was made, the phrase undoubtedly comprehends all those powers and qualities by which he is enabled to maintain his authority over the inferior creation. Among these the faculty of reason is confessedly the most important; for it is by it that man is capable of being made acquainted with the Author of his being, the relation which subsists between them, and the duties implied in that relation from the creature to the Creator.

That the first man, however, was not left to discover these things by the mere efforts of his own unassisted reason, we have endeavoured to show in another place; (see Religion, No. 5—10.) and the conclusion to Adam, which we were there led, is confirmed by the portion of revelation before us. The inspired historian says, that "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his works, which he created and made;" but Adam could not have understood what was meant by the sanctification of a particular day, or of any thing else, unless he had previously received received some religious instruction. There cannot therefore be a doubt, but that as soon as man was made, his Creator communicated to him the truths of what is called natural religion, which we have endeavoured to explain and establish in Part I. of this article; and to these were added the precept to keep holy the Sabbath-day, and set it apart for the purposes of contemplation and worship.

This was a very wise institution, as all the divine institutions must be. "The great end for which we are brought into life, is to attain the knowledge and be confirmed in the love of God." This includes obedience to his will in thought, word, and deed, or that course of conduct which can alone make us happy here, and fit us for everlasting glory hereafter. But of these things we cannot retain a proper sense without close and repeated application of thought; and the unavoidable cares and concerns of the present life occupying much of our attention, it is, in the nature of things, necessary that some certain portion of time should be appropriated to the purposes of religious instruction and the public adoration of our Creator, in whom we all live, and move, and have our being." Hence a very learned divine has inferred, that though the particular time is a matter of positive appointment, the observation of a sabbath in general is a duty of natural religion, as having its foundation in the reason of things. See SABBATH.

Man therefore in his natural and original state was a rational and religious being, bound to do "justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with his God, and to keep holy the Sabbath-day." These seem to be all the duties which in that state were required of him; for as soon as he was introduced into the terrestrial paradise and admitted into covenant with his Maker, he was placed in a supernatural state, when other duties were of course enjoined.

That our first parents were both made on the sixth day, Moses expressly affirms when he says, that "God created them male and female, and blessed them, and called their name Adam (x), in the day when they were created;" but that they were introduced into the garden of Eden on that day, is an opinion which, however generally it may be received, seems not to be reconcilable with the plain narrative of the sacred penman. After telling us that on the sixth day God finished all his works, which he saw to be very good, and rested on the seventh day, he briefly recapitulates the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth, gives us a more particular account of the formation of the first man, informing us that the "Lord God formed him out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, when man became a living soul;" and then proceeds to say, that the "Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, where he put the man whom he had formed." From this short history of the first pair it appears beyond dispute evident, that neither the man nor the woman was formed in the garden; and that from their creation some time elapsed before the garden was prepared for their reception, is likewise evident from a comparison of Gen. i. 29, with Gen. ii. 16, 17. In the first of these passages God gives man, immediately after his creation, "every herb bearing seed which was upon the face of all the earth, before he and every tree, without exception, in which was the placed fruit of a tree bearing seed:" to him he said it should be in the garden for meat." In the second, "he commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." When the first grant of food was given, Adam and his wife must have been where no tree of knowledge grew, and they must have been intended to live at least so long in that state as that they should have occasion for food; otherwise the formal grant of it would have been not only superfluous, but apt to mislead them with respect to the subsequent restriction.

In this original state man was under the discipline of what we have called natural religion, entitled to happiness while he should perform the duties required of him, and liable to punishment when he should neglect those duties, or transgress the law of his nature as a rational and moral agent. This being the case, it is a matter of some importance, to ascertain, if we can, what the rewards and punishments are which natural religion holds out to her votaries.

That under every dispensation of religion the pious and virtuous man shall enjoy more happiness than misery; and that the incorrigibly wicked shall have a greater portion of misery than happiness, are truths which cannot be controverted by any one who admits, that the Almighty governor of the universe is a Being of wisdom, goodness, and justice. But respecting the rewards of virtue and the punishment of vice, more than these general truths seems not to be taught by natural religion. Many divines, however, of great learning and worth, have thought otherwise, and have contended, that from the nature of things the rewards bestowed upon him by an infinite God upon piety and virtue must be eternal like their author. These men indeed appear willing enough to allow that the punishments with which natural religion is armed against vice must be only of a temporary duration, because reason, say they, is ready to revolt at the thought of everlasting punishment.

This opinion, which confounds natural with revealed religion, giving to the former an important truth which belongs exclusively to the latter, has been so ably confuted by a learned writer, that we shall submit his arguments to our readers in preference to any thing which we can give ourselves.

"If reason doth, on the one hand, seem to revolt at everlasting punishment; we must confess that fancy, on the other, (even when full plumed by vanity), hath scarcely force enough to rise to the idea of infinite rewards. How the heart of man came to consider this as no more than an adequate retribution for his right conduct during the short trial of his virtue here, would

(x) The woman was some time afterwards distinguished by the name of Eve, ἑώρα, because she was to be the mother of all living, and particularly of that blessed seed which was to bruise the head of the serpent. See Parkhurst's Lexicon on the word. be hard to tell, did we not know what monsters PRIDE begot of old upon Pagan philosophy; and how much greater still these latter ages have disclosed, by the long incubation of school-divinity upon folly. What hath been urged from natural reason, in support of this extravagant presumption, is so very slender, that it recalls as you enforce it. First, you say, "that the soul, the subject of these eternal rewards, being immaterial, and so therefore unaffected by the causes which bring material things to an end, is, by its nature, fitted for eternal rewards." This is an argument ad ignorantiam, and holds no farther.—Because an immaterial being is not subject to that mode of dissolution which affects material substances, you conclude it to be eternal. This is going too fast. There may be, and probably are, many natural causes (unknown indeed to us), whereby immaterial beings come to an end. But if the nature of things cannot, yet God certainly can, put a final period to such a being when it hath served the purpose of its creation. Both annihilation impeach that wisdom and goodness which was displayed when God brought it out of nothing. Other immaterial beings there are, viz. the souls of brutes, which have the same natural security with man for their existence, of whose eternity we never dream. But pride, as the poet observes, calls God unjust,

If man alone engross not heaven's high care; Alone made perfect here, IMMORTAL there.

However, let us (for argument's sake) allow the human soul to be unperishable by nature, and secured in its existence by the unchangeable will of God, and see what will follow from thence.—An infinite reward for virtue during one moment of its existence, because reason discovers that, by the law of nature, some reward is due? By no means. When God hath amply repaid us for the performance of our duty, will he be at a loss how to dispose of us for the long remainder of eternity? May he not find new and endless employment for reasonable creatures, to which, when properly discharged, new rewards and in endless succession will be assigned? Modest reason seems to dictate this to the followers of the law of nature. The flattering expedient of ETERNAL REWARDS for virtue here was invented in the simplicity of early speculation, after it had fairly brought men to conclude that the soul is immaterial.

Another argument urged for the eternity of the rewards held out by natural religion to the practice of piety and virtue is partly physical and partly moral. The merit of service (say the admirers of that religion) increases in proportion to the excellence of that Being to whom our service is directed and becomes acceptable. An infinite being, therefore, can dispense no rewards but what are infinite. And thus the virtuous man becomes entitled to immortality.

The misfortune is, that this reasoning holds equally on the side of the unmerciful doctors, as they are called, who doom the wicked to EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. Indeed were this the only discredit under which it labours, the merciless doctors would hold themselves little concerned. But the truth is, that the argument from infinity proves just nothing. To make it of any force, both the parties should be infinite. This inferior emanation of God's image, MAN, should either be supremely good or supremely bad, a kind of deity or a kind of devil. But these reasoners, in their attention to the original divinity, overlook the humanity, which makes the decrease keep pace with the accumulation, till the rule of logic, that the conclusion follows the weaker part, comes in to end the dispute."

These arguments seem to prove unanswerably that immortality is not essential to any part of the compound living being man, and that it cannot be claimed as a reward due to his virtue. It is not indeed essential to any created being, for what has not existence of itself, cannot of itself have perpetuity of existence (see METAPHYSICS, No. 272, &c.); and as neither man nor angel can be profitable to God, they cannot claim from him any thing as a debt. Both, indeed, as moral agents, have duties prescribed them; and while they faithfully perform these duties, they have all the security which can arise from the perfect benevolence of him who brought them into existence, that they shall enjoy a sufficient portion of happiness to make that existence preferable to non-existence; but reason and philosophy furnish no data from which it can be inferred that they shall exist for ever. Man is composed in part of perishable materials. However perfect Adam may be thought to have been when he came first from the hands of his Creator, his body, as formed of the dust of the ground, must have been naturally liable to decay and dissolution. His soul, indeed, was of a more durable substance; but as it was formed to animate his body, and had no prior conscious existence, it is not easy to conceive what should have led him, under an equal providence, where rewards and punishments were exactly distributed, to suppose that one part of him should survive the other. In his natural and original state, before the covenant made with him in paradise, he was unquestionably a mortal creature. How long he continued in that state, although it seems not possible to form a plausible conjecture, before his Bishop Warburton supposes him to have lived several thousand years under no other dispensation than that of natural religion; during which he was as liable to death as his to death-fallen posterity are at present.

"We must needs conclude (says this learned writer*), 'Dive that God having tried Adam in the state of nature, and Legatus approved of the good use he made of his free-will under book ii. the direction of that light, advanced him to a superior chap. i station in Paradise.' How long, before this remove, how long man had continued subject to natural religion alone, we cannot only guess; but of this we may be assured, that it is that was some considerable time before the garden of Eden state, could naturally be made fit for his reception. Since Moses, when he had concluded his history of the creation, and of God's rest on, and sanctification of, the seventh day, proceeds to speak of the condition of this new world in the following terms: 'And God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth.' Which Gen. ii. seems plainly to intimate, that when the seeds of vegetables had been created on the third day, they were left to nature, in its ordinary operations, to mature by sun and showers. So that when in course of time Paradise was become capable of accommodating its inhabitants, they were transplanted thither."

This reasoning is not without a portion of that ingenuity which was apparent in every thing that fell from the pen of Warburton; but it was completely confuted. ed almost as soon as it was given to the public, and shown to be deduced from premises which could be employed against the author's system. If only the seeds of vegetables were created on the third day, and then left to nature, in its ordinary operations, to mature by sun and showers, the first pair must have perished before a single vegetable could be fit to furnish them with food; and we may suppose that it was to prevent this disaster that the garden of Eden was miraculously stored at once with full grown trees and fruit in perfect maturity, whilst the rest of the earth was left under the ordinary laws of vegetation. There is, however, no evidence that they were only the seeds of vegetables that God created. On the contrary, Moses says expressly*, that God made the earth on the third day bring forth the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed was in itself after his kind;" and when he recapitulates the history of the creation, he says, that God made, not every seed, but every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. From the process of vegetation, therefore, nothing can be inferred with respect to the time of Adam's introduction into paradise, or to ascertain the duration of his original state of nature. If angels were created during the six days of which the Hebrew lawgiver writes the history, an hypothesis very generally received (see Angel), though in the opinion of the present writer not very probable, there can be no doubt but our first parents lived a considerable time under the law of nature before they were raised to a superior station in the garden of Eden; for it seems very evident that the period of their continuance in that station was not long. Of this, however, nothing can be said with certainty. They may have lived for years, or only a few days in their original state; but it is very necessary to distinguish between that state in which they were under no other dispensation than what is commonly called natural religion, entitled, upon their obedience, to the indefinite rewards of piety and virtue, and their state in Paradise when they were put under a new law, and by the free grace of God promised, if they should be obedient, a supernatural and eternal reward. Into that state we must now attend them, and ascertain, if we can, the precise terms of the first covenant.

Moses, who in this investigation is our only guide, tells us, that the Lord God, after he had formed the first pair, "planted a garden eastward in Eden, and took the man and put him in the garden, to dress it and to keep it." And the Lord God (continues he) commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die†." Here is no mention made of the laws of piety and moral virtue resulting from the relations in which the various individuals of the human race stand to each other, and in which all his creatures stand to God their Almighty and beneficent Creator. With these laws Adam was already well acquainted; and he must have been sensible, that as they were founded in his nature, no subsequent law could dispense with their obligation. They have been equally binding on all men in every state and under every dispensation; and they will continue to be so as long as the general practice of justice, mercy, and piety, shall contribute to the sum of human happiness. The new law peculiar to his paradisiacal state was the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was a positive precept, not founded in the nature of man, but very proper to be the test of his obedience to the will of his Creator. The laws of piety and virtue are sanctioned by nature, or by that general system of rules according to which God governs the physical and moral world, made with and by which he has secured, in some state or other, Adam in happiness to the pious and virtuous man, and misery to paradise, such as shall prove incorrigibly wicked. The law respecting the forbidden fruit was sanctioned by the penalty of death denounced against disobedience; and by the subjects of that law the nature of this penalty must have been perfectly understood: but Christian divines, as we shall afterwards see, have differed widely in opinion respecting the full import of the Hebrew words which our translators have rendered by the phrase thou shalt surely die. All, however, agree that they threatened death, in the common acceptation of the word, or the separation of the soul and body, as one part of the punishment to be incurred by eating the forbidden fruit; and hence we must infer, that had the forbidden fruit not been eaten, our first parents would never have died, because the penalty of death was denounced against no other transgression. What therefore is said respecting the fruit of the tree of knowledge, implies not only a law but also a covenant (i.), promising to man, upon the observance of one positive precept, immortality or eternal life; which is not essential to the nature of any created being, and cannot be claimed as the merited reward of the greatest virtue or the most fervent piety.

This obvious truth will enable us to dispose of the objections which have been sometimes brought by free-thinking divines against the wisdom and justice of punishing so severely as by death the breach of a mere positive precept; which, considered in itself, appears to be a precept of very little importance. We have only to reply, that as an exemption from death is not due either

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*(l.) It does not appear that any transaction between God and mankind in general was denominated by a word equivalent to the English word covenant till the end of the fourth century, when such phraseology was introduced into the church by the celebrated Augustine, bishop of Hippo. That the phraseology is strictly proper, no man can suppose who reflects on the infinite distance between the contracting parties, and absolute dominion of the one over the other. To be capable of entering into a covenant, in the proper sense of the word, both parties must have a right either to agree to the terms proposed or to reject them; but surely Adam had no right to bargain with his Maker, or to refuse the gift of immortality on the terms on which it was offered to him. The word dispensation would more accurately denote what is here meant by the word covenant; but as this last is in general use, we have retained it as sufficient, when thus explained, to distinguish what man received from God upon certain positive conditions, from what he had a claim to by the constitution of his nature. either to the nature or to the virtue of man, it was wise and just to make it depend on the observance of a positive precept, to impress on the minds of our first parents a constant conviction, that they were to be preserved immortal, not in the ordinary course of divine providence, but by the special grace and favour of God. The same consideration will show us the folly of those men who are for turning all that is said of the trees of knowledge and of life into figure and allegory. But the other trees which Adam and Eve were permitted to eat were certainly real trees, or they must have perished for want of food. And what rules of interpretation will authorise us to interpret eating and trees literally in one part of the sentence and figuratively in the other? A garden in a delightful climate is the very habitation, and the fruits produced in that garden the very food, which we should naturally suppose to have been prepared for the progenitors of the human race; and though in the garden actually fitted up for this purpose two trees were remarkably distinguished from the rest, perhaps in situation and appearance as well as in use, the distinction was calculated to serve the best of purposes. The one called the tree of life, of which, while they continued innocent, they were permitted to eat, served as a sacramental pledge or assurance on the part of God, that as long as they could observe the terms of the covenant their life should be preserved; the other, of which it was death to taste, was admirably adapted to impress on their minds the necessity of implicit obedience to the Divine will, in whatever manner it might be made known to them.

A question has been started of some importance, What would have finally become of men if the first covenant had not been violated? That they would have been all immortal is certain; but it is by no means clear that they would have lived for ever on this earth. On the contrary, it has been an article of very general belief in all ages of the church, that the garden of Eden was an emblem or type of heaven, and therefore called Paradise (see PARADISE); and that under the first covenant, mankind, after a sufficient probation here, were to be translated into heaven without tasting death. This doctrine is not indeed explicitly taught in Scripture; but many things conspire to make it highly probable. The frequent communications between God and man before the fall (m), seem to indicate that Adam was training up for some higher state than the terrestrial paradise. Had he been intended for nothing but to cultivate the ground and propagate his species, he might have been left like other animals to the guidance of his own reason and instincts; which, after the rudiments of knowledge were communicated to him, must surely have been sufficient to direct him to every thing necessary to the comforts of a life merely sensual and rational, otherwise he would have been an imperfect animal. It is obvious too, that this earth, however fertile it may have originally been, could not have afforded the means of subsistence to a race of immortal beings multiplying to infinity. For these reasons, and others which will readily occur to the reader, it seems incontrovertible, that, under the first covenant, either mankind would have been successively translated to some superior state, or would have ceased to propagate their kind as soon as the earth should have been replenished with inhabitants. He who reflects on the promise, that, after the general resurrection, there is to be a new heaven and a new earth, will probably embrace the latter part of the alternative; but that part in its consequences differs not from the former. In the new earth promised in the Christian revelation, nothing is to dwell but righteousness. It will therefore be precisely the same with what we conceive to be expressed by the word heaven; and if under the first covenant this earth was to be converted into a similar place, where, after a certain period, men should never marry nor be given in marriage, but enjoy what divines have called the beatific vision, we may confidently affirm, that, had the first covenant been faithfully observed, Adam and his posterity, after a sufficient probation, would all have been translated to some superior state or heaven.

To fit them for that state, the gifts of divine grace and the seem to have been absolutely necessary. To them it gifts of was a state certainly supernatural; otherwise a God of infinite wisdom and perfect goodness would not, for a moment, have placed them in an inferior state. But to enable any creature, especially such a creature as man, whom an ancient philosopher has justly styled Zoon pupillosum, to rise above its nature, foreign and divine aid is unquestionably requisite; and therefore, though we cannot persuade ourselves that the gifts of the Holy Ghost constituted that image of God in which man was originally made, we agree with Bishop Bull, that these gifts were bestowed on our first parents to enable them to fulfil the terms of the covenant under which they were placed.

On the whole, we think it apparent from the portions of scripture which we have examined, that Adam and Eve were endowed with such powers of body and mind as fitted them to exercise dominion over the other animals; that those powers constituted that image of God in which they are said to have been formed; that they received by immediate revelation the first principles of all useful knowledge, and especially of that system which is usually called natural religion; that they lived for some time with no other religion, entitled to the natural rewards of piety and virtue, but all the while liable to death; that they were afterwards translated into paradise, where they were placed under a new law, with the penalty of death threatened to the breach of it, and the promise of endless life if they should faithfully observe it; and that they were endowed with the gifts of the Holy Ghost, to enable them, if not wanting eagerly to themselves, to fulfil the terms of that covenant, which the cov. has been improperly termed the covenant of works, and since it flowed from the mere grace of God, and conferred privileges on man to which the most perfect human virtue could lay no just claim.

Sect. III. Of the Fall of Adam, and its Consequences.

From the preceding account of the primeval state of man,

(m) That there were such frequent communications, has been shown to be in the highest degree probable by the late Dr Law bishop of Carlisle. See his Discourse on the several Dispensations of revealed Religion. man, it is evident that his continuance in the terrestrial paradise, together with all the privileges which he there enjoyed, were made to depend on his observance of one positive precept. Every other duty incumbent on him, whether as resulting from what is called the law of his nature, or from the express command of his God, was as much his duty before as after he was introduced into the garden of Eden; and though the transgression of any law would undoubtedly have been punished, or have been forgiven only in consequence of sincere repentance and amendment, it does not appear that a breach of the moral law, or of the commandment respecting the sanctification of the Sabbath-day, would have been punished with death, whatever may be the import of that word in the place where it is first threatened. The punishment was denounced only against eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: For "the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." To the word death in this passage divines have affixed many and different meanings. By some it is supposed to import a separation of the soul and body, while the latter was to continue in a state of conscious existence; by others, it is taken to imply annihilation or a state without consciousness; by some, it is imagined to signify eternal life in torments; and by others a spiritual and moral death, or a state necessarily subject to sin. In any one of these acceptations it denoted something new to Adam, which he could not understand without an explanation of the term; and therefore, as it was threatened as the punishment of only one transgression, it could not be the divine intention to inflict it on any other.

The abstaining from a particular fruit in the midst of a garden abounding with fruits of all kinds, was a precept which at first view appears of easy observation; and the penalty threatened against the breach of it was, in every sense, awful. The precept, however, was broken notwithstanding that penalty; and though we may thence infer that our first parents were not beings of such absolute perfection as by divines they have sometimes been represented, we shall yet find, upon due consideration, that the temptation by which they were seduced, when taken with all its circumstances, was such as no wise and modest man will think himself able to have resisted. The short history of this important transaction, as we have it in the third chapter of the book of Genesis, is as follows.

"Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made; and he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know, that on the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 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."

To the less attentive reader this conversation between the serpent and the woman must appear to begin abruptly; and indeed it is not possible to reconcile it with the natural order of a dialogue, or even with the common course of grammar, but by supposing the tempter's question, "Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" to have been suggested by something immediately preceding either in words or in significant signs. Eve had undoubtedly by some means or other informed the serpent that she was forbidden to eat of the fruit on which he was probably feasting; and that information, whether given in words or in actions, must have produced the question with which the sacred historian begins his relation of this fatal dialogue. We are told that the woman saw that the tree was good for food; that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise; but all this she could not have seen, had not the serpent eaten of its fruit in her presence. In her walks through the garden, it might have often appeared pleasant to her eyes; but previous to experience she could not know but that its fruit was the most deadly poison, far less could she conceive it capable of conferring wisdom. But if the serpent ate of it before her, and then extolled its virtues in rapturous and intelligible language, she would at once see that it was not destructive of animal life, and naturally infer that it had very singular qualities. At the moment she was drawing this inference, it is probable that he invited her to partake of the delicious fruit, and that her refusal produced the conference before us. That she yielded to his temptation need excite no wonder; for she knew that the serpent was by nature a mute animal, and if he attributed his speech to the virtues of the tree, she might infer, with some plausibility, that what had power to raise the brute mind to human, might raise the human to divine, and make her and her husband, according to the promise of the tempter, become as gods, knowing good and evil. Milton, who was an eminent divine as well as the prince of poets, makes her reason thus with herself:

Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, Thou' kept from man, and worthy to be admir'd; Whose taste, too long forborn, at first essay Gave eloction to the mute, and taught The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise.

For us alone

Was death invented? or to us denied This intellectual food, for beasts reserved? For beasts it seems: yet that one beast which first Hath tasted envies not, but brings with joy The good befallen him, author unsuspect, Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. What fear I then, rather what know to fear Under this ignorance of good and evil, Of God or death, of law or penalty? Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine, Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?

Paradise Lost, book ix. Full of these hopes of raising herself to divinity, and not, as has sometimes been supposed, led headlong by a sensual appetite, she took of the fruit and did eat, and gave to her husband with her; and he did eat. The great poet makes Adam delude himself with the same sophistry that had deluded Eve, and infer, that as the serpent had attained the language and reasoning powers of man, they should attain

Proportional ascent, which could not be But to be gods, or angels, demi-gods.

Thus was the covenant, which, on the introduction of our first parents into paradise, their Creator was graciously pleased to make with them, broken by their violation of the condition on which they were advanced to that supernatural state; and therefore the historian tells us, that "lest they should put forth their hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever, the Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden to till the ground from whence they were taken (8)." Had they been so sent forth without any farther intimation respecting their present condition or their future prospects, and if the death under which they had fallen was only a loss of consciousness, they would have been in precisely the same state in which they lived before they were placed in the garden of Eden; only their minds must now have been burdened with the inward sense of guilt, and they must have known themselves to be subject to death; of which, though not exempted from it by nature, they had probably no apprehension till it was revealed to them in the covenant of life which they had so wantonly broken.

God, however, did not send them forth thus hopeless and forlorn from the paradise of delights which they had so recently forfeited. He determined to punish them for their transgression, and at the same time to give them an opportunity of recovering more than their lost inheritance. Calling therefore the various offenders before him, and inquiring into their different degrees of guilt, he began with pronouncing judgment on the serpent in terms which implied that there was mercy for man.

"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field: upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life; and 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."

That this sentence has been fully inflicted on the serpent, no reasoning can be necessary to evince. Every species of that reptile is more hateful to man than any other terrestrial creature; and there is literally a perpetual war between them and the human race. It is remarkable too that the head of this animal is the only part which it is safe to bruise. His tail may be bruised, or even cut off, and he will turn with fury and death on his adversary; but the slightest stroke on the head infallibly kills him. That the serpent, or at least the greater part of serpents, go on their belly, every one knows; though it is said *, that in some parts of the east serpents have been seen with wings, and others with feet, and that these species are highly beautiful. If there be any truth in this story, we may suppose that these walking and flying serpents have been suffered to retain their original elegance, that mankind might see what the whole race was before the curse was denounced on the tempter of Eve: but it is certain that most of the species have neither wings nor feet, and that many of the most poisonous of them live in burning deserts, where they have nothing to eat but the dust among which they crawl.

To this degradation of the serpent, infidels have objected, that it implies the punishment of an animal which was incapable of guilt; but this objection is founded in thoughtlessness and ignorance. The elegant form of any species of inferior animals adds nothing to the happiness of the animals themselves: the ass is probably as happy as the horse, and the serpent that crawls as he that flies. Fine proportions attract indeed the notice of man, and tend to impress upon his mind just notions of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator; but surely the symmetry of the horse or the beauty of the peacock is more properly displayed for this purpose than the elegance of the instrument employed by the enemy of mankind. The degradation of the serpent in the presence of our first parents must have served the best of purposes. If they had so little reflection as not yet to have discovered that he was only the instrument with which a more powerful being had wrought their ruin, they would be convinced, by the execution of this sentence, that the forbidden fruit had no power in itself to improve the nature either of man or of beast. But it is impossible that they could be so stupid as this objection supposes them. They doubtless knew by this time that some great and wicked spirit had actuated the organs of the serpent; and that when enmity was promised to be put between its seed and the seed of the woman, that promise was not meant to be fulfilled by serpents occasionally biting the heels of men, and by men in return bruising the heads of serpents! If such enmity, though it has literally taken place, was all that was meant by this prediction, why was not Adam directed to bruise the head of the identical serpent which had seduced his wife? If he could derive any consolation from the exercise of revenge, surely it would be greater from his revenging himself on his own enemy, than from the knowledge that there should be a perpetual warfare between his descendants and the breed of serpents through all generations.

We are told, that when the foundations of the earth were laid, the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy; and it is at least probable that there would be similar rejoicing when the six days work of creation was finished. If so, Adam and Eve, who were but a little lower than the angels, might be admitted into the chorus, and thus be made acquainted with the existence of good and evil spirits. At all events, we cannot doubt but their gracious and merciful Creator

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(*) The ideas which this language conveys are indeed allegorical; but they inform us of this, and nothing but this, that immortal life was a thing extraneous to our nature, and not put into our paste or composition when first fashioned by the forming hand of the Creator." Warburton's Divine Legation, book ix. chap. 1. of Creator would inform them that they had a powerful enemy; that he was a rebellious angel capable of deceiving them in many ways; and that they ought therefore to be constantly on their guard against his wiles. They must have known too that they were themselves animated by something different from matter; and when they found they were deceived by the serpent, they might surely, without any remarkable stretch of sagacity, infer that their malignant enemy had actuated the organs of that creature in a manner somewhat similar to that in which their own souls actuated their own bodies. If this be admitted, the degradation of the serpent would convince them of the weakness of the tempter when compared with their Creator; and confirm their hopes, that since he was not able to preserve unburnt his own instrument of mischief, he should not be able finally to prevail against them; but that though he had bruised their heels, the promised seed of the woman should at last bruise his head, and recover the inheritance which they had lost. See Prophecy, No. 9, 10.

Having thus punished the original instigator to evil, the Almighty Judge turned to the fallen pair, and said to the woman, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Here is a terrible denunciation of toil and misery and death upon two creatures who, being inured to nothing, and formed for nothing but happiness, must have felt infinitely more horror from such a sentence, than we, who are familiar with death, intimate with misery, and "born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward," can form any adequate conception of. The hardship of it, too, seems to be aggravated by its being severer than what was originally threatened against the breach of the covenant of life. It was indeed said, "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die:" but no mention was made of the woman's incurring sorrow in conception, and in the bringing forth of children; of the curse to be inflicted on the ground; of its bringing forth thorns and thistles instead of food for the use of man; and of Adam's eating bread in sorrow and the sweat of his face till he should return to the dust from which he was taken.

These seeming aggravations, however, are in reality instances of divine benevolence. Adam and Eve were now subjected to death; but in the sentence passed on the serpent, an obscure intimation had been given them that they were not to remain for ever under its power. It was therefore their interest, as well as their duty, to reconcile themselves as much as possible to their fate; to wean their affections from this world, in which they were to live only for a time; and to hope, with humble confidence, in the promise of their God, that, upon their departure from it, they should be received into some better state. To enable them to wean their affections from earth, nothing could more contribute than Adam, and to combine sensual enjoyment with sorrow, and lay them under the necessity of procuring their means of subsistence by labour, hard and often fruitless. This would daily and hourly impress upon their minds a full conviction that the present world is not a place fit to be an everlasting habitation; and they would look forward, with pious resignation, to death, as putting a period to all their woes. Had they indeed been furnished with no ground of hope beyond the grave, we cannot believe that the Righteous Judge of all the earth would have added to the penalty originally threatened. That penalty they would doubtless have incurred, the very day on which they fell; but as they were promised a deliverance from the consequences of their fall, it was proper to train them up by severe discipline for the happiness reserved for them in a future state.

After the passing of their sentence, the man and woman were turned out into the world, where they had formerly lived before they were placed in the garden of Eden; and all future access to the garden was for ever denied them. They were not, however, in the same state in which they were originally before their introduction into Paradise: They were now conscious of guilt; doomed to severe labour; liable to sorrow and sickness, disease and death; and all these miseries they had brought, not only on themselves, but also on their unborn posterity to the end of time. It may seem indeed to militate against the moral attributes of God, to inflict misery on children for the sins of their parents; but before any thing can be pronounced concerning the Divine goodness and justice in the present case, we must know precisely how much we suffer in consequence of Adam's transgression, and whether we have ourselves any share in that guilt which is the cause of our sufferings.

That women would have had less sorrow in the bringing forth of children; that we should have been subject to less toil and exempted from death, had our first parents not fallen from their paradisical state—are truths have been incontrovertible by him who believes the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; but that mankind would in that state have been wholly free from pain and every bodily distress, is a proposition which is not to be found in the antediluvian Bible, and which therefore no man is bound to believe.

The bodies of Adam and Eve consisted of flesh, blood, and bones, as ours do; they were surrounded by material objects as we are; and their limbs were unquestionably capable of being fractured. That their souls should never be separated from their bodies while they abstained from the forbidden fruit, they knew from the infallible promise of him who formed them, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life; but that not a bone of themselves or of their numerous posterity should ever be broken by the fall of a stone or of a tree, they were not told, and had no reason to expect. Of such fractures, pain would surely have been the consequence; though we have reason to believe that it would have been quickly removed by some infallible remedy, probably by the fruit of the tree of life.

Perhaps it may be said, that if we suppose our first parents or their children to have been liable to accidents of this kind in the garden of Eden, it will be difficult to conceive how they could have been preserved from death, as a stone might have fallen on their heads as well as on their feet, and have at once destroyed the principle of vitality. But this can be said only by him who knows little of the physical world, and still less of the power of God. There are many animals which are susceptible of pain, and yet not easily killed; and man in paradise might have resembled these. At any rate, we are sure that the Omnipotent Creator could and would have preserved him from death; but we have no reason to believe that, by a constant miracle, he would have preserved him from every kind of pain. Indeed, if, under the first covenant, mankind were in a state of probation, it is certainly conceivable that some one individual of the numerous race might have fallen into sin, without actually breaking the covenant by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge; and such a sinner would undoubtedly have been punished by that God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity: but how punishment could have been inflicted on a being exempted from all possibility of pain as well as of death, we confess ourselves unable to imagine. Remorse, which is the inseparable consequence of guilt, and constitutes in our present state great part of its punishment, flows from the fearful looking for of judgment, which the sinner knows shall, in a future state, devour the adversaries of the gospel of Christ; but he, who could neither suffer pain nor death, had no cause to be afraid of future judgment, and was therefore not liable to the tortures of remorse. We conclude, therefore, that it is a mistake to suppose pain to have been introduced into the world by the fall of our first parents, or at least that the opinion contrary to ours has no foundation in the word of God.

Death, however, was certainly introduced by their fall; for the inspired apostle assures us, that in Adam all die; and again, that through the offence of one many are dead. But concerning the full import of the word death in this place, and in the sentence pronounced upon our first parents, divines hold opinions extremely different. Many contend, that it includes death corporal, spiritual or moral, and eternal; and that all mankind are subjected to these three kinds of death, on account of their share in the guilt of the original transgression, which is usually denominated original sin, and considered as the source of all moral evil.

That all men are subjected to death corporal in consequence of Adam's transgression, is universally admitted; but that they are in any sense partakers of his guilt, and on that account subjected to death spiritual and eternal, has been very strenuously denied. To discover the truth is of great importance; for it is intimately connected with the Christian doctrine of redemption. We shall therefore state, with as much impartiality as we can, the arguments commonly urged on each side of this much agitated question.

Those who maintain that all men sinned in Adam, generally state their doctrine thus: "The covenant being made with Adam as a public person, not for himself only but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary generation sinned in him and fell with him in that first transgression; whereby they are deprived of that original righteousness in which he was created, and are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually; which is commonly called original sin, and from which do proceed all actual transgressions, so as we are by nature children of wrath, bond-slaves to Satan, and justly liable to all punishments in this world and in that which is to come, even to everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and to most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire for ever."

That which in this passage we are first to examine, is the sentence which affirms all mankind descending from Adam by ordinary generation to have sinned in him and fallen with him in his first transgression; the truth of which is attempted to be proved by various texts of Holy Scripture. Thus St Paul says expressly, that "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if, through the offence of one, many be dead; much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many; and not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift (for the judgment was by one unto condemnation); but the free gift is of many offences unto justification. For if, by one man's offence, death reigned by one; much more they, who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore as, by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so, by the righteousness of One, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners; so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." In this passage the apostle assures us, that all upon whom death hath passed have sinned; but death hath passed upon infants, who could not commit actual sin. Infants therefore must have sinned in Adam, since death hath passed upon them; for death "is the wages only of sin." He tells us likewise, that by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; and therefore since the Righteous Judge of heaven and earth never condemns the innocent with the wicked, we must conclude, that all men partake of the guilt of that offence for which judgment came upon them to condemnation. These conclusions are confirmed by his saying expressly, that "by one man's disobedience many (i.e. all mankind) were made sinners;" and elsewhere, that "there is none righteous, no not one;" and that his Ephesians and converts "were dead in trespasses and sins, and were by nature children of wrath even as others." The same doctrine, it is said, we are taught by the inspired writers of the Old Testament. Thus Job, expostulating with God for bringing into judgment with him such a creature as man, says, "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one." And Eliphaz, reproving the patient patriarch for what he deemed presumption, asks, "What is man that he should be clean, or be righteous who is born of a woman that he should be righteous?" From these two passages it is plain, that Job and his unfeeling friend, though they agreed in little else, admitted as a truth unquestionable, that man inherits from his parents a sinful nature, and that it is impossible for anything born of a woman by ordinary generation to be righteous. The psalmist talks the very same language; when acknowledging his transgressions, he says, "Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Having thus proved the fact, that all men are made sinners by Adam's disobedience, the divines, who embrace this side of the question, proceed to inquire how they can be partakers in guilt which was incurred so many ages before they were born. It cannot be by imitation; for infants, according to them, are involved in this guilt before they are capable of imitating any thing. Neither do they admit that sin is by the apostle put for the consequences of sin, and many said to be made sinners by one man's disobedience, because by that disobedience they were subjected to death, which is the wages of sin. This, which they call the doctrine of the Arminians, they affirm to be contrary to the whole scope and design of the context; as it confounds together sin and death, which are there represented, the one as the cause, and the other as the effect. It likewise exhibits the apostle reasoning in such a manner as would, in their opinion, disgrace any man of common sense, and much more an inspired writer; for then the sense of these words, "Death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned," must be, death has passed upon all men, because it hath passed upon all men; or, all men are obnoxious to death, because they are obnoxious to it. The only way therefore, continue they, in which Adam's posterity can be made sinners through his disobedience, is by the imputation of his disobedience to them; and his imputation is not to be considered in a moral sense, as the action of a man committed by himself, whether good or bad, is reckoned into him as his own; but in a forensic sense, as when one man's debts are in a legal way placed to the account of another. Of this we have an instance in the apostle Paul, who said to Philemon concerning Onesimus, "If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee any thing (ἀλλαγή), let it be imputed to me," or placed to and put on my account. And thus the posterity of Adam are made sinners by his disobedience; that being imputed to them and put to their account, as if it had been committed by them personally, though it was not.

Some few divines of this school are indeed of opinion, that the phrase, "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners," means nothing more than that the posterity of Adam, through his sin, derive from him a corrupt nature. But though this be admitted as an undoubted truth, the more zealous abettors of the system contend, that it is not the whole truth. "It is true (say they) that all men are made of one man's blood, and that blood tainted with sin; and so a clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean. What is born of the flesh is flesh, carnal and corrupt: every man is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity; but there is a difference between being made sinners and becoming sinful. The one respects the guilt, the other the pollution of nature; the one is previous to the other, and the foundation of it. Men receive a corrupt nature from their immediate parents; but they are made sinners, not by any act of their disobedience, but only by the imputation of the sin of Adam."

To illustrate this doctrine of imputed sin, they observe that the word καταδικάσθηναι, used by the apostle, signifies constituted in a judicial way, ordered and appointed in the dispensation of things that so it should be; just as Christ was made sin or a sinner by imputation, or by that constitution of God which laid upon him the sins of all his people, and dealt with him as if he had been the guilty person. That this is the sense of the passage, they argue further from the punishment inflicted on men Adam, and for the sin of Adam. The punishment threatened to that sin was death; which includes death corporal, moral, and eternal. Corporal death, say they, is allowed by all to be suffered on account of the sin of Adam; and if the punishment, there must be guilt, and that guilt made over to the merit of imputing guilt, which can be done only by imputation. A moral death is no other than the loss of the image of God in man, which consisted in righteousness and holiness; and particularly it is the loss of original righteousness, to which succeeded unrighteousness and unholiness. It is both a sin and a punishment for sin; and since it comes on all men as a punishment, it must suppose preceding sin, which can be nothing but Adam's disobedience; the guilt of which is made over to his posterity by imputation. This appears still more evident from the posterity of Adam being made liable to eternal death in consequence of his transgression; for the wages of sin is death, even death eternal, which never can be inflicted on guiltless persons. But from the passage before us we learn, that "by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation;" and therefore the guilt of that offence must be reckoned to all men, or they could not be justly condemned for it. That Adam's sin is imputed to his posterity, appears not only from the words, "by one man's disobedience many were made sinners;" but likewise from the opposite clause, "so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous;" for the many ordained to eternal life, for whom Christ died, are made righteous, or justified, only through the imputation of his righteousness to them; and therefore it follows, that all men are made sinners only through the imputation of Adam's disobedience.

To this doctrine it is said to be no objection that Adam's posterity were not in being when his sin was committed; for though they had not then actual being, they had yet a virtual and representative one. They were in him both seminally and federally, and sinned in him; just as Levi was in the loins of Abraham, and paid in his tithes to Melchizedek. From Adam they derive a corrupt nature; but it is only from him, as their federal head, that they derive a share of his guilt, and are subjected to his punishment. That he was a federal head to all his posterity, the divines of this school think evident from his being called a figure of Christ; and to his posterity the first Adam described as natural and earthly, in contrast to Christ the second Adam described as spiritual and the Lord from heaven; and from the punishment threatened against his sin being inflicted not on himself only, but on all his succeeding offspring. He could not be a figure of Christ, say they, merely as a man; for all the sons of Adam have been men as well as he, and in that sense were as much figures of Christ as he; yet Adam and Christ are constantly contrasted, as though they had been the only two men that ever existed, because they were the only two heads of their respective offspring. He could not be a figure of Christ on account of his extraordinary production; for though both were produced in ways uncommon, yet each was brought into the world in a way peculiar to himself. The first Adam was formed of the dust of the ground; the second, though not begotten by a man, was born of a woman. They did not therefore resemble each other in the manner of their formation, but in their office as covenant-heads; and in that alone the comparison between them is exact.

Nor have any of the posterity of Adam, it is said, reason to complain of such a procedure. Had he stood in his integrity, they would have been, by his standing, partakers of all his happiness; and therefore should not murmur at receiving evil through his fall. If this do not satisfy, let it be considered, that since God, in his infinite wisdom, thought proper that men should have a head and representative, in whose hands their good and happiness should be placed, none could be so fit for this high station as the common parent, made after the image of God, so wise, so holy, just, and good. Lastly, to silence all objections, let it be remembered, that what God gave to Adam as a federal head, relating to himself and his posterity, he gave as the Sovereign of the universe, to whom no created being has right to ask, "What dost thou?"

Such are the consequences of Adam's fall, and such the doctrine of original sin, as maintained by the more rigid followers of Calvin. That great reformer, however, was not the author of this doctrine. It had been taught so early as in the beginning of the fifth century, by St Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo (see AUGUSTINE); and the authority of that father had made it more or less prevalent in both the Greek and Roman churches long before the Reformation. Calvin was indeed the most eminent modern divine by whom it has been held in all its rigour; and it constitutes one great part of that theological system, which, from being taught by him, is now known by the name of Calvinism.

But if it was as sovereign of the universe that God gave to Adam what he received in paradise relating to himself and his posterity, Adam could in no sense of the words be a federal head; because, upon this supposition, there was no covenant. The Sovereign of the universe may unquestionably dispense his benefits, or withhold them, as seems expedient to his infinite wisdom; and none of his subjects or creatures can have a right to say to him, What dost thou? But the dispensing or withholding of benefits is a transaction very different from the entering into covenants; and a judgment is to be formed of it on very different principles. Everything around us proclaims that the Sovereign of the universe is a being of perfect benevolence; but, say the disciples of the school now under consideration, the dispensation given to Adam in paradise was so far from being the offspring of benevolence, that, as it is understood by the followers of Calvin, it cannot possibly be reconciled with the eternal laws of equity. The self-existent and all-sufficient God might or might not have created such a being as man; and in either case there would have been no reason for the question "What dost thou?" But as soon as he determined to create him capable of happiness or misery, he would not have been either benevolent or just, if he had not placed him in a state where, by his own exertions, he might, if he chose, have a greater share of happiness than of misery, and find his existence, upon the whole, a blessing. They readily acknowledge, that the existence of any created being may be of longer or shorter duration, according to the good pleasure of the Creator; and therefore they have no objection to the apostolic doctrine, that "in Adam all die;" for immortality being not a debt, but a free gift, may be bestowed on any terms, and with perfect justice withdrawn when these terms are not complied with. Between death, however, as it implies a loss of consciousness, and the extreme misery of eternal life in torments, there is an immense difference. To death all mankind might justly be subjected through the offence of one; because they had originally no claim to be exempted from it, though that one and they too had remained for ever innocent: but eternal life in torments is a punishment which a God of justice and benevolence can never inflict but upon personal guilt of the deepest die. That we can personally have incurred guilt from a crime committed some thousands of years before we were born, is impossible. It is indeed a notion as contrary to Scripture as to reason and common sense: for the apostle expressly informs us*, "that sin is the transgression of some law;" and the sin of Adam was the transgression of a law which it was never in our power either to observe or to break. Another apostle+ assures us, that where no law is, there is no transgression; but there is now no law, nor has been any these 5000 years, forbidding mankind to eat of a particular fruit; for, according to the Calvinists themselves†, Adam had no sooner committed his first sin, by which the covenant of death with him was broken, than he ceased to be a covenantal head. This law given him was no more; the promise of life by it ceased; and its sanction, death, took place. But if this be so, how is it possible that his unborn posterity should be under a law which had no existence, or that they should be in a worse state in consequence of the covenant being broken, and its promise having ceased, than he himself was before the covenant was first made? He was originally a mortal being, and was promised the supernatural gift of immortality on the single condition of his abstaining from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that fruit he did not abstain; but by eating it fell back into his natural state of mortality. Thus far it is admitted that his prosperity fell with him: for they have no claim to a supernatural gift which he had forfeited by his transgression, the more But we cannot admit, say the divines of this school, that they fell into his guilt; for to render it possible for a man to incur guilt by the transgression of a law, it is necessary not only that he have it in his power to keep the law, but also that he be capable of transgressing it by a voluntary deed. But surely no man could be capable of voluntarily eating the forbidden fruit 5000 years before he himself or his volitions existed. The followers of Calvin think it a sufficient objection to the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the same numerical body cannot be in different places at the same instant of time. But this ubiquity of body, say the remonstrants, is not more palpably absurd, than the supposition that a man could exert volitions before he or his will had any existence.

Nor will the introduction of the word imputation into this important question remove a single difficulty. For what is that we mean by saying that the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity? Is the guilt of that sin transferred from him to them? So surely thought Dr Gill, when he said that it is made over to them. But this is the same absurdity as the making over of the sensible qualities of bread and wine to the internal substance of our Saviour's body and blood! This imputation either found the posterity of Adam guilty of his sin, or it made them so. It could not find them guilty for the reason already assigned; as well as because the apostle says expressly, that for the offence of one judgment came upon all men, which would not be true had all been offended. It could not make them guilty; for this reason, that if there be in physics or metaphysics a single truth self-evident, it is, that the numerical powers, actions, or qualities, of one being cannot possibly be transferred to another, and be made its powers, actions, or qualities. Different beings may in distant ages have qualities of the same kind; but as easily may 4 and 3 be made equal to 9, as two beings be made to have the same identical quality. In Scripture we nowhere read of the actions of one man being imputed to another.

"Abraham (we are told) believed in God, and it was counted to him for righteousness;" but it was his own faith, and not the faith of another man, that was so counted. "To him that worketh not, but believeth, his faith (not another's) is imputed for righteousness." And of our faith in him that raised Christ from the dead, it is said, that "it shall be imputed, not to our fathers or our children, but to us for righteousness."

When this phrase is used with a negative, not only is the man's own personal sin spoken of, but the non-imputation of that sin means nothing more but that it brings not upon the sinner coadjoint punishment. Thus when Shimei "said unto David," Let not my lord impute iniquity unto me;" it could not be his meaning that the king should not think that he had offended; for with the same breath he added, Neither do thou remember that which thy servant did perversely, the day that my lord the king went out of Jerusalem, that the king should take it to his heart. For thy servant doth know that I have sinned." Here he plainly confesses his sin, and declares, that by intreating the king not to impute it to him, he wished only that it should not be so remembered as that the king should take it to heart, and punish him as his perverseness deserved. When therefore it is said, that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their iniquities, the meaning is only that for Christ's sake he was pleased to exempt them from the punishment due to their sins. In like manner, when the prophet, foretelling the sufferings of the Messiah, says, that "the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all," his meaning cannot be, that the Lord by imputation made his immaculate Son guilty of all the sins that men have ever committed; for in that case it would not be true that the "just suffered for the unjust," as the apostle expressly teaches: but the sense of the verse must be, as Bishop Cordvalde translated it, "through him the Lord pardoneth all our sins." This interpretation is countenanced by the ancient version of the Seventy, καὶ ἐκεῖνος ἀπολύσει ἡμᾶς τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων; words which express a notion very different from that of imputed guilt. The Messiah was, without a breach of justice, delivered for sins of which he had voluntarily offered to pay the penalty; and St Paul might have been justly charged by Philemon with the debts of Onesimus, which he had desired might be placed to his account. Had the apostle, however, expressed no such desire, surely Philemon could by no deed of his have made him liable for debts contracted by another; far less could be by imputation, whatever that word may mean, have made him virtually concur in the contracting of those debts. He could not have been justly subjected to suffering without his own consent; and he could not possibly have been made guilty of the sins of those for whom he suffered.

The doctrine of imputed guilt, therefore, as understood by the Calvinists, is, in the opinion of their opponents, without foundation in Scripture, and contrary to the nature of things. It is an insipious absurdity (say they), to which the mind can never be reconciled by the hypothesis, that all men were in Adam both seminally and federally, and sinned in him, as Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek in the loins of Abraham. The apostle, when he employs that argument to lessen in the minds of his countrymen the pride of birth and the lofty opinions entertained of their priesthood, plainly intimates, that he was using a bold figure, and that Levi's paying tithes is not to be understood in a strict and literal sense.

"Now consider (says he) how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils. And, as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham: for he was yet in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him." This is a very good argument to prove that the Levitical priesthood was inferior in dignity to that of Melchizedek; and by the apostle it is employed for no other purpose. Levi could not be greater than Abraham, and yet Abraham was inferior to Melchizedek. This is the whole of St Paul's reasonings, which lends no support to the doctrine of original sin, unless it can be shown that Levi and all his descendants contracted from this circumstance such a strong propensity to the paying of tithes, as made it a matter of extreme difficulty for them, in every subsequent generation, to comply with that part of the divine law which constituted them receivers of tithes. That all men were seminally in Adam, is granted; and it is likewise granted that they may have derived from him, by ordinary generation, diseased and enfeebled bodies; but it is as impossible to believe that moral guilt can be transmitted from father to son by the physical act of generation, as to conceive a scarlet colour to be a cube of marble, or the sound of a trumpet a cannon ball. That Adam was as fit a person as any other to be entrusted with the good and happiness of his posterity, may be true; but there is no fitness whatever, according to the Arminians, in making the everlasting happiness or misery of a whole race depend upon the conduct of any fallible individual. "That any man should so represent me (says Dr Taylor)," that when he is guilty, I am to be reputed guilty; when he transgresses, I shall be accountable and punishable for his transgression; and this before I am born, and consequently before I am in any capacity of knowing, helping, or hindering, what he doth: all this every one who useth his understanding must clearly see to be false, unreasonable, and altogether inconsistent with the truth and goodness of God." And that no such appointment ever had place, he endeavours to prove, by showing that the texts of Scripture upon which is built the doctrine of the Calvinists respecting original sin, will each admit of a very different interpretation.

One of the strongest of these texts is Romans v. 19. The several which we have already quoted, and which our author texts thus explains. He observes, that the apostle was a Jew, which this familiarly acquainted with the Hebrew tongue; that he wrote his epistle as well for the use of his own countrymen residing in Rome, as for the benefit of the Gentile converts; and that though he made use of the Greek language, it language, as most generally understood, he frequently employed Hebrew idioms. Now it is certain that the Hebrew words נָעַר וְנָעַר, "sin and iniquity," are frequently used in the Old Testament to signify sufferings, by a figure of speech which puts the effect for the cause; and it is surely more probable, that in the verse under consideration, the apostle used the corresponding Greek word ἀποκτόνων in the Hebrew sense, than that he meant to contradict what he had said in the former verse, by teaching that all men were made guilty of an act of disobedience committed thousands of years before the majority of them had any being. In the preceding verse he says, "that by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation." But this cannot be true, if by that offence all men were made sinners; for then judgment must have come upon each for his own share in the original disobedience. "Any one may see (says our author) that there is a vast difference between a man's making himself a sinner by his own wicked act, and his being made a sinner by the wicked act of another. In the latter case, he can be a sinner in no other sense but as he is a sufferer; just as Lot would have been made a sinner with the Sodomites, had he been consumed in the iniquity of the city; and as the subjects of Abimelech would have been made sinners, had he, in the integrity of his heart, committed adultery with Abraham's wife. That the people of Gerar could have contracted any real guilt from the adultery of their sovereign, or that he, by lying with a woman whom he had reason to believe to be not the wife but the sister of another man, would have incurred all the moral turpitude of that crime, are positions which cannot be maintained. Yet he says, that Abraham had brought upon him and on his kingdom a great sin; though it appears, from comparing the 6th verse with the 17th and 18th, that he had not been brought under sin in any other sense than as he was made to suffer for taking Sarah into his house. In this sense, "Christ, though we are sure that he knew no sin, was made sin for us, and numbered with the transgressors," because he suffered death for us on the cross; and in this sense it is true, that by the disobedience of Adam all mankind were made sinners, because, in consequence of his offence, they were by the judgment of God made subject to death.

But it may be thought that this interpretation of the words sin and sinners, though it might perhaps be admitted in the 19th verse, cannot be supposed to give the apostle's real meaning, as it would make him employ in the 12th verse an absurd argument, which has been already noticed. But it may perhaps be possible to get quit of the absurdity, by examining the original text instead of our translation. The words are, καὶ ἐξέσχεν ἡμᾶς ἀποκτόνων ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀγαπητοῖς. In order to ascertain the real sense of these words, the first thing to be done is to discover the antecedent to the relative

Our translators seem to consider it as used absolutely without any antecedent; but this is inaccurate, as it may be questioned whether the relative was ever used in any language without an antecedent either expressed or understood. Accordingly, the Calvinist critics, and even many Remonstrants, consider ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀγαπητοῖς in the beginning of the verse as the antecedent to ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ in the end of it, and translate the clause under consideration thus: "And so death hath passed upon all men, in whom (viz. Adam) all have sinned." Oracles, however, stands much nearer to ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀγαπητοῖς; and being of the same gender, ought, we think, to be considered as its real antecedent; but if so, the clause under consideration should be thus translated: "And so death hath passed upon all men, unto which (o) all have sinned, or, as the Arminians explain it, have suffered." If this criticism be admitted as just, ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀγαπητοῖς must be considered as standing here under a particular emphasis, denoting the utmost length of the consequences of Adam's sin (r); as if the apostle had said, "so far have the consequences of Adam's sin extended, and spread their influence among mankind, introducing not only a curse upon the earth, and sorrow and toil upon its inhabitants, but even death, universal death, in every part, and in all ages of the world." His words (say the Remonstrants) will unquestionably bear this sense; and it is surely much more probable that it is their true sense, than that an inspired writer should have taught a doctrine subversive of all our notions of right and wrong, and which, if really embraced, must make us incapable of judging when we are innocent and when guilty.

When the apostle says that there is none righteous, no not one, he gives us plainly to understand that he is quoting from the 14th Psalm; and the question first to be answered is, In what sense were these words used by the Psalmist? That they were not meant to include all the men and women then living, far less all that have ever lived, is plain from the fifth verse of the same Psalm, where we are told that those wicked persons "were in great fear, because God was in the congregation of the righteous." There was then, it seems, a congregation of righteous persons, in opposition to those called the children of men, of whom alone it is said that there was none that did good, no not one. The truth is, that the persons of whom David generally complains in the book of Psalms, constituted a strong party disaffected to his person and government. That faction he describes as proud and oppressive, as devising mischief against him, as violent men continually getting together for war. He styles them his enemies; and sometimes characterizes them by the appellation which was given to the apostate descendants of Cain before the deluge. Thus in the 57th Psalm, which was composed when he fled from Saul to the cave in which he spared that tyrant's life, he complains, "I lie among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears," &c.; and

(o) That ἐν, when construed with a dative case, often signifies to or unto, is known to every Greek scholar. Thus ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀγαπητοῖς, the way to fame, (Lucian). ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, a criminal unto death, (Demosth.). ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, to carry to death or execution, (Isoc.). ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, ye have been called to liberty, (Gal. v. 13.). ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, (Ephes. ii. 10.). See also 1 Thes. iv. 7.; 2 Tim. ii. 14.; and many other places of the New Testament.

(r) ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀγαπητοῖς has likewise this import, denoting the terminus ad quem in Phil. iii. 12. and iv. 10. and again, in the 58th Psalm, he says, "Do ye indeed and speak righteousness, O congregation? Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men?" By comparing these texts with 1 Sam. xxvi. 19, it will appear evident that by the sons of men mentioned in them, he meant to characterize those enemies who exasperated Saul against him. Now it is well known, that there was a party adhering to the interests of the house of Saul, which continued its enmity to David during the 40 years of his reign, and joined with Absalom in rebellion against him only eight years before his death. But it is the opinion of the most judicious commentators, that the 14th Psalm was composed during the rebellion of Absalom; and therefore it is surely much more probable, that by the children of men, of whom it is said there is "none that doth good, no not one," the inspired poet meant to characterize the rebels, than that he should have directly contradicted himself in the compass of two sentences succeeding each other. Had he indeed known that all the children of men, as descending from Adam, "are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good, and wholly and continually inclined to all evil," he could not, with the least degree of consistency, have represented the Lord as looking down from heaven upon them, to see, if there were any that did understand and seek after God? but if by the children of men was meant only the rebel faction, this scenerical representation is perfectly consistent, as it was natural to suppose that there might be in that faction some men of good principles misled by the arts of the rebel chiefs.

Having thus ascertained the sense of the words as originally used by the Psalmist, the Arminian proceeds to inquire for what purpose they were quoted by the apostle; and in this inquiry he seems to find nothing difficult. The aversion of the Jews from the admission of the Gentiles to the privileges of the gospel, the high opinion which they entertained of their own worth and superiority to all other nations, and the strong persuasion which they had that a strict obedience to their own law was sufficient to justify them before God, are facts universally known; but it was the purpose of the apostle to prove that all men stood in need of a Redeemer, that Jews as well as Gentiles had been under the dominion of sin, and that the one could not in that respect claim any superiority over the other. He begins his epistle, therefore, with showing the extreme depravity of the Heathen world; and having made good that point, he proceeds to prove, by quotations from the book of Psalms, Proverbs, and Isaiah, that the Jews were in no wise better than they, that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world become guilty, or insufficient for their own justification before God.

The next proof brought by the Calvinists in support of their opinion, that all men derive guilt from Adam by ordinary generation, is that text in which St. Paul says that the Ephesians "were by nature children of wrath even as others." To this their opponents reply, that the doctrine of original sin is in this verse, as in the last quoted, countenanced only by our translation, and not by the original Greek as understood by the ancient fathers of the Christian church, who were greater masters of that language than we. The words are \(\text{καὶ ἐγὼ ὁ ἀνθρώπος ἐγὼ ὁ ἀνθρώπος}\); in which it is obvious, that though in its original sense it signifies the genuine children of parents by natural generation, cannot be so understood here; because no man was ever begotten by, or born of, the abstract notion wrath. It must therefore be used figuratively; and in other places of scripture it often denotes a close relation to any person or thing. Thus we read of the children of God, of the kingdom the resurrection, wisdom, light, obedience, and peace; whence it is concluded, that by the children of wrath are meant those who are liable to punishment or rejection. And because there were in those days some children, in a lower and less proper sense, by adoption, and others, in a higher and more proper sense, by natural generation, of whom the relation of the latter to their parents was much closer than that of the former; the apostle tells the Ephesians, that they were by nature children of wrath, to convince them that they were really liable to it by the strictest and closest relation possible. That the word \(\text{φύσις}\) here is of the same import with really or truly, and that it does not signify what we mean by nature in the proper sense of that word, the ancient fathers are generally agreed; and that the modern Greeks, who still speak a dialect of mould and the noble language of their ancestors, understand the word in the same sense, is apparent from their version of the text before us. In the most correct and elegant edition of the New Testament in their vernacular tongue, the words under consideration are thus rendered: \(\text{καὶ ἐγὼ ὁ ἀνθρώπος ἐγὼ ὁ ἀνθρώπος}\), where it is impossible that \(\text{φύσις}\) can signify natural, otherwise the apostle will be made to say, not that we are by nature derived from Adam liable to wrath, but that we were naturally begotten by wrath in the abstract! For taking the word \(\text{φύσις}\) in the sense of really or truly, both the ancient and modern Greeks appear indeed to have the authority of St. Paul himself; who, writing to Timothy, calls him \(\text{τοῦ ἀληθοῦς γινέσθαι}\), "his true or genuine son;" not to signify that he was the child of the apostle by natural generation, but that he was closely related to him in the faith to which St. Paul had converted him. That the words \(\text{φύσις ἐγὼ ὁ ἀνθρώπος}\) can signify nothing but truly or really relations to wrath, is still farther evident from the ground assigned of that relation. It is not the sin of Adam, or the impurity of natural generation, but the trespasses and sins in which the Ephesians in time past walked, according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air; the spirit that at the time of the apostle's writing "worked in the children of disobedience." Surely no man can suppose that the Ephesians at any time past walked in Adam's trespass and sin, or that the prince of the power of the air tempted them to eat the forbidden fruit.

Having thus commented on the principal texts which are cited from the New Testament to prove the doctrine of original sin, the Arminians treat those which are quoted from the Old Testament, in support of the same doctrine, with much less ceremony. Thus, when Job says, "who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" Not one," he is speaking, say they, not of the pravity of our nature, but of its frailty and weakness, of the shortness and misery of human life. The sentence is proverbial; and as it is used only to signify, that nothing can be more perfect than its original, it must, whenever it occurs, be understood according to the subject to which it is applied. That in the place under considera- Fall of Adam, and its consequences.

Dr Taylor adds, with some plausibility, that if the words refer to the guilt which we are supposed to derive from Adam, they will prove too much to serve the common scheme of original sin. They will prove that our natural and inherent pravity, so far from rendering us fit objects of wrath, may be urged as a reason why God should not even bring us into judgment; for the patriarch's whole expostulation runs thus, "Dost thou open thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?"

The other text, quoted from the same book, they think still less to the purpose; for Eliphaz is evidently contrasting the creature with the Creator; in comparison with whom, he might well say, without alluding to original guilt, "what is man that he should be clean? and he who is born of a woman that he should be righteous? Behold he putteth no trust in his saints; yea the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity like water?" He does not say, who derives by birth an iniquitous nature; for he knew well, that as we are born, we are the pure workmanship of God, "whose hands have fashioned and formed every one of us;" but "who drinketh iniquity like water," who maketh himself iniquitous by running headlong into every vicious practice.

Of the text quoted from the fifty-first psalm in support of the doctrine of original sin, Dr Taylor labours, by a long and ingenious criticism, to prove that our translators have mistaken the sense. The word which they have rendered shapen, he shows to be used once by Isaiah, and twice in the book of Proverbs, to signify brought forth; and that which is rendered conceived me, is never, he says, employed in scripture to denote human conception. In this last remark, however, he is contradicted by a great authority, no less indeed than that of Mr Parkhurst, who says, that the LXX constantly render it by κατάρα or σύνεσμα, and the Vulgate generally by concipio. Without taking up us to decide between these two eminent Hebrew scholars, we shall only observe, that upon one occasion it certainly denotes ideas much grosser than those which the Psalmist must have had of his mother's conception; and that there, at least, Dr Taylor properly translates it, inacelascibant, adding, "de hoc vero inacelascendi genere loqui Davidem nemo sanus existimare potest. Matrem enim incaeloisse, aut ipsum calcescisse eo modo quo incalescent Jacobi pecudes Regem dicere, prorsus indecorum et absurdum." He contends, however, that the original force of the word is to be hot, and that it is applied to conception, to resentment, to warmth by which the body is nourished, to idolaters in love with idols, and to the heat of metals. The heat of idolaters, of resentment, and of metals, are evidently foreign to the Psalmist's purpose; and the idea conveyed by the word inacelascere being set aside for the reasons already assigned, there remains only the warmth by which the body is nourished, and of that warmth our ardour is confident that David spoke.

If this criticism be admitted, the whole verse will then run thus: "Behold I was born in iniquity, and in sin did my mother nurse me;" which hath no reference to the original formation of his constitution, but is a periphrasis of his being a sinner from the womb, and means nothing more than that he was a great sinner, or had contracted early habits of sin. He no more designed to signify in this verse, that by ordinary generation he had a nature conveyed to him which was utterly indisposed, disabled, and opposite to all that is spiritually good, and wholly and continually inclined to evil, than he meant in another to signify strictly and properly that "the wicked are estranged from the womb, and tell lies as soon as they are born;" or that Job meant to signify, that from the moment he came from his mother's womb he had been a guide to the widow and a succour to the fatherless. All these are hyperbolical forms of expression; which, though they appear strained, and perhaps extravagant, to the phlegmatic inhabitants of Europe, are perfectly suited to the warm imaginations of the orientals, and to the genius of eastern languages. They mean not that Job was born with habits of virtue, that the wicked actually walked, and spoke, and spoke lies from the instant of their birth, or that the Psalmist was really shapen in sin and conceived in iniquity. This last sentence, if interpreted literally, would indeed be grossly impious: it would make the inspired penman throw the whole load of his iniquity and sin from off himself upon him who shaped, and upon her who conceived him; even upon that God "whose hands had made him and fashioned him, and whom he declares that he will praise for having made him fearfully and wonderfully," and upon that parent who conceived him with sorrow, and brought him forth with pain, and to whom the divine law commanded him to render honour and gratitude. "But if, after all (says Dr Taylor), you will adhere to the literal sense of the text for the common doctrine of original sin, show me any good reason why you ought not to admit the literal sense of the text, this is my body, for transubstantiation? If you say, it is absurd to suppose that Christ speaks of his real natural body; I say, it is likewise absurd to suppose that the Psalmist speaks of his being really and properly shapen in iniquity, and conceived in sin. If you say, that the sense of the words this is my body may be clearly explained by other texts of scripture where the like forms of speech are used; I say, and have shown, that the Psalmist's sense may as clearly and evidently be made out by parallel texts, where you have the like kind of expression. If you say that transubstantiation is attended with consequences hurtful to piety, I say that the common doctrine of original sin is attended with consequences equally hurtful; for it is a principle apparently leading to all manner of iniquity, to believe that sin is natural to us, that it is interwoven and ingrafted into our very constitution from our conception and formation in the womb."

The Arminians having thus, as they think, proved that the posterity of Adam, are not in any sense rendered guilty by his sin, contend, that the death threatened against his eating of the forbidden fruit, and which, in consequence of his transgression, came upon all men, according to the principle which he received when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul. Every thing beyond this is pure conjecture, which has no foundation in the scriptures of truth, and is directly contrary to all the notions of right and wrong which we have been able to acquire from the study of those very scriptures. It is not conceivable from anything in the history, that Adam could understand it of the loss of any other life than that which he had lately received, for no other life is spoken of to which the threatened death can be opposed; and in such circumstances, it was strange indeed, if by the word death he understood either eternal life in misery, or a necessity of continuing in sin. The sense therefore of the threatening, say they, is this: "I have formed thee of the dust of the ground, and breathed into thy nostrils the breath of life; and thus thou art become a living soul. But if thou eatest of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt cease to be a living soul; for I will take from thee the breath of life, and thou shalt return to the dust of which thou wast formed."

Thus far the Arminians of the present day are agreed in opposing the doctrine of the rigid Calvinists, and in stating their own notions of the consequences of Adam's fall; but from that event their adversaries deduce one consequence, which some of them admit and others deny. It is said that though we cannot possibly be partakers in Adam's guilt, we yet derive from him a moral taint and infection, by which we have a natural propensity to sin; that having lost the image of God, in which he was created, Adam begat sons in his own image; and in one word, that the sensual appetites of human nature were inflamed, and its moral and intellectual powers greatly weakened by the eating of the forbidden fruit. The heathens themselves acknowledged and lamented this depravity; though they were ignorant of the source from which it sprung. The scriptures assert it, affirming that no man can be born pure and clean; that whatever is born of the flesh, or comes into the world by ordinary generation, is flesh, carnal and corrupt; that the imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually; that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; and that out of it proceeds all that is vile and sinful.

This depravity of human nature, thus clearly deducible from scripture, and confirmed by the testimony of ages, an ingenious writer of the moderate Arminian school undertakes to illustrate upon the principles of natural knowledge. "We know (says he), that there are several fruits in several parts of the world so noxious a nature as to destroy the best human constitution on earth. We also know that there are some fruits in the world which inflame the blood into fevers and frenzies; and we are told that the Indians are acquainted with a certain juice, which immediately turns the person who drinks it into an idiot, leaving him at the same time in the enjoyment of his health and all the powers of his body. Now I ask Whether it be not possible, nay, whether it be not rational, to believe, that the same fruit, which, in the present infirmity of nature, would utterly destroy the human constitution, might, in its highest perfection, at least disturb, impair, and disease it? and whether the same fruit, which would now inflame any man living into a fever or frenzy, might not inflame Adam into a turbulence and irregularity of passion and appetite; and whether the same fluids, which inflame the blood into irregularity of passion and appetite, may not naturally produce infection and impair the constitution? That the forbidden fruit had the effect to produce irregularity of appetite, appears as from other proofs, so I think fully and clearly from the covering which Fall of Adam and Eve made use of soon after their offence; for Adam, and there is no imaginable reason for that covering but one, and that one sufficiently demonstrates, that irregularity and violence of appetite, independent of the dominion of reason, was the effect of their offence. But the fruit which inflamed the sensual appetite might likewise debase their rational powers; for I ask, whether the same juice, which now affects the brain of an ordinary man so as to make him an idiot, might not affect the brain of Adam so as to bring his understanding down to the present standard of ordinary men? And if this be possible, and not absurd to be supposed, it is evident that the subsequent ignorance and corruption of human nature may be clearly accounted for upon these suppositions; nay, I had almost said upon any one of them. For it is universally known, that the infections and infirmities of the father affect the children yet in his loins; and if the mother be equally infected, must, unless removed by proper remedies, affect their posterity to the end of the world, or at least till the race become extinct. Therefore why all mankind might not by their first father's sin be reduced to the same condition of infirmity and corruption with himself, especially when the mother was equally infirm, and infected, I believe no man any way skilled in the knowledge of nature will so much as pretend to say."

This account of the corruption of human nature seems to be generally adopted by moderate divines, as well among the Calvinists as among the Arminians; but by the high-fliers in both schools it is rejected, on different principles indeed, with great indignation. The zealous Calvinist contends, that this hereditary corruption is not to be accounted for or explained by any principle of physical science, since it is part of that punishment which was inflicted on the race for their original sin. If we were not partakers of Adam's guilt, say they, we should not have been partakers of his corruption. The one is previous to and the foundation of the other. The depravity of human nature is a punishment for sin; and so it was threatened to Adam, and came upon him as such, and so to all his posterity, by the ordination and appointment of God; for which there can be no other foundation but the imputation of Adam's disobedience to them, nor can any thing else vindicate the righteousness of God. For if the law of nature was sufficient, why should this original taint infect men rather than the sins of their immediate parents?"

The more violent Arminians, on the other hand, deny that we inherit any moral taint whatever from Adam, or that the rational powers of our minds are naturally weaker than his were. Of that wonderful degree of perfection which is usually attributed to the first pair, they find no evidence in scripture. All that we learn whilst of them, say they, is, that they fell from a state of exquisite happiness by yielding to a temptation less powerful by far than some others which many of their degenerate sons have successfully resisted. "I leave you to judge (says Dr Taylor), whether Joseph, when he resisted the solicitations of his mistress, and Moses when he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteeming the reproach of true religion greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, did not exhibit proofs of regularity." regularity of passions and appetites equal at least to what Adam displayed in the garden of Eden. When the three young men mentioned in the book of Daniel submitted to be burnt alive in a fiery furnace rather than worship Nebuchadnezzar's golden image; when Daniel himself resolved, rather than conceal the worship of God for one month only of his life, to be torn in pieces by hungry lions; and, to come nearer to our own times, when numbers of men and women, during the reign of Mary queen of England, chose rather to be burnt at stake than renounce the reformed religion and embrace the errors of popery—surely all these persons exhibited a virtue, a faith in God and a steady adherence to what they believed to be the truth, far superior to what Adam displayed, when his wife gave him of the forbidden fruit, and he did eat." If it be said that these persons were supported under their trials by the grace of God strengthening them, the same will be said of Adam. He was undoubtedly supplied with every aid from the spirit of grace which was necessary to enable him to fulfil his duty; for being designed for more than mere animal life, even for the refined enjoyments of heaven, there is every reason to believe, as we have already observed, that he was put under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, to train him for that supernatural state of felicity. These communications of the spirit would of course be withdrawn when he forfeited his right to those privileges, on account of which they were originally vouchsafed to him; but that any positive malignity or taint was infused into his nature, that his mere rational powers were weakened, or his appetites inflamed by the forbidden fruit, there is no evidence to be found in scripture, or in the known constitution of things. The attributing of this supposed hereditary taint to the noxious qualities of the forbidden fruit, is a whimsical hypothesis, which receives no countenance from any well authenticated fact in natural history. After the numberless false and deceitful stories that have been told of the poison tree of Java, illustration something more would be requisite than the common evidence of a lying voyager to give credit to the qualities of the Indian tree, of which the fruit instantly turns the wisest man into an idiot: and yet for this singular story our ingenious author vouchsafes not even that evidence, slight as it generally is. The inference drawn from the covering used by our first parents is contradicted by every thing that we know of human nature; for surely no man inflamed to the utmost with the fire of animal love, ever turned his eyes from a naked beauty ready and eager to receive him to her embrace. Yet this, it seems, was the behaviour of Adam and Eve in such a state! According to our author, the juice of the forbidden fruit had rendered their carnal appetites violent and independent of reason; according to the scripture, they were both naked; and as they were husband and wife, there was no law prohibiting them from gratifying these inflamed appetites. In such circumstances, how did they conduct themselves? One would naturally imagine that they immediately retired to some shady grove, and pleased themselves in all the soft dalliances of wedded love. Their conduct however, was very different. We are told, that "they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons to cover their nakedness:" And this transaction is brought as a proof of the impetuosity of their carnal appetites. The truth is, that the carnal appetite appears not to be naturally more violent than is necessary to answer the end for which it was implanted in the human constitution. Among savages the desires of animal love are generally very moderate; and even in society they have not often, unless inflamed by the luxurious arts of civil life, greater strength than is requisite to make mankind attend to the continuation of their species. In the decline of empires highly polished, where the difference of rank and opulence is great, and where every man is ambitious of emulating the expense of his immediate superiors, early marriages are prevented by the inability of most people to provide for a family in a way suitable to what each is pleased to consider as his proper station; and in that state of things the violence of animal love will indeed frequently produce great irregularities. But for that state of things, as it was not intended by the Author of nature, it is perhaps unreasonable to suppose that provision should be made; and yet we believe it will be found, upon due consideration, that if the desires of animal love were less violent than they are, the general consequences would be more pernicious to society than all the irregularities and vices which these desires now accidentally produce; for there would then be no intercourse between the sexes whatever except in the very highest stations of life. That our constitution is attended with many sensual appetites and passions, is true; and that there is a great danger of their becoming excessive and irregular in a world so full of temptation as ours is, is also true; but there is no evidence that all this is the consequence of Adam's fall, and far less that it amounts to a natural propensity to sin. For I presume (says Dr Taylor), that by a supernatural propensity is meant a necessary inclination to sin, or that we are necessarily sinful from the original bent and bias of our natural powers. But this must be false; for then we should not be sinful at all, because that which is necessary, or which we cannot help, is not sin. That we are weak and liable to temptation, is the will of God holy and good, and for glorious purposes to ourselves; but if we are wicked, it must be through our own fault, and cannot proceed from any constraint, or necessity, or taint in our constitution.

Thus we have given as full and comprehensive a view as our limits will permit of the different opinions of the Calvinists and Arminians respecting the consequences of Adam's fall. If we have dwelt longer upon the scheme of the latter than of the former, it is because every Arminian argument is built upon criticism, and appeals to the original text; whilst the Calvinists rest their faith upon the plain words of scripture as read in our translation. If we might hazard our own opinion, we should say that the truth lies between them, and that it has been found by the moderate men of both parties, who, while they make use of different language, seem to us Calvinists to have the same sentiments. That all mankind really and assumed in Adam, and are on that account liable to meet with the grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, and in hell fire for ever, is a doctrine which cannot be reconciled to our natural notions of God. On the other hand, if human nature was not somehow debased by the fall of our first parents, it is not easy to account for the numberless phrases in scripture which certainly seem to speak that language, or for the very general opinion of the Pagan philosophers and poets respecting the golden age and the degeneracy of man. Cicero, in a quotation preserved... Theology preserved by St Augustine from a work that is now lost has these remarkable words, "Homo non ut a matre sed ut a noverca natura editus est in vitam, corpore nudo, et fragili, et infirmo; animo autem anxio ad molestias, humi- ad timores, mollis ad labores, prone ad libidines; in quo tamen inest tanquam obritus quidam divinis ignis tegenti et mentis." Nor do we readily perceive what should induce the more zealous Arminians to oppose so vehemently this general opinion of the corruption of human nature. Their desire to vindicate the justice and goodness of God does them honour; but the doctrine of inherent corruption militates not against these attributes; for what we have lost in the first Adam has been amply supplied to us in the second; and we know from the highest authority that the duties required of us are in proportion to our ability, since we are told, that "unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required."

Sect. IV. View of Theology from the fall of Adam to the coming of Christ.

We have dwelt long on the original state of man, his introduction into the terrestrial paradise, the privileges to which he was there admitted, his forfeiture of those privileges, and the state to which he was reduced by transgressing the law of his Maker; but the importance of these events renders them worthy of all the attention that we have paid to them. They paved the way for the coming of Christ and the preaching of the gospel, and unless we thoroughly understand the origin of the gospel, we cannot have an adequate conception of its design. By contrasting the first with the second Adam, St Paul gives us clearly to understand, that one purpose for which Christ came into the world and suffered death on the cross, was to restore to mankind that life which they had lost by the fall of their original progenitor. The preaching of the gospel therefore commenced with the first hint of such a restoration; and the promise given to Adam and Eve, that "the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent," was as truly evangelical as these words of the apostle, by which we are taught, that "this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." The former text taken by itself is indeed obscure, and the latter is explicit; but both belong to the same system, for the Scriptures contain but two covenants or dispensations of God to man, in which the whole race is included.

Christianity therefore is indeed very near as old as the creation; but its principles were at first obscurely revealed, and afterwards gradually developed under different forms as mankind became able to receive them, (see Prophecy, No. 5. &c.). All that appears to have been at first revealed to Adam and Eve was, that by some means or other one of their posterity should in time redeem the whole race from the curse of the fall; or if they had a distinct view of the means by which that redemption was to be wrought, it was probably communicated to them at the institution of sacrifices, (see Sacrifice). This promise of a future deliverer served to comfort them under their heavy sentence; and the institution of sacrifices, whilst it impressed upon their minds lively ideas of the punishment due to their transgression, was admirably calculated to prepare both them and their posterity for the great atonement which, in due time, was to take away the sins of the world.

Our first parents, after their fall, were so far from being left to fabricate a mode of worship for themselves by those innate powers of the human mind of which we daily hear so much, and feel so little, that God was graciously pleased to manifest himself to their senses, and visibly to conduct them by the angel of his presence in all the rites and duties of religion. This is evident from ages of the different discourses which he held with Cain, as well world as from the complaint of that murderer of being hid from his face, and from its being said, that "he went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt on the east of Eden." Nor does it appear that God wholly withdrew his visible presence, and left mankind to their own inventions, till their wickedness became so very great that his spirit could no longer strive with them. The infant state of the world stood in constant need of his supernatural guidance and protection. The early inhabitants of this globe cannot be supposed to have been able, with Moses, to look up to him who is invisible, and perform a worship purely rational and spiritual. They were all tillers of the ground, or keepers of cattle; employed in cultivating and replenishing this new world; and, through the curse brought upon it by their forefather, forced, with him, to eat their bread "in the sweat of their brow." Man in such circumstances could have little leisure for speculation; nor has mere speculation, unless furnished with principles from another source, ever generated in the human mind adequate notions of God's nature or providence, or of the means by which he can be acceptably worshipped. Frequent manifestations, therefore, of his presence would be necessary to keep a tolerable sense of religion among them, and secure obedience to the divine institutions; and that the Almighty did not exhibit such manifestations, cannot be inferred from the silence of that very short history which we have of those early ages. Adam himself continued 930 years a living monument of the justice and mercy of God; of his extreme hatred and abhorrence of sin, as well as of his love and long suffering towards the sinner. He was very sensible how sin had entered into the world, and he could not but apprise his children of its author. He would at the same time inform them of the unity of God, and his dominion over the evil one; of the means by which he had appointed himself to be worshipped; and of his promise of future deliverance from the curse of the fall. Such information would produce a tolerable idea of the Divine Being, and afford sufficient motives to obey his will. The effects of it accordingly were apparent in the righteous family of Seth, who soon distinguished themselves from the posterity of Cain, and for their eminent piety were honoured with the appellation of the sons of God. Of this family sprang a person so remarkable for virtue and devotion, as to be exempted from Adam's sentence; and the common lot of his sons; for after he had walked with God 300 years, and prophesied to his brethren, he was translated that he should not see death. Of this miraculous event there can be no doubt but that his contemporaries had some visible demonstration; and as the fate of Abel was an argument to their reason, so the translation of Enoch was a proof to their senses of another state of life after the present. To Adam himself, if he was then alive (s), it must have been a lively and affecting instance of what he might have enjoyed, had he kept his innocence; it must have been a comfortable earnest of the promised victory over the evil one; and have confirmed his hope, that when the head of the serpent should be completely bruised, he and his posterity would be restored to the favour of their Maker, and behold his presence in bliss and immortality.

Notwithstanding this watchful care of God over his fallen creature man, vice, and probably idolatry, spread through the world with a rapid pace. The family of Seth married into that of Cain, and adopted the manners of their new relations. Rape and violence, unbounded lust and impurity of every kind, prevailed universally; and when those giants in wickedness had filled the earth with tyranny, injustice and oppression; when the whole race was become entirely carnal—God, after raising up another prophet to give them frequent warnings of their fate for the space of 120 years, was at length obliged, in mercy to themselves as well as to the succeeding generations of men, to cut them off by a general deluge. See DELUGE.

Thus did God, by the spirit of prophecy, by frequent manifestations of his own presence, and by uninterrupted tradition, make ample provision for the instruction and improvement of the world for the first 1600 years. After the deluge he was pleased to converse again with Noah, and make in his person a new and extensive covenant with mankind, (see PROPHECY, No 11.) Of his power, justice, and goodness; of his supreme dominion over the earth and the heavens; of his abhorrence of sin, and his determination not to let it go unpunished—that patriarch and his family had been most awfully convinced: nor could they or their children, for some time, want any other argument to enforce obedience, fear, and worship. The sons of Noah were an hundred years old when the deluge overwhelmed the earth. They had long conversed with their ancestors of the old world, had frequented the religious assemblies, observed every Sabbath day, and had been instructed by those who had seen Adam. It is therefore impossible that they could be ignorant of the creation of the world, of the fall of man, or of the promise of future deliverance from the consequences of that fall; or that they could offer their sacrifices, and perform the other rites of the instituted worship, without looking forward with the eye of faith to that deliverance seen, perhaps obscurely, through their typical oblations.

In this state of things religion might for some time be safely propagated by tradition. But when by degrees mankind corrupted that tradition in its most essential parts; when, instead of the one Supreme God, they set up several orders of inferior deities, and worshipped all the host of heaven; when, at the same time they were uniting under one head, and forming a universal empire under the patronage of the Sun their chief divinity (see BABEL)—God saw it necessary to disperse them into distinct colonies, by causing such discord among them as rendered it impossible for any one species of idolatry to be at once universally established.

After this dispersion, there is reason to believe that particular revelations were vouchsafed wherever men were disposed to regard them. Peleg had his name prophetically given him from the dispersion which was to happen in his days; and not only his father Eber, but all the heads of families mentioned from Noah to Abraham, are with much plausibility supposed to have had the spirit of prophecy on many occasions. Noah was undoubtedly both priest and prophet; and living till within two years of the birth of Abraham, or, according to others, till that patriarch was near 60 years old, he would surely be able to keep up a tolerable sense of true religion among such of his descendants as sojourned within the influence of his doctrine and example. His religious son Shem, who lived till after the birth of Isaac, could not but preserve in tolerable purity the faith and worship of the true God among such of his own descendants as lived in his neighbourhood.

But though the remains of true religion were thus preserved among a few righteous men, idolatry had in a short time prevailed so far among the sons of Noah, that God saw it expedient not only to shorten the lives of men, but also to withdraw his presence from the generality, who had thus rendered themselves unworthy of such communications; and to select a particular family, in which his worship might be preserved pure amidst the various corruptions that were spreading the world.

With this view Abraham was called, and, after many remarkable trials of his faith and constancy, admitted to a particular intimacy and friendship with his Maker. God entered into a peculiar covenant with him, engaging to be his present guide, protector, and defender; to bestow all temporal blessings upon him and his seed; and to make some of those seed the instruments of conveying blessings of a higher kind to all the nations of the earth.

It was doubtless for his singular piety that Abraham to prevent was fixed upon to be the parent of that people, who should preserve the knowledge of the unity of God in the midst of an idolatrous and polytheistic world; but yet we are not to imagine that it was for his sake only that all this was done, or that his less worthy descendants were by the equal Lord of all treated with partial fondness for the virtues of their ancestor; it was for the benefit of mankind in general that he was called from his country, and from his father's house, that he might preserve the doctrine of the divine unity in his own family, and be an instrument in the hand of Providence (and a fit one he was) to convey the same faith to the nations around him. Accordingly, we find him distinguished among the neighbouring princes, and kings reproved for his sake; who being made acquainted with his prophetic character, desired his intercession with God. History tells us of his conversing on the subject of religion with the most learned Egyptians, who appear to have derived from him or some of his descendants the rite of circumcision, and to have been for a while stopt in their progress towards the last stage of that degrading idolatry which afterwards rendered their national worship the opprobrium of the whole earth, (see POLYTHEISM, No 28.) We are informed that his name was held in the greatest veneration all over the East; that the Magians, Sabians, Persians,

(s) According to the Samaritan chronology, he was alive; according to the Hebrew, he had been dead 57 years. Persians, and Indians, all glory in him as the greatest reformer of their respective religions; and to us it appears extremely probable, that not only the Brahmans, but likewise the Hindoo god Brahma*, derive their names from the father of the faithful. As he was let into the various counsels of the Almighty, and taught to reason and reflect upon them; as he was fully apprised of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, with the particular circumstances of that miraculous event; and as he had frequent revelations of the promised Redeemer, whose day he longed earnestly to see, and seeing it was glad—there can be no doubt but that he and his family took care to propagate these important doctrines in every nation which they visited; for the only reason which we can conceive for his being made to wander from place to place was, that different people might be induced to inquire after his profession, his religion, and his hopes.

But though the Supreme Being was pleased to manifest himself in a more frequent and familiar manner to Abraham, he by no means left the rest of the world without sufficient light. Lot professed the true religion in the midst of Sodom. In Canaan we meet with Melchizedeck, king and priest of the most high God, who blessed Abraham, and to whom that patriarch himself did homage. Abimelech king of Gerar receiving an admonition from the Lord, immediately paid a due regard to it; and the same sense of religion and virtue descended to his son. Laban and Bethuel acknowledged the Lord, and the former of them was even favoured with a vision. In Arabia, we find Job and his three friends, all men of high rank, entering into the deepest disquisitions in theology; agreeing about the unity, omnipotence, and spirituality of God; the justice of his providence, with other fundamental articles of true religion; and mentioning divine inspiration or revelation as a thing not uncommon in their age and country† (u).

Balaam appears to have been a true prophet: and as he was unquestionably a man of bad morals, the natural inference is, that the gift of prophecy was then, as afterwards, bestowed on individuals, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the public; and that, as in "every nation, he who feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him;" so in those early ages of the world, when mankind were but children in religious knowledge, they were blessed with the light of divine revelation wherever they were disposed to make a proper use of it.

Very few, however, appear to have had this disposition; and therefore God was pleased to adopt Abraham and part of his posterity as the race from which the great Redeemer was to spring, to train them up by degrees in suitable notions of their Creator, and gradually to open up to them, as they were able to receive it, the nature of that dispensation under which "all the nations of the earth were to be blessed in the patriarch's seed," (see PROPHECY, No. 13.) For this purpose, he held frequent correspondence with them; and to strengthen and confirm their faith, to fix and preserve their dependence on the one God of heaven and earth, he daily gave them new promises, each more magnificent than that which preceded it. He blessed Isaac, miraculously increased his substance, and soon made him the envy of the neighbouring princes. He foretold the condition of his two sons, renewed the promise made to Abraham, and blessed the adopted son Jacob, with whom he condescended to converse as he had conversed with Abraham and Isaac; renewing to him the great promise; bestowing upon him all kinds of riches; and impressing such terror upon all the cities which were round about him as prevented them from hurting either him or his family.

All this was indeed little enough to keep alive even in the mind of Jacob a tolerable sense of duty and dependence on his Creator. After the first vision he is surprised, and hesitates, seemingly inclined to make a kind of stipulation with his Maker, "If (says he) God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." It appears not to have been till after many such revelations, blessings, and deliverances, and being reminded of the vow which on this occasion he had vowed, that he set himself in good earnest to reform the religion of his own family, and to drive out from it all strange gods*. So little able, in that age, were the boasted powers of the human mind to preserve in the world just notions of the unity of the Godhead, that we see there was a necessity for very frequent revelations, to prevent even the best men from running headlong into polytheism and idolatry.

Thus was God obliged to treat even with the patriarchs themselves, by way of positive covenant and express compact; to promise to be their God if they would be his people; to give them a portion of temporal blessings as introductory to future and spiritual ones; and to engage them in his service by immediate rewards, till they could be led on to higher views, and prepared by the bringing in of a better hope to worship him in spirit and in truth. With regard to what may be called the theory of religion, mankind were yet scarcely got out of their childhood. Some extraordinary persons indeed occasionally appeared in different countries, such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Job, with many others, who had a more enlarged prospect of things, and entertained more worthy sentiments of the divine dispensations and of the ultimate end of man; but these were far superior to the times in which they lived, and appear to have been providentially raised up to prevent the savage state and savage idolatry from becoming universal among men.

The worship which was practised by those holy men appears to have consisted principally of the three kinds of sacrifice mentioned elsewhere (see SACRIFICE); to those early which were doubtless added prayers and praises, with ages performed in faith.

(u) There are great disputes among the learned respecting the antiquity and the author of the book of Job, and whether it be a history of events, or a poem which has its foundation in history. All sober men, however, are agreed, that there really was such a person as Job, eminent for patience under uncommon sufferings; and that he was of very remote antiquity. The LXX give us the names of his father and mother, and say that he was the fifth from Abraham. the more valuable oblation of pure hands and devout hearts. Such of them as looked forward to a future redemption, and had any tolerable notion of the means by which it was to be effected, as Abraham certainly had, must have been sensible that the blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin, and that their sacrifices were therefore valuable only when they were offered in faith of that great promise, "which they, having seen afar off, were persuaded of, and embraced: and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth."

That such persons looked for "a better country, even a heavenly one," in a future state, cannot be questioned; for they knew well how sin and death had entered into the world, and they must have understood the promise made to their original progenitor, and repeatedly renewed to themselves, to include in it a deliverance at some period from every consequence of the first transgression. They were to all intents and purposes Christians as well as we. They indeed placed their confidence in a Redeemer, who in the fulness of time was to appear upon earth, while we place ours in a Redeemer that has been already manifested; they expressed that confidence by one mode of worship, we express it by another; but the patriarchal worship had the same end in view with the Christian—the attainment of everlasting life in heaven.

The generality of men, however, appear not, in the early age of which we now write, to have extended their views beyond the present life. From the confused remains of ancient tradition, they acknowledged indeed some superior power or powers, to whom they frequently applied for direction in their affairs; but in all probability it was only for direction in temporal affairs, such as the cultivation of the ground, or their transactions with each other. In the then state of things, when no part of the world was overstocked with inhabitants, and when luxury with its consequences was everywhere unknown, virtue and vice must have produced their natural effects; and the good man being happy here, and the wicked man miserable, reason had no data from which to infer the reality of a future state of rewards and punishments. Those who were blessed with the light of revelation undoubtedly looked forward to that state with a holy joy; but the rest worshipped superior powers from worldly motives. How many of those powers there might be, or how far their influence might reach, they knew not. Uncertain whether there be one Supreme Governor of the whole world, or many co-ordinate powers presiding each over a particular country, climate, or place—gods of the hills and of the valleys, as they were afterwards distinguished—they thought that the more of these they could engage in their interest the better. Like the Samaritans therefore, in after times, they sought, wherever they came, the "manners of the god of the land," and served him, together with their own gods.

Thus was the world ready to lose all knowledge of the true God and his worship, had not he been graciously pleased to interpose, and take effectual care to preserve that knowledge in one nation, from which it might be conveyed to the rest of mankind at different times, and in greater or less degrees, as they should be capable of receiving it. To this purpose he made way for the removal of Jacob and his family to one of the most improved and polished countries of the world; and introduced them into it in a manner so advantageous, as to give them an opportunity of imparting much religious knowledge to the natives. The natives, however, were from the gross idolaters; and that his chosen people might be as far as possible from the contagion of their example, he caused them to be placed upon the borders of Egypt, where, though of Chil's occupation still kept a separate people, and must have been rendered, by a long and severe oppression, in a great degree averse to the manners and religion of their neighbours. This aversion, however, seems to have gradually become less and less; and before they were miraculously redeemed from their house of bondage, they had certainly lost all correct notions of the unity of God, and the nature of his worship, and had adopted the greater part of the superstitions of their task-masters. Of this we need no other proof than what is implied in the words of Moses, when he said unto God, "Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?" Had not the destined lawgiver of the Hebrews been aware that his countrymen had adopted a plurality of gods, this difficulty could not have occurred to him; for names are never thought of but to distinguish from each other beings of the same kind; and he must have remembered, that in Egypt, where the multitude of goods was marshalled into various classes, the knowledge of their names was deemed of great importance. This we learn likewise from Herodotus, who informs us, that the Pelasgi, after settling in Greece, thought it necessary to consult the oracle of Dodona, whether it would be proper to give to their own gods the names of the Egyptian divinities; and that the oracle, as might have been supposed, assured them that it would. Indeed the Hebrews during their residence in Egypt had acquired such an attachment to the idolatrous worship of the country, that it appears never to have left them entirely till many ages afterwards, when they were carried captive into Babylon, and severely punished for their repeated superstitions; and so completely were they infatuated by these superstitions at the era of their exodus, that, as the prophet Ezekiel informs us, they rebelled against God, and would not cast away their abominations, or forsake the idols of Egypt, even in the very day that the hand of Omnipotence was lifted up to bring them forth of that land in which they had been so long and so cruelly oppressed. In such a state of things, to have suffered them to remain longer in Egypt, could have served no good purpose; and therefore to fulfil the promise which he had given to Abraham, God determined to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians by means which should convince both them and their offspring of his own supremacy over heaven and earth.

As Moses was the person appointed to deliver God's message to Pharaoh, and to demand of him leave for the Israelites to go three days journey into the wilderness to serve the God of their fathers, it was necessary that he should be endowed with the power of working miracles to evince the reality of his divine mission. Without a conviction that his claims were well founded, neither Pharaoh nor his own countrymen could reasonably have been expected to listen to the proposals of a man who, though blessed in his youth with a princely education, had come directly on his embassy from the humble employment The ployment of a shepherd, which he had for many years exercised in the country of Midian. To prove that he was really sent by God, any visible and undoubted control of the laws of nature would have been abundantly sufficient; but he was to prove not only this truth, but also the unity of the Divine nature; and the miracles which he was directed to work were executions of judgment against the very gods of Egypt.

When Pharaoh first turned a deaf ear to his request, though enforced by the conversion of a rod into a serpent, at the command of Jehovah he smote with the same rod upon the waters in the river, which were instantly converted into blood, and occasioned the death of all the fishes that swam in them. To any people this miracle would have been a proof of Divine agency; but it was in a particular manner calculated to open the eyes of the blind and infatuated Egyptians, who considered the Nile as one of their greatest gods, and all the fishes that it contained as subordinate deities. They called that noble river sometimes *Sirius*, sometimes *Osiris*, sometimes *Canopus* (see *Canorus*), and not unfrequently *Oxas* (x); and adored it as the parent of all their deities. What then must the people have thought when they found their most revered god, at the command of a servant of Jehovah, converted into blood, and all his sacred offspring into stinking carcasses? To conceive their consternation, if it can be conceived, the reader must remember, that the Egyptian priests held blood in the utmost abhorrence, as a thing of which the very touch would deeply pollute them, and require immediate and solemn expiation. The same sacred river was a second time polluted, when it sent forth frogs, which covered all the land of Egypt, and died in the houses, in the villages, and in the fields; thus rendering it impossible for the people to avoid the touch of dead bodies, though from every such contact they believed themselves to contract an impurity, which, in the case before us, must have been the more grievous, that in the whole country there was not left a pool of uninfected water to wash away the stain.

The third plague inflicted on the Egyptians was, the converting of the dust of the land into lice, upon man and upon beast, throughout the whole kingdom. To see the propriety of this miracle as a judgment upon their idolatry, we must recollect their utter abhorrence of all kinds of vermin, and their extreme attention to external purity above every other people perhaps that has hitherto existed on the face of the earth. On this head they were more particularly solicitous when about to enter the temples of their gods; for Herodotus informs us, that their priests wore linen raiment only, and shaved off every hair from their heads and bodies, that there might be no *louse* or other detestable object upon them when performing their duty to the gods. This plague therefore, while it lasted, made it impossible for them to perform their idolatrous worship, without giving such offence to their deities as they imagined could never be forgiven. Hence we find, that on the production of the lice, the priests and magicians perceived immediately from what hand the miracle had come, and exclaimed, "This is the finger of God!" The fourth plague seems to have been likewise acknowledged to be the finger of God, if not by the magicians, at least by Pharaoh; for in a fit of terror he agreed that the Israelites should go and serve the Lord. That he was terrified at the swarms of flies which infested the whole country, except the land of Goshen, will excite no wonder, when it is known that the worship of the fly originated in Egypt; whence it was carried by the Caphtorim to Palestine; by the Phenicians to Sidon, Tyre, and Babylon; and from these regions to other parts of the world. The denunciation of this plague was delivered to Pharaoh early in the morning, when he was on the banks of the Nile, probably paying his accustomed devotion to his greatest god; and when he found himself and his people tormented by a swarm of subordinate divinities, who executed the judgment of Jehovah in defiance of the power of the supreme *numen* of Egypt, he must have been convinced, had any candour remained in his mind, that the whole system of his superstition was a mass of absurdities, and that his gods were only humble instruments at the disposal of a Superior Power. He was not, however, convinced; he was only alarmed, and quickly relapsed into his wonted obstinacy.

The fifth plague therefore, the murrain among the cattle, brought death and destruction on his most revered gods themselves. Neither Osiris, nor Isis, nor Ammon, nor Pan, had power to save his brute representatives. The sacred bull, and heifer, and ram, and goat, were carried off by the same malady which swept away all the other herds of deities, these *di stercores*, who lived on grass and hay. The impression of this punishment must have been awful on the minds of the Egyptians, but perhaps not equal to that which succeeded it.

In Egypt there were several altars on which human sacrifices were offered; and from the description of the persons qualified to be victims, it appears that those unhappy beings must have been foreigners, as they were required to have bright hair and a particular complexion. The hair of the Israelites was much brighter than that of the Egyptians, and their complexions fairer; and therefore there can be little doubt but that, during their residence in Egypt, they were made to furnish the victims demanded by the bloody gods. These victims being burnt alive on a high altar, and thus sacrificed for the good of the nation, their ashes were gathered together by the priest, and scattered upwards in the air, that a blessing might be entailed on every place to which an atom of this dust should be wafted. Moses too, by the direction of the true God, took ashes of the furnace, probably of one of those very furnaces in which some of his countrymen had been burnt, and sprinkling them towards heaven in the sight of Pharaoh, brought boils and blains upon all the people, of so malignant a nature, that the magicians and the other ministers of the medical gods, with which Egypt abounded beyond all other countries, could not themselves escape the infection.

The powers of darkness were thus foiled; but the heart of the monarch was still hardened. Destruction was therefore next brought on him and his country by the elements, which were among the earliest idol deities

(x) Whence came the Greek word *ακτηνη*, the ocean. not only of the Egyptians, but of every other polytheistic nation. "The Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt; so that there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and broke every tree of the field." This was a dreadful calamity in itself; and the horror which it excited in the minds of the people must have been greatly aggravated by the well-known fact, that Egypt is blessed with a sky uncommonly serene; that in the greatest part of it rain has never been seen at any other time since the creation of the world; and that a slight and transient shower is the utmost that in the ordinary course of nature falls anywhere throughout the country. The small quantity of vegetables which was left undestroyed by the fire and the hail was afterwards devoured by locusts, which by a strong east wind were brought in such numbers from Arabia, where they abounded at all times, that they covered the whole face of the earth, and did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees, so that there remained not any green thing in the trees or in the herbs of the field through all the land of Egypt.

The ninth plague which the obstinacy of Pharaoh brought upon his country, whilst it severely punished the Egyptians for their cruelty to the Hebrews, struck at the very foundation of all idolatry. We have elsewhere shown, that the first objects of idolatrous worship were the contending powers of light and darkness (see Polytheism); and that the benevolent principle, or the power of light, was everywhere believed to maintain a constant superiority over the power of darkness. Such was the faith of the ancient Persians; and such, as a very learned writer has lately proved, was likewise the faith of the earlier Egyptians. It was therefore with wisdom truly divine, that God, to show the vanity of their imaginations, brought upon these votaries of light, who fancied themselves the offspring of the sun, a supernatural darkness, which, for three days, all the powers of their supreme deity, and his subordinate agents, could not dispel.

The tenth and last plague brought on this idolatrous people was more universally and severely felt than any which had preceded it. It was likewise, in some sense, an instance of the lex talionis, which requires an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, &c. Moses was commanded, at his first interview with Pharaoh, to say, "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my first-born. Let my son go that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy first-born." Before this threat was put in execution, every attempt was made to soften the hardened heart of the obstinate tyrant. The waters of his sacred river were turned into blood, and all the fishes that it contained slain; frogs were brought over all the land to pollute the people; the ministers of religion were rendered so impure by vermin, that they could not discharge their wonted offices; the animals most revered as gods, or emblems of gods, were cut off by a murrain; the elements, that were everywhere worshipped as divinities, carried through the land a devastation, which was completed by swarms of locusts; the ashes from the sacred furnaces, which were thought to convey blessings wheresoever they were wafted, were made to communicate incurable disease; a thick and preternatural darkness was spread over the kingdom, in defiance of the power of the great Osiris; and when the hearts of the people and their sovereign continued still obdurate, the eldest son in each family was slain, because they refused to let go Israel, God's first-born. From this universal pestilence the Israelites were preserved by sprinkling the door-posts of their houses with the blood of one of the animals adored in Egypt; a fact which, as it could not be unknown to Pharaoh or his subjects, ought to have convinced that people of the extreme absurdity of their impious superstitions. This effect it seems not to have had; but the death of the first-born produced the deliverance of the Hebrews; for when it was found that there was not a house where there was not one dead, "Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both you and the children of Israel; and bless me also. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men (x)." The wonted obstinacy of the monarch indeed very soon returned; and his subjects, forgetting the loss of their children, joined with him in a vain attempt to bring back to bondage the very people whom they had been thus urgent to send out of the land; but their attempt was defeated by Jehovah, and all who engaged in it drowned in the Red sea.

The God of Israel having thus magnified himself over the Egyptians and their gods, and rescued his people from bondage by such means as must not only have struck terror and astonishment into the whole land, but also have spread his name through all the countries which had any communication with that far-famed nation, proceeded to instruct and exercise the Hebrews for many years in the wilderness. He incleated upon them the unity of the Godhead; gave them statutes and judgments more righteous than those of any other nation; and by every method consistent with the freedom of moral agency guarded them against the contagion of idolatry and polytheism. He sent his angel before them to keep them in the way, took upon himself the office of their supreme civil governor, and by his presence directed them in all their undertakings. He led them with repeated signs and wonders through the neighbouring nations, continued to try and discipline

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(x) For this account of the plagues of Egypt, we are indebted to the very valuable Observations on the subject published by Mr Bryant. We have not quoted the authorities by which the learned and pious author supports his opinions; because it is to be hoped, that for a fuller account of these important transactions the reader will have recourse to his work, of which we have given only a very brief abstract. For much of the preceding parts of this section, we acknowledge our obligations to Bishop Law's admirable discourse on the Several Dispensations of Revealed Religion. them till they were tolerably attached to his government and established in his worship, and introduced them into the Promised Land when its inhabitants were ripe for destruction. At their entrance into it, he gave them a summary repetition of their former laws, with more such ordinances, both of a ceremonial and moral kind, as were both suited to their temper and circumstances, as well as to prefigure, and by degrees to prepare them for, a more perfect dispensation under the Messiah.

The Jewish law had two great objects in view; of which the first was to preserve among them the knowledge of the true God, a rational worship springing from that knowledge, and the regular practice of moral virtue: and the second was to fit them for receiving the accomplishment of the great promise made to their ancestors, by means analogous to those which a school-master employs to fit his pupils for discharging the duties of maturer years. Every thing in that law peculiar to itself, its various ceremonies, modes of sacrificing, the sanctions by which it was enforced, and the theocratic government by which it was administered, had a direct tendency to promote one or other of these ends; and keeping these ends in view, even the minutest laws, at which impious ignorance has affected to make itself merry, will be discovered by those who shall study the whole system, and are at the same time acquainted with the genius of ancient polytheism, to have been enacted with the most consummate wisdom.

It is not easy for us, who have been long blessed with the light of revelation, to conceive the propensity of all nations, in that early age of the world, to the worship of false gods, of which they were daily adding to the number. It is indeed probable, from many passages of Scripture, as well as from profane authors of the greatest antiquity, that one supreme numen was everywhere acknowledged: but he was considered as an extraneous being, too highly exalted to concern himself with the affairs of this world, the government of which, it was believed, he had delegated to various orders of subordinate deities. Of those deities, some were supposed to have the charge of one nation and some of another. Hence it is, that we read of the gods of Egypt, the gods of the Amorites, and the gods of the different nations around Palestine. None of those nations denied the existence of their neighbour's gods; but all agreed, that while the Egyptians were the peculiar care of Osiris and Isis, the Amorites might be the favourites of Moloch, the Phoenicians of Cronus, and the Philistines of Dagon; and they had no objection occasionally to join with each other in the worship of their respective tutelary deities. Nay, it was thought impious in foreigners, while they sojourned in a strange country, not to sacrifice to the gods of the place. Thus Sophocles makes Antigone say to her father, that a stranger should both venerate and abhor those things which are venerated and abhorred in the city where he resides.

From this notion of local divinities, whose power or partial fondness was confined to one people, the Israelites, on their departure from Egypt, appear not to have been free (z). Hence it is, that when the true God first tells them, by their leader Moses, that if they would obey his voice indeed and keep his covenant, then they should be a peculiar treasure to him above all people: to prevent them from supposing that he shared the earth with the idols of the heathen, and had from partial fondness chosen them for his portion, he immediately adds, for all the earth is mine. By this addition he gave them plainly to understand that they were chosen to be his peculiar treasure for some purpose of general importance; and the very first article of the covenant which they were to keep was, that they should have no other gods but him. So inextirpate, however, was the principle which led to an intercommunity of the objects of worship, that they could not have kept this article of the covenant but in a state of separation from the rest of mankind; and that separation could neither have been effected nor continued without the visible providence of the Almighty watching over them as his peculiar treasure. This we learn from Moses himself, who, when interceding for the people after their idolatrous worship of the golden calf, and intreating that the presence of God would still accompany them, adds these words: "For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is it not in that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are on the face of the earth." On this separation every thing depended; and therefore to render it the more secure, Jehovah was graciously pleased to become likewise their supreme Magistrate, making them a "kingdom of priests and a holy nation," and delivering to them a digest as well of their civil as of their religious laws.

The Almighty thus becoming their King, the government of the Israelites was properly a theocracy, in theocratic which the two societies, civil and religious, were of course incorporated. They had indeed after their settlement in the Promised Land, at first, temporary judges occasionally raised up; and afterwards permanent magistrates called kings, to lead their armies in war, and to give vigour to the administration of justice in peace; but neither those judges nor those kings could abrogate a single law of the original code, or make the smallest addition to it but by the spirit of prophecy. They cannot

(z) It is not indeed evident that they had got entirely quit of this absurd opinion at a much later period. Jephtha one of their judges, who, though half paganized (as Warburton observes) by a bad education, had probably as correct notions of religion as an ordinary Israelite, certainly talked to the king of Ammon as if he had believed the different nations of the earth to be under the immediate protection of different deities: "Wilt not thou (says he) possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess! So whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess." (Judges xi. 24.) not therefore be considered as supreme magistrates, by whatever title they may have been known; for they were to go out and come in at the word of the priests, who were to ask counsel for them of the Lord, and with whom they were even associated in all judicial proceedings, as well of a civil as of a spiritual nature*. Under any other than a theocratic government, the Hebrews could not have been kept separate from the nations around them; or if they could, that separation would not have answered the great purpose for which it was established. "The people, on their leaving Egypt, were sunk into the lowest practices of idolatry. To recover them by the discipline of a separation, it was necessary that the idea of God and his attributes should be impressed upon them in the most sensible manner. But this could not be commodiously done under his character of God of the universe: under his character of King of Israel, it well might. Hence it is, that we find him in the Old Testament so frequently represented with affections analogous to human passions. The civil relation in which he stood to the Israelites made such a representation natural; the grossness of their conceptions made the representation necessary; and the guarded manner in which it was always qualified prevented it from being mischievous†." Hence too it is, that under the Mosaic dispensation, idolatry was a crime of state, punishable by the civil magistrate. It was indeed high treason, against which laws were enacted on the justest principles, and carried into effect without danger of error. Nothing less indeed than penal laws of the severest kind could have restrained the violent propensity of that headstrong people to worship, together with their own God, the gods of the Heathen. But penal laws enacted by human authority for errors in religion are manifestly unjust; and therefore a theocratic government seems to have been absolutely necessary to obtain the end for which the Israelites were separated from the surrounding nations.

It was for the same purpose that the ritual law was given, after their presumptuous rebellions in the wilderness. Before the business of the golden calf, and their frequent attempts to return into Egypt, it seems not to have been the Divine intention to lay on them a yoke of ordinances; but to make his covenant depend entirely on their duly practising the rite of circumcision; observing the festivals instituted in commemoration of their deliverance from bondage, and other signal services vouchsafed them; and keeping inviolate all the precepts of the decalogue (A), which, if they had done, they should have even lived in them†. But after their repeated apostasies, and impious wishes to mix with the surrounding nations, it was necessary to subject them to a multifarious ritual, of which the ceremonial parts were solemn and splendid, fitted to engage and fix the attention of a people whose hearts were gross; to inspire them with reverence, and to withdraw their affections from the pageantry of those idle superstitions which they had so long witnessed in the land of Egypt.

To keep them warmly attached to their public worship, that worship was loaded with opulent and magnificent rites, and so completely incorporated with their civil polity as to make the same things at once duties of religion and acts of state. The service of God was indeed so ordered as to be the constant business as well as entertainment of their lives, supplying the place of all other entertainments; and the sacrifices which they were commanded to offer on the most solemn occasions, were of such animals as the Egyptians and other Heathens deemed sacred.

Thus a heifer without blemish was in Egypt held sacred to the goddess Isis, and worshipped as the representative of that divinity; but the same kind of heifer was by the ritual law of the Hebrews commanded to be burnt without the camp, as the vilest animal, and the water of separation to be prepared from her ashes*. The goat was by the Egyptians held in great veneration as emblematical of their ancient god Pan, and sacrifices of the most abominable kind were offered to the impure animal (see Pan); but God, by his servant Moses, enjoined the Israelites to offer goats themselves as sacrifices for sin, and on one occasion to dismiss the live animal loaded with maledictions into the wilderness†. The Egyptians, with singular zeal, worshipped a calf without blemish as the symbol of Apis, or the god of fertility; and it appears from the book of Exodus, that the Israelites themselves had been infected with that superstition. They were, however, so far from being permitted by their Divine lawgiver to consider that animal as sacred, that their priests were commanded to offer for themselves a young calf as a sin-offering‡. No animal was in Egypt held in greater veneration than the ram, the symbol of their god Ammon, one of the constellations. It was therefore with wisdom truly divine, that Jehovah, at the institution of the passover, ordered his people to kill and eat a young ram on the very day that the Egyptians began their annual solemnities § in honour of that animal as one of their greatest gods; and that he enjoined the blood of this divinity to be sprinkled as a sign on the two side-posts and upper door-post of the house in which he was eaten. Surely it is not in the power of imagination to conceive a ritual better calculated to cure the Israelites of their propensity to idol-worship, or to keep them separate from the people who had first given them that propensity, than one which enjoined them to offer in sacrifice the very creatures which their superstitious masters had worshipped as gods. "Shall we (said Moses) sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?"

But it was not against Egyptian idolatry only that the ritual law was framed: the nations of Syria, in the midst of whom the Israelites were to dwell, were addicted to many cruel and absurd superstitions, against which it was as necessary to guard the people of God as against the brute-worship of Egypt. We need not inform any reader of the book of Moses that those nations worshipped

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(A) Of these precepts we think it not necessary, in an abstract so short as this, to waste the reader's time with a formal and laboured defence. To the decalogue no objection can be made by any man who admits the obligations of natural religion; for, except the observation of the Sabbath-day, it enjoins not a single duty which does not by the confession of all men result from our relations to God, ourselves, and our fellow-creatures. Theology ped the sun and moon and all the host of heaven; or that it was part of their religion to propitiate their offended gods by occasionally sacrificing their sons and their daughters. From such worship and sacrifices the Israelites were prohibited under the severest penalties; but we cannot consider that prohibition as making part of the ritual law, since it relates to practices impious and immoral in themselves, and therefore declared to be abominations to the Lord. The Phoenicians, however, and the Canaanites, entertained an opinion that every child came into the world with a polluted nature, and that this pollution could be removed only by a lustral fire. Hence they took their new-born infants, and with particular ceremonies made them pass through the flame of a pile sacred to Baal or Moloch, the symbols of their great god the sun. Sometimes this purgation was delayed till the children had arrived at their tenth or twelfth year, when they were made either to leap through the flame, or run several times backwards and forwards between two contiguous sacred fires; and this lustration was supposed to free them from every natural pollution, and to make them through life the peculiar care of the deity in whose honour it was performed.

The true God, however, who would have no fellowship with idols, forbade all such purifications among his people, whether done by fires consecrated to himself or to the bloody deities of the Syrian nations. "There shall not be found (says he) among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire."

There are, in the Jewish law, few precepts more frequently repeated than that which prohibits the seething of a kid in his mother's milk; and there being no moral fitness in this precept when considered absolutely and without regard to the circumstances under which it was given, infidel ignorance has frequently thought fit to make it the subject of profane ridicule. But the ridicule will be forborne by those who know that, among the nations round Judea, the feasting on a kid boiled in its mother's milk was an essential part of the impious and magical ceremonies celebrated in honour of one of their gods, who was supposed to have been suckled by a she-goat. Hence, in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the text runs thus: "Thou shalt not seeth a kid in its mother's milk; for whoever does so, is as one who sacrificeth an abominable thing, which offends the God of Jacob."

Another precept, apparently of very little importance, is given in these words: "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shall thou mar the corners of thy beard." But its wisdom is seen at once, when we know that at funerals it was the practice of many of the heathens, in that early period, to round the corners of their heads, and mar their beards, that by throwing the hairs they had cut off on the dead body, or the funeral pile, they might propitiate the shade of the departed hero; and that in other nations, particularly in Phoenicia, it was customary to cut off all the hair of their heads except what grew on the crown, which, with great solemnity, was consecrated either to the sun or to Saturn. The unlearned Christian, if he be a man of reflection, must read with some degree of wonder such laws as these: "Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown and the fruits of thy vineyard be defiled. Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together. Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, or of woollen and linen together." But his wonder will cease when he knows that all these were practices from which the Sabian idolaters of the east expected the greatest advantages. Their belief in magic and judicial astrology led them to imagine, that by sowing different kinds of corn among their vines they should propitiate the gods which were afterwards known in Rome by the names of Bacchus and Ceres; that, by yoking animals so heterogeneous as the ox and the ass in the same plough, they should by a charm secure the favour of the deities who presided over the affairs of husbandry; and that a garment composed of linen and woollen, worn under certain conjunctions of the stars, would protect its owner, his flocks, his herds, and his field, from all malign influences, and render him in the highest degree prosperous through the whole course of his life. But magical ceremonies were always performed in order to render propitious good or evil demons (see MAGIC), and therefore such ceremonies, however unimportant in themselves, were in that age most wisely prohibited in the Mosaic law, as they naturally led those who were addicted to them to the worship of idols and impure spirits.

If the whole ritual of the Jewish economy be examined in this manner, every precept in it will be found to be directed against some idolatrous practice of the age in which it was given. It was therefore admirably calculated to keep the Israelites a separate people, and to prevent too close an intercourse between them and their Gentile neighbours. The distinction made by their law between clean and unclean animals (see STANLEY, No. 33.) rendered it impossible for them, without a breach of that law, to eat and drink with their idolatrous neighbours; their sacred and civil ceremonies being directly levelled against the Egyptian, Zabian, and Canaanitish superstitions, had a tendency to generate in their minds a contempt of those superstitions; and that contempt must have been greatly increased by their yearly, monthly, and daily sacrifices, of the very animals which their Egyptian masters had worshipped as gods.

That these laws might have the fuller effect on minds gross and carnal, they were all enforced by temporal sanctions. Hence it is that Moses assured them that if enforced, they would hearken to God's judgments, and keep them, and do them, they should be blessed above all nations, people; threatening them at the same time with utter destruction if they should at all walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them. Nor were these temporal rewards and punishments held out only to the nation as a collective body; they were promised and threatened to every individual in his private capacity as the certain consequences of his obedience or disobedience. Every particular Hebrew was commanded to honour his father and mother, that it might go well with him, and that his days might be prolonged; whilst he who cursed his father or his mother was surely to be put to death. Against every idolater, and even against the wilful transgressor of the ceremonial law, God repeatedly declared that he would set his face, and would cut off that man from among his people; and that individuals, as well as the nation, were in this life actually rewarded and punished according to their deserts, has been proved by Bishop Warburton. Indeed the Mo-sect. The law, taken in its literal sense, holds out no other prospects to the Israelites than temporal happiness; such as health, long life, peace, plenty, and dominion, if they should keep the covenant; and temporal misery, viz. diseases, premature death, war, famine, want, subjection, and captivity, if they should break it. "See (says Moses), I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply; and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land whither thou passest over Jordan to possess it." And elsewhere, having informed them that, upon their apostasy, their land should be rendered like Sodom and Gomorrah, he adds, that all men should know the reason of such barrenness being brought upon it, and should say, "Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, to bring upon it all the curses that are written in this book."

From this fact, which scarcely any man of letters will venture to deny, some divines have concluded, that the ancient Israelites had no hope whatever beyond the grave; and that in the whole Old Testament there is not a single intimation of a future state. That many of the lower classes, who could neither read nor write, were in this state of darkness, may be true; but it is impossible that those who understood the book of Genesis could be ignorant that death came into the world by the transgression of their first parents, and that God had repeatedly promised to redeem mankind from every consequence of that transgression. They must likewise have known that, before the deluge, Enoch was translated into heaven without tasting death; that afterwards Elijah had the same exemption from the common lot of humanity; and that, as God is no respecter of persons, every one who served him with the zeal and fidelity of these two prophets would, by some means or other, be made capable of enjoying the same rewards. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was not the God of the dead, but of the living.

In the earliest periods of their commonwealth, the Israelites could, indeed, only infer, from different passages of their sacred books, that there would be a general resurrection of the dead, and a future state of rewards and punishments; but from the writings of the prophets it appears, that before the Babylonish captivity that doctrine must have been very generally received. In the Psalms, and in the prophecies of Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, there are several texts which seem to us to prove incontrovertibly, that, at the time when these inspired books were written, every Israelite who could read the scriptures must have had some hopes of a resurrection from the dead. We shall consider two of these texts, because they have been quoted by a very learned and valuable writer in support of an opinion the reverse of ours.

In a sublime song, composed with a view to incite the people to confidence in God, the prophet Isaiah has these remarkable words; "Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." We agree with Bishop Warburton that these words are figurative, and that they were uttered to give the Israelites consolation in very disastrous times. The purpose of the prophet was to assure them, that though their community should, in Babylon, be as completely dissolved as a dead body reduced to dust, yet God would surely restore them to their own land, and raise that community again to life. This was indeed a prophecy only of a temporal deliverance; but as it is expressed in terms relating to the death and resurrection of man, the doctrine of a resurrection must then have been well known, and generally received, or such language would have been altogether unintelligible.

The prophet Ezekiel, when the state of things was most desperate, is carried by the Spirit into a valley full of dry bones, and asked this question; "Son of man, can these bones live?" To which he answers; "O Lord God, though knowest." He was not asked if all the dead would rise at the last day; but only if the particular bones then presented to him could live at that time; and while other bones were mouldering in corruption; and to such a question we cannot conceive any answer that a man brought up in the belief of a general resurrection could have given, but—"O Lord God, thou knowest." Had Ezekiel been a stranger to the doctrine of a general resurrection, or had he not believed that doctrine, he would doubtless have answered the question that was put to him in the negative; but convinced that all men are at some period to rise from the dead, "that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad," he very naturally said, that God alone knew whether the bones then exhibited to him in the valley would rise before the general resurrection.

But though the more intelligent and righteous Israelites certainly "all died in faith, and not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were persuaded of them and embraced them, confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on earth, who desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one;" we are not to suppose that this heavenly desire arose from anything taught in the law of Moses. That law, when taken by itself, as unconnected with prior and subsequent revelations, makes no mention whatever of a heavenly inheritance, which St Paul assures us § was given 420 years before to Abraham by a promise which may be traced back to the first ray of comfort vouchsafed to fallen man in the sentence passed on the original deceiver. "Wherefore then served the law? It was added (says the apostle), because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made." The transgressions here alluded to were polytheism and idolatry, which, with a train of cruel and detestable vices, had overspread the whole world; and the primary attention of the law was to stem the torrent of these corruptions, for which we have seen it was admirably calculated; and, like a schoolmaster, to instruct the Israelites in the unity and worship of Jehovah, and thus by degrees bring them to Christ. But though it is apparent that a future state of rewards and punishments made no part of the Mosaic dispensation, yet the law had certainly a spiritual meaning to be understood when the fulness of time should come. Every Christian sees a striking resemblance between the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, which delivered the Israelites from the destroying angel in Egypt, and the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Indeed the whole ritual of sacrifice must have led the more intelligent of them to faith in a future sacrifice; by which, while the heel of the seed of the woman should be bruised, the head of the serpent should be completely crushed (see Sacrifice); and as prophets were raised up from time to time, to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah, and to foretell the nature of his kingdom, there can be no doubt but that those inspired teachers would lay open to them, as far as was expedient, the temporary duration of the Mosaic law, and convince them that it was only the shadow of better things to come. From the nature of their ritual, and the different prophecies vouchsafed them, which became more and more explicit as the time approached for their accomplishment, they must surely have been led to expect redemption from the curse of the fall by the sufferings of their Messiah; but that any one of them knew precisely the manner in which they were to be redeemed, and the nature of that religion which was to supersede their own, is wholly incredible. Such knowledge would have made them impatient under the yoke of ordinances to which they were subjected; for after the Christian faith came into full splendour, mankind could be no longer under the tuition of such a schoolmaster as the law, which "had only a shadow of good things; and so far from their reality, not even the very image of them." Through these shadows, however, the Jews, aided by the clearer light of prophecy, though it too shone in a dark place, might have seen enough of God's plan of redemption to make them acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth, when he came among them working miracles of mercy, for the Messiah so long promised to their forefathers, and in whom it was repeatedly said, that all the nations of the earth should be blessed.

While such care was taken to prepare the descendants of Abraham for the coming of the Prince of Peace, we must not suppose that God was a respecter of persons, and that the rest of the world was totally neglected. The dispersion of the ten tribes certainly contributed to spread the knowledge of the true God among the eastern nations. The subsequent captivity of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin must have confirmed that knowledge in the great empires of Babylon and Persia; and that particular providence of God which afterwards led Ptolemy Philadelphus to have the Jewish scriptures translated into the Greek language, laid the divine oracles open to the study of every accomplished scholar. At last, when the arms of Rome had conquered the civilized world, and rendered Judea a province of the empire; when Augustus had given peace to that empire, and men were at leisure to cultivate the arts and sciences; when the different sects of philosophers had by their disputations whetted each other's understandings, so that none of them was disposed to submit to an imposture; and when the police of the Roman government was such that intelligence of every thing important was quickly transmitted from the most distant provinces to the capital of the empire; "when that fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons," and be restored to that inheritance of which the forfeiture introduced the several dispensations of revealed religion into the world.

Sect. V. View of Theology more peculiarly Christian.

MANKIND being trained by various dispensations of providence for the reception of Jesus Christ, and the time fixed by the prophets for his coming being arrived, "a messenger was sent before his face to prepare his way before him by preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins." This messenger was John the Baptist, a very extraordinary man, and the greatest of all the prophets. His birth was miraculous, the scene of his ministry the wilderness, his manners austere, and his preaching upright, without respect of persons. He frankly told his audience that he was not the Messiah, that the Messiah would soon appear among them, that "he was mightier than himself, and that he would baptize them with the Holy Ghost and with fire."

Mightier indeed he was; for though born of a woman, the Messiah was not the son of a human father, divine and though living for the first thirty years of his life in obscurity and poverty, he was the lineal descendant of David, and heir to the throne of Israel. But the dignity of his human descent, great as it was, vanishes from consideration when compared with the glory which he had with his Father before the world was. The Jewish dispensation was given by the ministry of Moses, and illustrated by subsequent revelations vouchsafed to the prophets; the immediate author of the Christian religion is the λόγος or the second person of the blessed Trinity, of whom St John declares, that "he was in the beginning with God, and was God; that all things were made by him; and that without him was not anything made that was made." We have already proved that in the one Godhead there is a Trinity of persons; and that the λόγος is one of the three, is apparent from these words of the apostle, and from many other passages of sacred scripture. Thus he is called the Lord of hosts himself; the first and the last, besides whom there is no God; the most high God; God blessed for ever; the mighty God, the everlasting Father, Jehovah our righteousness; and the only wise God our Saviour (B). This great Being, as the same apostle assures us, was made flesh, and dwelt among men; not that the divine nature was or could be changed into humanity, for God is immutable, the same almighty and incomprehensible Spirit,

(n) Isaiah viii. 13, 14. compared with 1 Peter ii. 7, 8.; Isaiah vi. 5. compared with John xii. 41.; Isaiah xlv. 6. compared with Revelation xxii. 13.; Psalm lxxviii. 56. compared with 1 Corinthians x. 9. Romans ix. 5. Isaiah ix. 6. Jeremiah xxiii. 6. Jude. Theology Spirit yesterday, today, and for ever; but the Word or second person in the godhead, assuming a human soul and body into a personal union with himself, dwelt upon earth as a man, veiling his divinity under mortal flesh. Hence he is said elsewhere to have been "manifested in the flesh," and "to have taken upon him the nature of man;" phrases of the same import with that which asserts "the Word to have been made flesh."

This incarnation of the Son of God is perhaps the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, and that to which ancient and modern heretics have urged the most plausible objections. The doctrine of the Trinity is indeed equally incomprehensible; but the nature of God and the mode of his subsistence, as revealed in scripture, no man, who thinks, can be surprised that he does not comprehend; for a revelation which should teach nothing mysterious on such a subject would be as incredible and as useless as another which contained nothing but mystery. The difficulty respecting the incarnation, which forces itself on the mind, is not how two natures so different as the divine and human can be so intimately united as to become one person; for this union in itself is not more inconceivable than that of the soul and body in one man; but that which at first is apt to stagger the faith of the reflecting Christian is the infinite distance between the two natures in Christ, and the comparatively small importance of the object, for the attainment of which the eternal Son of God is said to have taken on him our nature.

Upon mature reflection, however, much of this difficulty will vanish to him who considers the ways of Providence, and attends to the meaning of the words in which this mystery is taught. The importance of the object for which the Word condescended to be made flesh, we cannot adequately know. The oracles of truth indeed inform us, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; but there are passages scattered through the New Testament which indicate, not obscurely, that the influence of his sufferings extends to other worlds besides this; and if so, who can take on him to say, that the quantity of good which they may have produced was not of sufficient importance to move even to this condescension a Being who is emphatically styled love?

But let us suppose that every thing which he did and taught and suffered was intended only for the benefit of man, we shall, in the daily administration of providence, find other instances of the divine condescension; which, though they cannot be compared with the incarnation of the second person in the blessed Trinity, are yet sufficient to reconcile our understandings to that mystery when revealed to us by the Spirit of God. That in Christ there should have dwelt on earth "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily," is indeed a truth by which the devout mind is overwhelmed with astonishment; but it is little less astonishing that the omnipotent Creator should be intimately present at every instant of time to the meanest of his creatures, "upholding all things, the vilest reptile as well as the most glorious angel, by the word of his power." Yet it is a truth self-evident, that without this constant presence of the Creator, nothing which had a beginning could continue one moment in being; that the visible universe would not only crumble into chaos, but vanish into nothing; and that the souls of men, and even the most exalted spirits of creation, would instantly lose that existence, which, as it was not of itself, and is not necessary, must depend more wholly on the will of Him from whom it was originally derived. See Metaphysics, No. 272—276, and Providence, No. 3.

In what particular way God is present to his works, we cannot know. He is not diffused through the universe like the anima mundi of the ancient Platonists, or that modern idol termed the substratum of space (Metaphysics, No. 309, 310): but that he is in power as intimately present now to every atom of matter as when he first brought it into existence, is equally the dictate of sound philosophy and of divine revelation; for "in him we live and move and have our being;" and power without substance is inconceivable. If then the divine nature be not debased, if it cannot be debased by being constantly present with the vilest reptile on which we tread, why should our minds recoil from the idea of a still closer union between the second person of the ever blessed Trinity and the body and soul of Jesus Christ? The one union is indeed different from the other, but we are in truth equally ignorant of the nature of both. Reason and revelation assure us that God must be present to his works to preserve them in existence; and revelation informs us farther, that one of the persons in the Godhead assumed human nature into a personal union with himself, to redeem myriads of rational creatures from the miserable consequences of their own folly and wickedness. The importance of this object is such, that, for the attainment of it, we may easily conceive that he who condescends to be potentially present with the worms of the earth and the grass of the field, would condescend still farther to be personally present with the spotless soul and body of a man. Jesus Christ lived indeed a life of poverty and suffering upon earth, but his divine nature was not affected by his sufferings. At the very time when, as a man, he had not a place where to lay his head; as God, he was in heaven as well as upon earth, dwelling in light inaccessible; and while, as a man, he was increasing in wisdom and stature, his divinity was the fulness of him who filleth all in all, and from whom nothing can be hid.

Perhaps the very improper appellation of mother of God, which at an early period of the church was given to the Virgin Mary, may have been one cause of the reluctance with which the incarnation has been admitted; for as we have elsewhere observed (see Nestorius), such language, in the proper sense of the words, implies what those, by whom it is used, cannot possibly believe to be true; but it is not the language of scripture. We are there taught, that "Christ being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man;" that "God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons;" and that "the Word who was in the beginning with God, and was God, by whom all things were made, was made flesh, and dwelt among men (who beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth:" but we are nowhere taught that, as God, he had a mother! It was indeed the doctrine of the primitive church, that the very principle of personality and individual existence in man, Mary's Mary's son, was union with the uncreated Word; and this doctrine is thought to imply the miraculous conception, which is recorded in the plainest terms by two of the evangelists; for he was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of a virgin; but, as God, he had been begotten from all eternity of the Father, and in order of nature was prior to the Holy Ghost. This is evident from the appellation of ἀγέννητος given to him by St John; for the term being used in that age, both by the Jewish rabbies and the heathen philosophers, to denote the second divine subsistence, which they considered as an eternal and necessary emanation from the first, sometimes called τάξις and sometimes τὸ ἐξ ὑψί; and the apostle giving no intimation of his using the word in any uncommon sense, we must necessarily conclude, that he meant to inform us that the divinity of Christ is of eternal generation. That the term ἀγέννητος was used in this sense by the later Platonists, and in all probability by Plato himself, we have sufficiently shewn in another place (see Platonism); and that a similar mode of expression prevailed among the Jews in the time of St John, is apparent from the Chaldee paraphrase; which, in the 116th psalm, instead of the words "the Lord said unto my Lord," has, "the Lord said unto his word." Again, where we are told in the Hebrew that Jehovah said to Abraham, "I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward," we read in the Chaldee, "my word is thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." Where it is said, "your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hath I," the paraphrast hath it, "my word hatheth;" and where it is said, that "Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation," in the same paraphrase it is, "Israel shall be saved by the word of the Lord with everlasting salvation." But there is a passage in the Jerusalem Targum which puts it beyond a doubt, that by the ἀγέννητος the Jews understood a divine person begotten of his Father before all worlds; for commenting on Genesis iii. 22, the authors of that work thus express themselves: "The Word of the Lord said, behold Adam, whom I created, is the only begotten upon earth, as I am the only begotten in heaven:" in conformity with which, Philo introduces the Logos speaking thus of himself; Καὶ γὰρ σὺ εἶ ἀγέννητος ὡς ἂν εἴης ἢ ὡς ἂν γενόμην ὡς ὑπάρχως ὡς ἔσῃς. I am neither unbegotten, as God, nor begotten after the same manner as you are.

From these quotations we may justly conclude, that the Nicene fathers expressed themselves properly when they declared that the only begotten Son of God was begotten of his father before all worlds, and is God of God; for if St John had believed the ἀγέννητος or WORD to be unbegotten, contrary to the belief of all who made more precise use of the phrase at the time when he wrote, he would fairly Christians surely have expressed his dissent from the generally received opinion. This however he is so far from doing, that he gives the most amplest confirmation of that opinion, by declaring, that "he beheld the glory of the word incarnate as the glory of the only begotten of the Father;" for this declaration is true only of the divinity of Christ, his human nature not being begotten of the Father, but conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary. Hence our blessed Lord assures us, that "as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given the Son to have life in himself;" that "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do;" and that "he knew the Father, because he was from him and sent by him." We must therefore agree with Bishop Pearson (c), that "though the Father and Son are both truly God, and therefore equal in respect of nature, yet the one is greater than the other, as being the fountain of the Godhead. The Father is God, but not of God; Light, but not of Light. Christ is God, but of God; Light, but of Light. There is no difference or inequality in the nature or essence, because the same in both; but the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ hath that essence of himself, from none; Christ hath the same essence, not of himself, but from him."

The great purpose for which this divine person was sent into the world, was to bruise the head of the serpent, and restore mankind to the inheritance which had been forfeited by Adam's transgression. Every dispensation of Providence from the fall had been preparatory to this restoration. Prophets had been raised from time to time to preserve in the early ages of the world the knowledge and worship of the true God: the children of Abraham had been separated from the surrounding nations for the same purpose; and by the dispersion of the ten tribes, the captivity of the other two in Babylon, and the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into the Greek language, much of the knowledge which had been revealed to the Israelites was gradually diffused over the eastern world.

But while the Jews were thus rendered the instruments of enlightening the heathen nations of antiquity, their intercourse with those nations made them almost unavoidably acquainted with the philosophy which was cultivated among the Chaldeans, the Persians, and the Egyptian Greeks; and ingrafting many of the opinions derived from those schools upon the doctrines of Moses and the prophets, they corrupted their own religion while

(c) We beg leave to recommend to our readers this author's excellent exposition of the apostle's creed, as a work which will render them great assistance in acquiring just notions of the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. They will find it, we think, a complete antidote against the poison of modern Unitarians and modern Trinitarians; of whom the former teach that Jesus Christ was a mere man, the son of Joseph as well as of Mary; while the latter, running to the other extreme, maintain, that, with respect to his divinity, he is in no sense subordinate to the Father, but might have been the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost, according to the good pleasure of the eternal three. We have been at some pains to prove his divinity, and likewise his eternal generation; but in such a short compass as we must give, it seems not to be worth while to prove his miraculous conception. That miracle is plainly asserted in the New Testament in words void of all ambiguity; and as it is surely as easy for God to make a man of the substance of a woman as of the dust of the earth, we cannot conceive what should have induced any person professing Christianity to call it in question. The natural generation of Christ is an groundless fancy, which can serve no purpose whatever, even to the Unitarians. Theology while they improved that of their neighbours. Hence, by the time that Christ came among them, they had made the word of God of none effect through a number of idle fancies which they inculcated on the people as the traditions of the elders; and as they had attached themselves to different masters in philosophy, their unauthorised opinions were of course different according to the different sources whence they were drawn. The peculiar tenets of the Essenes seem to have been a species of mystic Platonism. The Pharisees are thought to have derived their origin from a Jewish philosopher of the Peripatetic school; and the resemblance between the doctrines of the Sadducees and the philosophy of Epicurus has escaped no man's observation.

Though these sects maintained mutual communion in public worship, they abhorred each other's distinguishing tenets; and their wranglings had nearly banished from them every sentiment of true religion. They agreed, however, in the general expectation of the Messiah promised to their fathers; but, unhappily for themselves, expected him as a great and temporal prince. To this mistake several circumstances contributed: some of their prophets had foretold his coming in lofty terms, borrowed from the ritual law, and the splendour of earthly monarchs. The necessity of casting this veil over those living oracles we have shewn in another place (see Prophecy, No. 17.). At the time when the predictions were made, the Mosaic system had not run out half its course, and was therefore not to be exposed to popular contempt by an information, that it was only the harsh rudiment of one more easy and perfect. To prevent, however, all mistakes in the candid and impartial, when the Messiah should arrive with the credentials of miraculous powers, other prophets had described him in the clearest terms as having no form nor comeliness, as a sheep dumb before his shearers, and as a lamb brought to the slaughter; but the Jews had suffered so much from the Chaldeans, the Greeks, and other nations by whom they had been conquered, and were then suffering so much from their masters the Romans, that they could think of no deliverance greater than that which should rescue their nation from every foreign yoke.

What men earnestly wish to be true, they readily believe. Hence that people, losing sight of the yoke under which they and the whole human race were brought by the fall of Adam, mistaking the sense of the blessing promised to all nations through the seed of Abraham, and devoting their whole attention to the most magnificent descriptions of the Messiah's kingdom, expected in him a prince who should conquer the Romans, and establish on earth a universal monarchy, of which Jerusalem was to be the metropolis.

As our Saviour came for a very different purpose, the first object of his mission was to rectify the notions of his erring countrymen, in order to fit them for the deliverance which they were to obtain through him. Accordingly, when he entered on his office as a preacher of righteousness, he embraced every opportunity of inveighing against the false doctrines taught as traditions of the elders; and by his knowledge of the secrets of all hearts, he exposed the vile hypocrisy of those who made a gain of godliness. The Jews had been led, by their separation from the rest of the world, to consider themselves as the peculiar favourites of Jehovah; and the consequence was, that, contrary to the spirit of their own law, and the explicit doctrines of some of their prophets, they looked on all other nations with abhorrence, more as on people physically impure. These prejudices the holy blessed Jesus laboured to eradicate. Having desired a lawyer, by whom he was tempted, to read that part of the law of Moses which commanded the Israelites to love their neighbours as themselves, he compelled him, by means of a parabolical account of a compassionate Samaritan, to acknowledge, that under the denomination of neighbour the divine lawgiver had comprehended all mankind as the objects of love. The importance St. John in which Moses held the ritual law, and to which, as the means of preserving its votaries from the contagion of idolatry, it was justly intituled, had led the Jews to consider every ceremony of it as of intrinsic value and perpetual obligation; but Jesus brought to their recollection God's declared preference of mercy to sacrifice; showed them that the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, claimed their regard in the first place, and its ceremonial observances only in the second; and taught them, in conformity with the predictions of their own prophets, that the hour was about to come when the worship of God should not be confined to Jerusalem, but that "true worshippers &c. should everywhere worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

It being the design of Christ's coming into the world to break down the middle wall of partition between the Jews and Gentiles, and to introduce a new dispensation of religion which should unite all mankind as brethren in the worship of the true God, and fit them for the enjoyment of heaven; he did not content himself with merely restoring the moral part of the Mosaic law to its primitive purity, disencumbered of the corrupt glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees, but added to it many spiritual precepts, which, till they were taught by him, had never occurred either to Jew or Gentile. The Hebrew lawgiver had prohibited murder under the penalty of death; but Christ extended the prohibition to causeless anger, and to contemptuous treatment of our brethren, commanding his followers, as they valued their everlasting salvation, to forgive their enemies, and to love all mankind. Adultery was forbidden by the law of Moses as a crime of the deepest dye; but Jesus said to his disciples, "that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart," and is of course liable to the Divine vengeance. The lex talionis was in force among the Jews, so that the man who had deprived his neighbour of an eye or a tooth, was to suffer the loss of an eye or a tooth himself; but this mode of punishment, which inflicted blemish for blemish, though suited to the hardness of Jewish hearts, being inconsistent with the mild spirit of Christianity, was abolished by our blessed Lord, who severely prohibited the indulgence of revenge, and commanded his followers to love even their enemies. Perjury has in every civilized nation been justly considered as a crime of the highest atrocity, and the Mosaic law doomed the false witness to bear the punishment, whatever it might be, which he intended by swearing falsely to bring on his brother; but the Author of the Christian religion forbade not only false swearing, but swearing at all, except on solemn occasions, and when an oath should be required by legal authority. See Oath.

By thus restoring the law to its original purity, and in many cases extending its sense, the blessed Jesus executed the office of a Prophet to the lost sheep of the house of Israel; but had he not been more than an ordinary prophet, he could not have abrogated the most trivial ceremony of it, nor even extended the sense of any of its moral precepts; for their great lawgiver had told them, that "the Lord their God would raise up unto them but one Prophet, like unto him, to whom they should hearken." That Prophet was by themselves understood to be the Messiah, whom they expected to tell them all things. It was necessary therefore that Jesus, as he taught some new doctrines, and plainly indicated that greater changes would soon be introduced, should vindicate his claim to that exalted character which alone could authorise him to propose innovations. This he did in the simplest manner, by fulfilling prophecies and working miracles (See Miracle and Prophecy); so that the unprejudiced part of the people readily acknowledged him to be of a truth "that prophet which should come into the world—the Son of God, and the King of Israel." He did not, however, make any change in the national worship, or assume to himself the smallest civil authority. He had submitted to the rite of circumcision, and strictly performed every duty, ceremonial as well as moral, which that covenant made incumbent on other Jews; thus fulfilling all righteousness. Though the religion which he came to propagate was in many respects contrary to the ritual law, it could not be established, or that law abrogated, but in consequence of his death, which the system of sacrifices was appointed to prefigure; and as his kingdom, which was not of this world, could not commence till after his resurrection, he yielded during the whole course of his life a cheerful obedience to the civil magistrate, and wrought a miracle to obtain money to pay the tribute that was exacted of him. Being thus circumstanced, he chose from the lowest and least corrupted of the people certain followers, whom he treated with the most endearing familiarity for three years, and commissioned at his departure to promulgate such doctrines as, consistently with the order of the divine dispensations, he could not personally preach himself. With these men, during the course of his ministry on earth, he went about continually doing good, healing the sick, casting out devils, raising the dead, reproving vice, preaching righteousness, and instructing his countrymen, by the most perfect example which was ever exhibited in the world, of whatsoever things are true, or honest, or just, or pure, or lovely, or of good report. The Scribes and Pharisees, however, finding him not that conqueror whom they vainly expected, becoming envious of his reputation among the people, and being filled with rancour against him for detecting their hypocritical arts, delivered him up to the Roman governor, who, though convinced of his innocence, yielded to the popular clamour, and crucified him between two thieves, as an enemy to Caesar.

Just before he expired, he said, It is finished, intimating that the purpose was now fulfilled for which he had come into the world, and which, as he had formerly told his disciples, "was not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." For his blood, as he assured them at the institution of the Eucharist, "was to be shed for the remission of sins." That Christ died voluntarily for us, the just for the unjust, and that "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," is Theology the uniform doctrine of the prophets who foretold his second coming, of John the Baptist who was his immediate herald, Chri- binger, and of the apostles and evangelists who preached the gospel after his ascension into heaven. Thus Isaiah says of the Messiah §, that "he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; that the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and that with his stripes we are healed; that we had all like sheep gone astray, turning every one to his own way, and that the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all; that he was cut off out of the land of the living, and stricken for the transgression of God's people; and his soul or life was made an offering for sin; and that he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." The Baptist, "when he saw Jesus coming unto him, said to the people, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;" plainly intimating that his death was to be a sacrifice, since it was only as a sacrifice that the Jews could form any conception of a lamb taking away sin. The epistles of St Paul are so full of the doctrine of Christ's satisfaction, that it is needless to quote particular texts in proof of it. He tells the Romans, that Jesus Christ was set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood; he was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification; that he died for the ungodly; and that God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." He assures the Corinthians that Christ died for all; that "they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but to him who died for them and rose again; and that God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." He informs the Galatians, that Christ "gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father; and that he redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." St Peter and St John speak the very same language; the former teaching us, that "Christ suffered for us, and bare our sins in his own body on the tree;" the latter, that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, and that it is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world." That I John came into the world for the purpose of suffering, appears from his own words: for "no man (said he) took my life from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received from my Father." And that he voluntarily laid it down for mankind, is evident from his calling himself the Good Shepherd, and adding, that "the Good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."

That Christ died for the benefit of the human race, is a truth so apparent from these texts, that no man professing Christianity has hitherto called it in question. Very different opinions have been formed indeed concerning the nature and extent of that benefit, and the means by which it is applied; but that the passion and death of the blessed Jesus were essential parts of his ministry on earth, ne'er has been controverted. That on the cross he made satisfaction to his Father for the sins of the world, is the general belief of Christians; but presumptuous men, aiming at being wise beyond what is written, have started a thousand idle questions concerning the necessity of such satisfaction, and the manner in which it was made. Some limiting the power and mercy of the Omnipotent, have dared to affirm that God could not have pardoned man without receiving full satisfaction for his offences; that nothing but the shedding of the blood of Christ could make that satisfaction; that his death was indeed sufficient to atone for a thousand worlds; that, however, he did not die for all mankind, but only for a chosen few, ordained to eternal life by a secret decree before the foundation of the world; and that the rest of the race are passed by, and doomed to eternal perdition, for the glory of God's justice. Others, convinced by everything around them that the Creator and Governor of the universe is a being of infinite benevolence, whose only end in giving life must have been to communicate happiness, have contended, that no atonement whatever could be necessary to obtain from him the forgiveness of sin on sincere repentance; that it is contrary to all our notions of justice to punish the innocent for the guilty; and that therefore the death of Christ, though the essential part of his ministry, could not be necessary, but at the most expedient.

We enter not into these debates. The Scriptures have nowhere said what God could or could not do; and on this subject we can know nothing but what they have taught us. That "we are reconciled to God by the death of his Son," is the principal doctrine of the New Testament; and without presuming to limit the power, the mercy, or the wisdom, of him who created and sustains the universe, we shall endeavour to show that it is a doctrine worthy of all acceptation. In doing this, we shall state impartially the opinions which pious men have held respecting the form or manner in which Christ by his death made satisfaction to God for the sins of the world; and we hope that our readers will embrace that opinion which shall appear to them most consonant to the general sense of sacred Scripture.

The strictest adherents to the theological system of Calvin, interpreting literally such texts of Scripture as speak of his being made sin for us, of his bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, and of the Lord's laying on him the iniquity of us all, contend, that the sins of the elect were lifted off from them and laid on Christ by imputation, much in the same way as they think the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity. "By bearing the sins of his people (says Dr Gill) he took them off from them, and took them upon himself, bearing or carrying them, as a man bears or carries a burden on his shoulders. There was no sin in him inherently, for if there had, he would not have been a fit person to make satisfaction for it; but sin was put upon him by his Divine Father, as the sins of the Israelites were put upon the scape-goat by Aaron. No creature (continues he) could have done this; but the Lord hath laid on him, or made to meet on him, the iniquity of us all, not a single iniquity, but a whole mass and lump of sins collected together; and laid as a common burden upon him; even the sins of all the elect of God. This phrase of laying sin on Christ is expressive of the imputation of it to him; for it was the will of God not to impute the transgressions of his elect to themselves, but to Christ, which was done by an act of his own; for he hath made none him to be sin for us: that is, by imputation, in which way we are made the righteousness of God in him; that being imputed to us by him as our sins were to Christ.

The sense (says our author) is, a charge of sin was brought against him as the surety of his people. He was numbered with the transgressors; for bearing the sins of many, he was reckoned as if he had been a sinner himself; sin being imputed to him; and he was dealt with as such. Sin being found upon him by imputation, a demand of satisfaction for sin was made, and he answered it to the full. All this was with his own consent. He agreed to have sin laid upon him, and imputed to him, and a charge of it brought against him, to which he engaged to be responsible; yea, he himself took the sins of his people upon him; so the evangelist Matthew has it, "He himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." As he took the nature of men, so he took their sins, which made his flesh to have the likeness of sin, vii. 15, ful flesh, though it really was not sinful. What Christ bore being laid upon him, and imputed to him, were sins of all sorts, original and actual; sins of every kind, open and secret, of heart, lip, and life; all acts of sin committed by his people; for he has redeemed them from all their iniquities; and God, for Christ's sake, forgives all trespasses, his blood cleanses from all sin, and his righteousness justifies from all; all being imputed to him as that is to them. Bearing sin supposes it to be a burden; and indeed it is a burden too heavy to bear by a sensible sinner (E). When sin is charged home upon the conscience, and a saint groans, being burdened with it, what must that burden be, and how heavy the load which Christ bore, consisting of all the sins of all the elect from the beginning of the world to the end of it; and yet he sunk not, but stood up under it; failed not, nor was he discouraged, being the mighty God, and the Man of God's right hand, made strong for himself."

To the Arminians or Remonstrants, this doctrine of the imputation of the sins of men to the Son of God appears as absurd as the similar doctrine of the imputation of the sin of Adam to his unborn posterity; and it is certainly attended with consequences which have alarmed serious Christians of other denominations.

Were it possible in the nature of things, says the Arminian, to transfer the guilt of one person to another, and to lay it upon him as a burden, it could not be done without violating those laws of equity which are established in the scripture and engraven on the human heart. But this is not possible. To talk of lifting lumps of sin, or transferring them like burdens from the guilty to the innocent, is to utter jargon, says he, which has no meaning; and we might with as much propriety speak of lifting a scarlet colour from a piece of cloth and laying it on the sound of a trumpet, as of literally lifting the sins of the elect from them and laying them on Christ. Guilt is seated on the mind; and no man can become a sinner but by an act of volition. If Christ therefore really took upon him the sins of his people, he must have deliberately formed a wish to have actually committed

(e) By the phrase a sensible sinner, the learned author means a sinner who is not past feeling, but has a conscience alive to the sense of remorse. Theology committed all these sins; but such a wish, though it would have made him inherently guilty, and therefore incapable of satisfying for sin, could not have cancelled those innocent who really had been sinners. A deed once done cannot be undone; a volition which has been formed cannot be annihilated. By sincere repentance, the habitual dispositions are indeed changed, and those who have been sinners become objects of mercy; but no power can recall the hours that are past, or make those actions which have been performed to have been not performed. To remove guilt from the sinner and lay it on the innocent may therefore be safely pronounced impossible even for Omnipotence itself, for it implies that a thing may be and not be at the same instant of time; and the doctrine which teaches that this removal was made from the elect to Christ, is an imagination of yesterday, which has no countenance from scripture, and is contrary to the established constitution of things. Those who imagine that guilt may be propagated from father to son, have something like an argument to urge for the imputation of Adam's sin to his numberless posterity; for all the men and women who have by ordinary generation been introduced into the world, have undoubtedly derived their nature from the primeval pair. But Christ did not derive his nature from the elect, that their sins should be communicated to him; nor, as he was miraculously conceived by the Holy Ghost, can we attribute to him any degree of that taint which is supposed to have been conveyed from Adam to all the other generations of men.

Nothing more, therefore, can be meant by "Christ's being made sin for us," and "bearing our sins in his own body on the tree," or by God's "laying upon him the iniquity of us all," than that by his sufferings we are freed from the punishment of our sins: it being in scripture a common figure of speech, as even Dr Gill has somewhere acknowledged, to denote by the word sin the consequences of sin. That this figure is used in those texts from which he infers that Christ took the sins of the elect on himself, is evident from the verse which he quotes from the gospel of St Matthew; in which it is said, that "himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses." The sicknesses and infirmities there alluded to are the leprosy, the palsy, the fever, and demoniacal possessions: but when our blessed Lord cured these diseases, surely he did not by his omnipotent word lift them off from the patients and take them on himself, so as actually to become a leper, a paralytic, and a demoniac, or even to be reckoned as such either by the multitude, or by the priest, whose duty it was to take cognizance of every illegal uncleanness*. And if his inveterate enemies did not impute to him the leprosy when he removed that plague from others, why should it be supposed that his own Father, to whom he was at all times well-pleasing, imputed to him the sins of which, by his sufferings, he removed the punishment from those who were guilty? To impute to a person any action, whether virtuous or vicious, which he did not perform, can proceed only from ignorance or malice, or partiality; but God is no respecter of persons, and from ignorance and malice he is removed to an infinite distance. It is indeed an undoubted truth, that "the Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which lie through the eternal spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the more peculiar kingdom of heaven for all those whom the Father hath dearly given him;" but that he actually took on himself the sins of mankind, or that those sins were imputed to him by God, who punished him as a person whom he considered as guilty, is a doctrine equally injurious to the justice of the Father and to the immaculate purity of the Son.

The earnestness with which this doctrine was insinuated by some of the earliest reformers, and the impossibility of admitting it, which every reflecting and unprejudiced mind must feel, was probably one of the causes which drove Socinus and his followers to the extreme of denying Christ's satisfaction altogether, and considering his death as nothing more than that of an ordinary martyr, permitted for the purpose of attesting the truth of his doctrine, and paving the way for his resurrection, to confirm the great promise of immortality. According to these men, forgiveness is freely dispensed to those who repent, by the essential goodness of God, without regard to the merit or sufferings of any other being; and the gospel is said to save from sin, because it is the most perfect lesson of righteousness. The great objection of Crellius to the doctrine of the satisfaction is, that it is a hindrance to piety; for if Christ has paid the whole debt, he thinks that he must have nothing to do, as nothing more can be required of us. And if it were indeed true that our sins are imputed to Christ, and his righteousness imputed to us, this objection would be insurmountable; for God could not justly exact a double punishment for the same sin, or inflict misery on those to whom he imputes perfect righteousness. But as to this imaginary transferring of virtues and vices from one person to another, the scriptures give no countenance; so they nowhere call the death of Christ a satisfaction for the sins of men. The term has indeed been long in use among divines, and when properly explained it may be retained without any danger; but in treating of this subject, it would perhaps be more prudent to restrict ourselves to the use of scripture language, as the word satisfaction carries in it the ideas of a debt paid and accepted; whereas it is said by St Paul, that "eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord; and that we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood."

To clear up this matter, and attain adequate notions of the death, redemption and justification, it will be necessary to look back to the fall of our first parents; for the great purpose for which Christ was promised, and for which he came into the world, was, by bruising the head of the serpent, to restore mankind to the inheritance which they had lost through the transgression of Adam. This is apparent not only from the original promise made to the woman, but also from different passages in the epistles of St Paul, who expressly calls Christ the second Adam, and says, that "as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life;" that "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous;" and that, "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Hence it was that John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus coming to him, said to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world," evidently alluding to Adam's sin and its consequences, since no other sin was ever committed of which the consequences extend to the whole world.

This being the case, it is undeniable, that whatever we lost in the first Adam is restored to us by the second; and therefore they who believe that the punishment denounced against eating the forbidden fruit was death corporal, spiritual, and eternal, must believe that we are redeemed from all these by Christ; who having appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.

The image of God in which man was created was lost by the breach of the first covenant, it is more than restored to us "by the Mediator of a better covenant, which is established upon better promises;" if by the sin of Adam we were utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all that is spiritually good, and wholly inclined to all evil, and that continually, we are freed from that dreadful curse by our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works; and if for our share in the first transgression we be justly liable to all punishments in this world and in that which is to come, the apostle assures us, that "when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, because that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them."

As Jesus is "the Lamb slain in the divine decree from the foundation of the world," these beneficial consequences of his death have been extended by a retrospective view to all in every age whose names are written in the book of life, though it be absurd to suppose that he literally took their sins upon him, and impious to imagine that he suffered under the imputation of sin.

Such is the general doctrine of redemption, as it is taught by the more moderate Calvinists and more moderate Remonstrants; for moderate Christians of all denominations, though they express themselves differently, have nearly the same views of the fundamental articles of their common faith. It must not, however, be concealed, that many divines of great learning and piety contend strenuously against the doctrine of vicarious atonement for actual transgressions of the moral law. These are the more zealous Arminians, who deny that we inherit any mortal taint or intellectual weakness from our first parents, whom they believe never to have been in a state of greater perfection than many of their posterity who are called degenerate. According to them, we lost nothing by the fall of Adam but our title to eternal life or perpetual existence, together with those graces of the Holy Spirit which were bestowed under the first covenant to train mankind for the society of heaven; and as eternal life and supernatural grace constituted one free gift, not due to the nature of man, or indeed of any created being, they might, when forfeited, be restored by any means or on any condition which should seem expedient to the all-wise Donor. These means, and that condition, human reason cannot indeed discover; but it seems very fit that they should be different from the means by which moral agents under the law of nature can secure to themselves the favour of their benevolent Creator, or recover it when occasionally lost. The former depends on arbitrary will and pleasure, or at least on no other principles discoverable by us; while the latter ariseth out of the established and well-known constitution of things. Thus moral virtue, comprehending piety, was the condition of that favour and protection which man, in his original state, could claim from his Maker; but obedience to a positive command was the condition of the free gift of immortality conferred on Adam on his introduction into paradise. The claim arising from the relation between the creature and the Creator is indissoluble, because that relation cannot be dissolved: so that the man who, by a transgression of the moral law has forfeited the favour of God may reasonably hope to recover it by sincere repentance and a return to his duty; and nothing but such repentance and reformation can recover it; because, in a moral agent, nothing can be agreeable to God but moral dispositions, which cannot be transferred from one person to another, and for the want of which nothing can atone. Our virtues are not required nor our vices prohibited, as if the one could profit and the other injure him who created us; for "is it any pleasure to the Almighty that we are righteous? or is it gain to him that we make our ways perfect? Will he reprove us for fear of us?" No? He commands us to be virtuous, and forbids us to be vicious, only because virtue is necessary to our own happiness, and vice productive of everlasting misery.

Were an immoral man to be introduced into the society of angels and just men made perfect, he would not experience in that society what we are taught to expect from the joys of heaven; because to such joys his acquired dispositions would be wholly repugnant. Nor could the sufferings of any person whatever, or the imputation of any extrinsic righteousness, make that mind which had long been immersed in the grossest sensuality relish the intellectual and refined enjoyments of heaven; or the man who had been the habitual slave of envy, malice, and duplicity, a fit inhabitant of that place where all are actuated by mutual love. On the other hand, say the divines whose doctrine we are now detailing, it is impossible to suppose that the Father of mercies, who knows whereof we are made, should have doomed to eternal misery any moral agent who had laboured through life to serve him in sincerity and in truth; or that any atonement could be necessary to redeem from the pains of hell the man whose pious and virtuous dispositions have through penitence and prayer become suited to the society of heaven. Unsinning perfection never was nor ever could be expected in man. He is brought into the world free indeed from vice, but equally destitute of virtue; and the great business of his life is to guard his mind from being polluted by the former, and to acquire dispositions habitually leading to the practice of the latter. Till these habits be fairly formed, it seems impossible that he should not sometimes deviate from the paths of rectitude, and thereby incur a temporary forfeiture of the divine favour; but the very constitution of his mind, and the purpose for which he is placed in a state of probation, show that the divine favour thus forfeited can be recovered only by repentance and reformation. Widely different, however, is the case with respect to the forfeiture and recovery of a free gift, to which man has no natural claim. When the condition is broken on which such a gift was bestowed, repentance can be of no avail; it must be either irrecoverably lost or restored by the mere good pleasure of the giver. Immortality or perpetual existence is a gift which upon certain terms was freely bestowed upon the human race, and forfeited by the transgression of their first parent violating those terms. It was restored by the free grace of God, who was pleased to ordain, that "since by man came death, by man should also come the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Hence the apostle, writing to the Romans of the benefits of being the children of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, summeth up those benefits with resurrection from the dead." For the creature, i.e., mankind, was made subject (says he) to vanity or death, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope: because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain together until now: and not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, viz., the redemption of our body (f). That this the redemption of our body is the consequence of the sacrifice of Christ, is taught in the most explicit terms in the epistle to the Hebrews; of which the inspired author informs us, that "forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and deliver them, who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." A vicarious atonement made with this view, the divines, whose theory we are now considering, acknowledge to be perfectly rational and consistent with the strictest justice. "The law of nature (say they) allows not of vicarious atonements; but ordains that the man who transgresseth shall himself bear the punishment of his iniquity; a punishment which no man deserves for the faults of another, unless he be partaker of the guilt by joining in the transgression." And in proof of this their opinion, they appeal to the words of God himself, declaring to Moses,—"Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book." But when the free gift of immortality was lost, it was with great wisdom, say they, that God restored it through a Mediator who should make atonement by his blood for the breach of the first covenant; since such a mediation implies that the gift restored is merely of grace, to the attainment of which man could no further co-operate than by his hopes and wishes.

To this view of redemption, and indeed to every view of it which we have yet taken, an objection forces itself upon the mind. Throughout the New Testament life more perfect and immortality are considered as a free gift, and Christ called so in express words by St Paul*. To the scheme under consideration it is essential to consider them as *Rom. v. such; and yet we know that a large price was paid for them, as St Paul likewise acknowledges, when he twice tells the Corinthians that they were bought with a price f.

"To clear up this matter (says Bishop Warburton), Obviated, and to reconcile the apostle to himself, who certainly was not defective either in natural sense or artificial logic, let us once again remind the reader, that life and immortality bestowed on Adam in paradise was a free gift, as appears from the history of his creation. As a free gift, it was taken back by the Donor when Adam fell; to which resumption our original natural rights are not subject, since natural religion teacheth, that sincere repentance alone will reinstate us in the possession of those rights which our crimes had suspended. So that when this free gift, forfeited by the first Adam, was recovered by the second, its nature continuing the same, it must still remain a free gift—a gift to which man, by and at his creation had no claim; a gift which natural religion did not bestow. But if misled by measuring this revealed mystery of human redemption by the scant idea of human transactions, where a free gift and purchased benefit are commonly opposed to one another, yet even here we may be able to set ourselves right, since, with regard to man, the character of a free gift remains to immortality restored. For the price paid by forfeited man was not paid by him, but by a Redeemer of divine extraction, who was pleased, by participating of man's nature, to stand in his stead. Hence the sacred writers seeing, in this case, the perfect agreement between a free gift and a purchased possession, Div. Leg. call it sometimes by the one and sometimes by the other name."

A restoration to life and immortality from that state The death of unconsciousness or extinction, to which all mankind of Christ were doomed in consequence of the fall, is that great salvation which we have obtained through the blood of our Redeemer; and according to the theologians whose theory we are now considering, it was the only thing in sin the divine intention when the promise was given to the first mother that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. But though they contend that the death of Christ does not operate, directly as atonement for the actual sins of men, they admit that it does so indirectly and by necessary consequence, since it gives opportunities for repentance and newness of life, which under the first covenant they did not enjoy. Had a man under that covenant transgressed any moral precept, he would have forfeited the favour of his God, and either been subjected to punishment or to a long course of repentance; but supposing the efficacy of repentance under

(f) That by the words creature and creation the apostle here means all mankind, and by vanity and corruption, death, the reader will find proved by Dr Whitby, in his note on the place, with a strength of argument which cannot be shaken; and that the whole creation, the Gentiles as well as the Jews, groaned and travailed in pain together under the apprehension of death, is apparent from the writings of Cicero, who always seems doubtful whether death be a good or an evil; and from the lamentation of Hezekiah, when desired by the prophet to set his house in order because he should die and not live. Theology

der the law of nature to be what they suppose it to be, more peculiarly Christ's by the eating of the forbidden fruit; and thus his penitence or punishment have ended in everlasting death. This can never be the issue of things under the new covenant, which, by the death of Christ, secures immortality to man, and gives to him opportunities, as long as he shall be in a state of probation, of recovering the divine favour when forfeited, whether by a moral transgression or a temporary violation of the peculiar condition of the covenant. Hence they admit the truth of the apostle's doctrine, that we are gainers by the fall of Adam and the redemption wrought by Christ; which will appear when we come to consider their notions of justification. In the mean time it may be proper to observe, that they consider it as no small confirmation of their opinion, that it tends to put an end to the long agitated disputes concerning the extent of redemption, and to reconcile passages of scripture which, on the commonly received theories both of Calvinists and Arminians, seem to be at variance with each other.

It is well known to be one of the fundamental doctrines of the Calvinistic school, that "none are redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only"; and if the notions of redemption, which, in the end of the 17th century, were very generally embraced, be admitted as just, it will not be easy to overturn the arguments by which that doctrine is supported. Such of them as are connected with the great question of election and reprobation, and enter into the decision of it, we have stated in another place (see Predestination, No. 14); but it is farther argued, that the doctrine of universal redemption reflects on the wisdom, the justice, and the power of God, and robs him of his glory.

The scriptures assure us that all men shall not be saved; but how can this be, if Christ died for all, and the scheme of salvation, by his death was formed by infinite wisdom? The Arminians indeed say, that those who fail of salvation, fail through their own fault in not performing the conditions required of them; but God either knew or knew not that such men would not perform those conditions. If he knew it not, his knowledge is limited; if he did know it, where was his wisdom in providing a scheme of redemption for men to whom he was aware that it would be of no benefit? "God, we are told, is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works;" but there is no righteousness in making Christ bear the sins of all men, and suffer the punishment due to them, if any one of those men shall be afterwards punished everlasting. If Christ has already paid the debts of the whole world, it cannot be just to cast a single inhabitant of the whole world into the prison of hell, there to be detained till he shall again have paid the uttermost farthing. "The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save;" for he is and always will be the same Almighty power that he was from eternity; but if by the divine decree Christ died for all men, and yet all men shall not be saved, it would appear that man is mightier than his Maker! The ultimate end of God in the redemption of man is admitted to have been his own glory; but if any individual of the human race, who was redeemed by Christ, shall not be saved, God will so far lose his end, and be deprived of his glory. For, if this were the case, where would be the glory of God the Father in forming a scheme which, with respect to multitudes, does not succeed? and where would be the glory of the Son of God, the Redeemer, in working out the redemption of men who are yet not to be saved by him? and where would be the glory of the spirit of God, if redemption were not by him effectually applied to every individual for whom it was wrought? By such arguments as these do the Calvinists oppose the scheme of universal redemption, and contend that Christ died only for the elect, or such as shall be placed on his right hand at the day of judgment. This notion of a limited redemption, as they think it more worthy of the sovereignty of God, they believe to be taught by our Saviour himself, when he saith, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me, I will in nowise cast out. For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's will who hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day."

The Arminians, on the other hand, contend, that it is impious to limit the effects of Christ's death to a chosen few, since it appears from scripture, that by the decree and intention of his Father he tasted death for every man, that all, without exception, might through him obtain remission of their sins. Thus our Lord himself told Nicodemus, that "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." In perfect conformity with the doctrine of his divine Master, St Paul teaches, that "Christ died for all; that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;" that "he will have all men to be saved, and to come into the knowledge of the truth;" that "Christ gave himself a ransom for all;" and that "Jesus was made a little lower than the angels, that by the grace of God he should taste death for every man." The very same thing is taught by St Peter and St John, when the former says, that "the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance;" and the latter, that "Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our's only, but for the whole world."

On these texts, without any commentary, the Arminians are willing to rest their doctrine of universal redemption; though they think that a very strong additional argument for its truth arises from the numberless absurdities which flow from the contrary opinion. Thus, say they, the apostles were commanded by our Saviour to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature;" and all who hear it preached are required to believe it; but no man, as the Calvinists themselves confess, can believe the gospel as a Christian, without believing that Christ died for him; and therefore, if it be true that Christ died only for the elect, a great part of mankind are required to believe a lie, and a falsity is made the object of divine faith! Again, if Christ did not die for all, then no man can be sure that Theology he is bound to believe in Christ when preached to him; nor can any man be justly condemned for infidelity: which is not only absurd in itself, but directly contrary to what we are taught by our blessed Lord, who assures us that unbelief is the cause of condemnation. Lastly, if Christ died not for all, then it is certain that he cannot claim dominion over all in consequence of his death and resurrection; but St Paul says expressly, that "to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be the Lord of the dead and living." The Arminians acknowledge, that though Christ died for all, there are many who will not be saved; for, say they, the death of Christ did not literally pay the debts incurred by sinners, but only obtained for them the gracious covenant of the gospel, by which all who believe in him, and sincerely endeavour to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, are entitled to forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

Such is the state of this controversy as it was agitated between the Calvinists and Arminians of the 17th century; but the present leaders of this latter school, are of opinion, that it never could have been started, had not both parties mistaken the purpose for which Christ died. It is not conceivable, say they, that any thing for which the eternal Son of God took upon him human nature, and in that nature suffered a cruel and ignominious death, shall not be fully accomplished; and therefore, if in the divine intention he died to make atonement for the sins of man actual as well as original, we must of necessity conclude, that those for whom he died shall certainly be saved. Yet we learn from scripture that many shall go away into everlasting punishment, though the same scripture repeatedly assures us that Christ gave his life a ransom for all, and that he is the propitiation for the whole world. To reconcile these different passages of scripture is impossible, if we suppose that he laid down his life to atone for the actual transgressions of men; but if the direct purpose of the Godhead in forming this stupendous plan of redemption was, that the death of Christ should be the ransom of all from the grave or utter extinction, every difficulty is removed; for we know that all, the wicked as well as the righteous, shall through him be raised to life at the last day. That this was the purpose for which he died, they think apparent from the very words quoted by the Calvinists to prove that redemption was not universal; for he declares that it was his Father's will, "that of all which had been given him he should lose nothing," not that he should save it all from future punishment, but only that he "should raise it up at the last day."

When St John calls him a propitiation for our sins, which, as we have seen, the divines whose doctrine we are now stating hold him to be indirectly, he does not add, as in our translation, for the sins of the whole world, but ἐπὶ πᾶσι τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων, for the whole world, which, by his death, he redeemed from that vanity and corruption under which, according to St Paul, it had groaned from the fall till the preaching of the gospel. Hence it is that our blessed Lord calls himself "the resurrection and the life," and always promises to those who should believe in him, that though they were dead, yet should they live, and that he would raise them up at the last day.

Among these various opinions respecting the destination of the death of Christ, it belongs not to us to decide. The serious reader, divesting himself of prejudice in favour of the system in which he has been educated, more prudently will search the scriptures, and adopt the theory which fairly Christ shall find most explicitly taught in that sacred volume; but as in every system it is admitted, that one purpose for which Christ died was to redeem mankind from the everlasting power of the grave, and bring to pose for light life and immortality, it is of the utmost importance which to know whether that purpose has been fully attained. Death we see still triumphing over all the generations brings to men; and as the scriptures give us no hopes of being light life rescued from its dominion but through the medium of a resurrection, some sensible evidence seems necessary to evince that a general resurrection shall actually take place. This we are promised as one great benefit purchased for us by the sufferings of Christ sacrificed on the cross. And since the price has been paid, and paid thus visibly, the nature of the covenant requires that the benefit should be as visibly enjoyed by the person whose sufferings obtained it for his brethren. "If the Redeemer himself had not been seen to enjoy the fruits of the redemption procured, what hopes could have remained for the rest of mankind? Would not the natural conclusion have been, that the expedient of redemption by the death and sacrifice of Jesus, had proved ineffectual?" This is the conclusion which St Paul himself draws: "If Christ be not risen (says he), then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also, who are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished—ἀπώλειοι—are lost, as if they had never existed. But now (adds he) is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead: For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."—So necessarily connected, in the opinion of the apostle, is the resurrection of Christ with the very essence of Christianity.

We have in another place (see Resurrection, No. 30,) stated such arguments for the truth of this fundamental article of our common faith, as must carry conviction to every mind capable of estimating the force of evidence; we shall not here resume the subject.

Archbishop King has supposed, that the human will is a faculty distinct from the understanding and the appetites; that activity is essential to it; and that previous to an election formed, it is equally indifferent to all objects. He thence infers, that a man may choose, and even take delight in, what is not naturally agreeable to any of his appetites; because when the choice is made, a relation is formed between the will and the object of choice, which, from being originally indifferent, now becomes a favourite object. But neither his Grace, nor any other asserter of human liberty, has ever affirmed or supposed, that any man or body of men could deliberately choose evil for its own sake, or enter zealously upon a tedious and difficult enterprise, from which no good could possibly arise, and from which unmixed misery was clearly foreseen as the necessary result of every step of the progress. Such, however, must have been the choice and the conduct of the apostles, when they resolved to preach a new religion founded on the resurrection of Jesus, if they did not certainly know that Jesus had risen from the dead. And this conduct must have been adopted, and, in opposition to every motive which can influence the human mind, have been perse- vered in by a great number of men and women, without more peculiarly Christian, the smallest contradiction having ever appeared in the various testimonies, which at different times, and under the cruellest tortures, they all gave to a variety of circumstances, of which not one had its foundation in truth. He who can admit this supposition, will not surely object to the incredibility of miracles. The resurrection of a man from the dead is an event so different indeed from the common course of things, that nothing but the most complete evidence can make it an object of rational belief; but as the resurrection of Jesus has always been said to have had God for its Author, it is an effect which does not exceed the power of the cause assigned, and is therefore an event possible in itself and capable of proof. It is a deviation from the laws of nature, but it is not contradictory to any one of those laws.

That a great number of men and women should deliberately form a plan of ruin and misery to themselves, without a prospect of the smallest advantage either in this world or in the next, is as different from the common course of things as the resurrection from the dead; and therefore in itself at least as great a miracle: but that they should persist in prosecuting this plan in the midst of torments; that they should spread themselves over the whole world, and everywhere publish a number of falsehoods, without any one of them contradicting the rest; that truth should never escape them either in an unguarded moment, or when lingering on the rack, and yet that all their lies should be in perfect agreement with each other; that they should every one of them court sufferings for a person whom they knew to be an impostor; that not one of the number—not even a single woman—should have so much compassion for a fellow-creature, as to rescue him from the flames by confessing a truth which could injure nobody—not even the suffering deceivers themselves—all this is not only different from the common course of things, but directly contrary to the most known laws of nature, and is therefore not miraculous, but may be pronounced impossible. Yet this impossibility we must admit, or acknowledge, that as Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, and was buried; so he arose again the third day according to the Scriptures; that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that of above five hundred brethren at once; after that of James; then of all the apostles; and that he was last of all seen of St Paul *, who was converted by the vision to preach the faith which till then he had persecuted.

Thus we are assured, that "those who have fallen asleep in Christ are not lost, since he is risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming; for all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation t."

Our blessed Lord having conversed familiarly with the eleven apostles for forty days after his resurrection, instructing them in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God; having extended their authority as his ministers, by giving them a commission to teach all nations, and make them his disciples, by baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and having promised them power from on high to enable them to discharge the duties of so laborious an office—led them on as far as Bethany, that they might be witnesses of his ascension into heaven.

When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said, it is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high; and he lift up his hands and blessed them; and it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly towards heaven, as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; who also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

That our blessed Lord ascended into heaven, will scarcely be denied in the present age by any one who admits that he rose from the dead. The ascension was indeed the natural consequence of the resurrection; for we cannot suppose that a man would be called back from the grave to live for ever in a world where all other men fall in succession a prey to death. The purpose for which he died was to recover for the descendants of Adam every privilege which they had forfeited through his transgression; and if, as has been generally believed, mankind were by the terms of the first covenant to enjoy eternal life in heaven, some proof was necessary that Christ by his death and resurrection had opened the kingdom of heaven to all faithful observers of the terms of the second. Hence it was prophesied of the Messiah, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed, that "he should ascend on high, lead captivity captive, and sit on the right hand of God until his enemies should be made his footstool." It was therefore of the greatest importance to the apostles to have sufficient proof of their Master's exaltation to the right hand of the Majesty on high; for otherwise they could neither have looked for an entrance into heaven themselves, by a new and living way, as the author of the epistle to the Hebrews expresses it, nor have preached Jesus as the Messiah promised to their fathers, since they could not have known that in him these prophecies were fulfilled. But the proof vouchsafed them was the most complete that the nature of the thing would bear. The spectators of the ascension were many; for, according to the history of St Luke t, those who returned from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, and prepared themselves for the coming of the Holy Ghost, were in number about six score; and to such a cloud of witnesses the evangelist would not have appealed, had not the fact he was recording been very generally known. Yet these were perhaps but part of the witnesses; for name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth." More peculiarly Christ's submission is due to him, because "God raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principalities and powers, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church." Eph. As God, Christ possessed a kingdom, which, as it had not a beginning, can never have an end; but the dominion, of which the apostle is here treating, was conferred upon him as the mediator of the new covenant, and will no longer continue than till his enemies shall be subdued; for we are told, that "he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet; and that the last enemy which shall be destroyed is death." "He will ransom his subjects from the power of the grave; he will redeem them from death. O death, he will be thy plague; O grave, he will be thy destruction." Hos. The trumpet shall sound, the graves shall be opened, all will rise, the sons and daughters of Adam shall return to life, and death shall be swallowed up in victory. "Then cometh the end, when the office of mediator ceasing, he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all."

The first conspicuous proof which our blessed Lord gave of being vested with supreme power, and made head over all things to the church, was on the day of Descent of Pentecost. He had told the apostles that he would the Holy Ghost give them another comforter, who should abide with them for ever, even the Spirit of truth, which should teach them all things, and bring all things to their remembrance which he had said unto them. He had assured them, that it was expedient for them that he himself should go away; "for if I go not away (said he), the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." At his last interview with them, just before his ascension, he had desired them to tarry at Jerusalem till they should be endued with power from on high, before they entered upon their great work of converting the nations. These promises were amply fulfilled; for "when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling

(H) There was one Apelles in the primitive church, who was condemned as a heretic for teaching that Christ's body was dissolved in the air, and that he ascended to heaven without it. The opinions of this man and his followers are stated at large and confuted by Tertullian, Gregory Nazianzen, and Epiphanius; and the reader who thinks such ridiculous notions worthy his notice, will find enough said of them in the Notes to the sixth article of Pearson's Exposition of the Creed. Perhaps it may be from a hint communicated in these Notes, that our great modern corrector of the evangelists has discovered, if it be indeed true that he pretends to have discovered, that Jesus Christ is still upon earth.

Vol. XX. Part I. dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, decent men, out of every more peculiar nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed, and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews, and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians—we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?

That those who heard the apostles speak so many different languages were amazed, is what we should naturally suppose; but that a single individual among them remained unconvinced, is astonishing; for the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost is one of the most palpable miracles that was ever wrought. It is likewise one of the best authenticated miracles; for the book entitled the Acts of the Apostles was written not more than 30 years after the event took place (see Scripture, No. 168); and it is not conceivable that, within so short a period, St Luke, or any man of common sense, would have appealed for the truth of what he recorded to so many inveterate enemies of the Christian name, had he not been aware that the miraculous gift of tongues was a fact incontrovertible. We all know how desirous the Jewish rulers were to stop the progress of the faith, by whatever means; but if this miracle was not really performed, they had now an opportunity of doing it effectually by means to which truth and honour would give their approbation. Thousands must have been alive in the city of Jerusalem who were men and women at the time when the apostles were said to have been thus suddenly inspired with the tongues of the Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, &c.; and as these foreigners were themselves either Jews by descent, or at least proselytes to the Jewish religion, surely the chief priests would have found multitudes ready, both at home and abroad, to contradict this confident appeal of St Luke's if contradiction had been possible. We read however of no objection whatever being made to this miracle. Some of the audience, indeed, when the apostles addressed people of so many nations in all their respective languages, not understanding what was said, and taking it for jargon which had no meaning, concluded, not unnaturally, that the speakers were full of new wine, and mocked them for being drunk so early in the day; but this is a circumstance which, so far from rendering the miracle doubtful, adds much to the credit of the historian, as it would hardly have occurred to the writer of a narrative wholly false, and would certainly not have been mentioned, had he known that the apostles really attempted to impose on the multitude unmeaning sounds for foreign languages.

As it is thus certain that the apostles were miraculously furnished with the gift of tongues, so the elegance and propriety of that miracle to attest the real descent of the Spirit of truth, who was to teach them all things, and endue them with power from on high to convert the nations, can never be enough admired by the pious Christian; for words being the vehicle of knowledge, that an ability to speak the different languages of the earth was absolutely necessary to enable those who had been originally fishermen to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Yet there have been writers*, who, though unable to call in question the reality of the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, have contended, that it was a gift "not lasting, but instantaneous and transitory;" not bestowed upon them for the constant work of the ministry, but as an occasional sign only, that the person endowed with it was a chosen minister of the gospel; which sign, according to them, ceased and totally vanished as soon as it had served that particular purpose." The chief argument upon which this opinion is attempted to be built, is drawn from the scripture Greek, which is said to be "utterly rude and barbarous, and abounding with every fault which can possibly deform a language;" whereas we should naturally expect to find an inspired language pure, clear, noble, and affecting, even beyond the force of common speech; since nothing can come from God but what is perfect in its kind. In short, we should expect, says the objector, the purity of Plato and the eloquence of Cicero."

In reply to this objection, it has been well observed, that it supposes what is called the purity, elegance, and sublimity, of language, to be something natural and essential to human speech, and inherent in the constitution of things. "But the matter is far otherwise. These qualities are accidental and arbitrary, and depend on custom and fashion; modes of humanity as various as the different climes of the earth; and as inconstant as the temper, genius, and circumstances, of its inhabitants. For what is purity, but the use of such terms and their combinations as the caprice of a writer or speaker of authority hath preferred to their equals? what is elegance, but such a turn of idiom as a fashionable fancy hath brought into credit; and what is sublimity, but the application of such images as arbitrary and casual connections, rather than their own native grandeur, have dignified and ennobled?" The consequence of this is, that the mode of composition which is a model of perfection to one nation or people, has always appeared either extravagant or mean to another. Asiatic and Indian eloquence was esteemed hyperbolical and unnatural by the Greeks and Romans, and is so esteemed by us; whilst the Greek and Roman eloquence in its turn appeared cold and insipid to the warm inhabitants of the east; and ours would appear perhaps still colder. But the New Testament was designed for the rule of life to all mankind. Such a rule required inspiration; and inspiration, say the objectors, implies the most perfect eloquence. What human model then was the Holy Ghost to follow? for a human model it must have been, because there was no other; and if there had, no other would have answered the purpose, which was to make a due impression on the mind and affections. Should the eastern eloquence have been employed? But it would have been too swelling and animated for the west. Should the western? This would have been too stiff and inactive for the east. Or suppose us only solicitous for what we best understand; which species of this latter genus should the sacred writers have preferred? The dissolute softness of the Asiatic Greeks, or the dry conciseness of the Spartans? The flowing exuberances Theology

But are there not some general principles of eloquence in common to all the species? There are. Why then should not these have been employed to credit the apostolic inspiration? Because the end even of these (replies our author), is to mislead reason, and inflame the passions; which being abhorrent to the truth and purity of our holy religion, were very fitly rejected by the inspired penman. Besides, it might easily be known to have been the purpose of Providence, though such purpose had not been expressly declared, that the gospel should bear all possible marks of its divine original, as well in the course of its progress as in the circumstances of its promulgation. To this end, the human instruments of its conveyance were mean and illiterate, and chosen from among the lowest of the people, that when the world saw itself converted by the foolishness of preaching, as the only learned apostle thinks fit to call it, unbelievers might have no pretence to ascribe its success to the parts, or stations, or authority, of the preachers. Now had the language inspired into these illiterate men been the eloquence of Plato or Tully, Providence would have appeared to counteract its own measures, and to defeat the purpose best calculated to advance its glory. But God is wise, though man is a fool. The course of Providence was uniform and constant: It not only chose the weakest instruments, but carefully kept out of their hands that powerful weapon of words which their adversaries might so easily have wrested to the dishonour of the gospel. Common sense tells us, that the style of an universal law should retain what is common to all languages, and neglect what is peculiar to each. It should retain nothing but clearness and precision, by which the mind and sentiments of the writer are intelligibly conveyed to the reader. This quality is essential, invariably the same, and independent of custom and fashion. It is the consequence of syntax, the very thing in language which is least positive, as being formed on the principles of philosophy and logic: whereas all besides, from the very power of the elements and signification of the terms to the tropes and figures in composition, are arbitrary; and, as deviating from these principles, frequently vicious. But this quality of clearness and precision eminently distinguishes the writings of the New Testament; insomuch that it may be easily shown, that whatever difficulties occur in the sacred books do not arise from any imperfect information caused by this local or nominal barbarity of style; but either from the sublime or obscure nature of the things treated of, or from the intentional conciseness of the writers; who, in the casual mention of anything not essential to the dispensation, always observe a studied brevity."

After much ingenious and sound reasoning on the nature of language in general, our author concludes, that the style of the New Testament, even on the truth of what has been said to its discredit, is so far from proving the language not to be divinely inspired, that it bears one certain mark of that original. "Every language consists of two distinct parts, the single terms, and the phrases and idioms. Suppose now a foreign language to be instantaneously introduced into the minds of illiterate men like the apostles; the impression must be made either by fixing in the memory the terms and single words only with their signification, as, for instance, Greek words corresponding to such or such Syriac or Hebrew words; or else, together with that simple impression, by enriching the mind with all the phrases and idioms of the language so inspired. But to enrich the mind with the peculiar phrases and idioms of a foreign language, would require a previous impression to be made of the manners, notions, fashions, and opinions, of the people to whom that language is native; because the idiom and phrases arise from, and are dependent on, these manners. But this would be a waste of miracles without sufficient cause or occasion; for the Syriac or Hebrew idiom, to which the Jews were of themselves enabled to adapt the Greek or any other words, abundantly served the useful purposes of the gift of tongues, which all centered in those tongues, being so spoken and written as to be clearly understood. Hence it follows, that if the style of the New Testament were indeed derived from that language which was miraculously impressed upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, it must be just such a one as in reality we find it to be; that is, it must consist of Greek words in the Syriac or Hebrew idiom."

The immediate author of this gift, so necessary to the Divinity of propagation of the gospel, was the Spirit of truth, or the Holy Comforter, who is the Holy Ghost and the third person in the blessed Trinity. That there are three persons in the one Godhead, has been shewn at large in a former section of this article; and that the Holy Ghost is one of these three, might be safely concluded from the form of baptism instituted by Christ himself. But as more plausible objections have been urged against his divinity than any that we have met with against the divinity of Christ, it may not be improper to consider these before we proceed to give an account of the graces which he imparted to the infant church, and of the apostles preaching under his influence. By the Arians the Holy Ghost is considered as a creature; by the Socinians and modern Unitarians, as they call themselves, the words Holy Ghost are supposed to express, not a person or spiritual subsistence, but merely an energy or operation, a quality or power, of the Father, whom alone they acknowledge to be God. If this doctrine can be confuted, the Arian hypothesis will fall to the ground of itself; for it is not conceivable that any inspired teacher should command his followers to be baptized in the name of the self-existent God and two creatures.

It is admitted by the Socinians themselves, that in the Scriptures many things are spoken of the Holy Ghost which can be properly predicated only of a person; but the inference drawn from this concession they endeavour to invalidate by observing, that in scripture there are likewise expressions in which things are predicated of abstract virtues, which can be literally true only of such persons as practise these virtues. Thus when St Paul says, that "charity suffereth long and is kind, charity envieth not, charity vaunteth not itself," &c., we cannot suppose his meaning to be, that these actions are performed by charity in the abstract, but that every charitable person, in consequence of that one Christian grace, suffereth long and is kind, envieth not, vaunteth not himself, and is not puffed up, &c. In like manner, say they, personal actions are attributed to the Holy Ghost, which itself is Theology no person, but only the virtue, power, or efficacy, of God the Father; because God the Father, who is a person, performs such actions by that power, virtue, or efficacy, in himself, which is denominated the Holy Ghost. Thus when we read Acts x. 19, 20, "Behold three men seek thee; arise therefore and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I have sent them;" we must understand that God the Father was the person who spoke these words and sent the three men; but because he did so by that virtue in him which is called the Spirit, therefore the Spirit is said to have spoken the words and sent the men.

Again, when Acts xii. 2, "the Holy Ghost said to those at Antioch, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them?" we are to conceive that it was God the Father who commanded the two apostles to be separated for the work to which he had called them; but because he had done all this by that power within him which is called the Holy Ghost, therefore his words and actions are attributed to the Holy Ghost, just as long-suffering in men is attributed to charity.

This reasoning has a plausible appearance, and would be of much force were all the actions which in scripture are attributed to the Holy Ghost of such a nature as that they could be supposed to have proceeded from the person of God the Father in consequence of any particular power or virtue in him; but this is far from being the case. Thus Acts xiv. 26, "Spirit is said to make intercession for us?" but with whom can we suppose God the Father, the fountain of divinity, to intercede? Our Saviour assured his disciples, that the Father would, in his name, send to them the Holy Ghost, who is the Comforter; that he would himself send the Comforter unto them from the Father; that the Comforter should not speak of himself, but speak only what he should hear; and that he should receive of Christ's, and shew it unto them. But we cannot, without blasphemy and absurdity, suppose that the Father would, in the name of Christ, send himself; that the Son would send the Father from the Father; and the Father would not speak of himself, but speak only what he heard; or that either the Father in person, or a quality of the Father, should receive any thing of Christ to shew unto the apostles.

The sagacity of Socinus perceived the force of such objections as these to his notion of the Holy Ghost being nothing more than the power of the Father personified; and therefore he invented another prosopopoeia to serve his purpose in the interpretation of those texts to which this one cannot be applied. "The Spirit of God (says he) may be considered either as a property or power in God, or as the things on which that power is working. When taken in the former sense, the Spirit, where any personal attribute is given to it, means God the Father; when taken in the latter sense, it means the man on whom the power of the Father is working; who, as long as he is affected by that power, is therefore called the Spirit of God;" and he quotes, we think most absurdly, the tenth verse of the second chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, as a text in which by the Spirit is meant an inspired man who could search all things, yea, even the deep things of God.

How his modern followers, who deny the plenary inspiration even of Christ, will relish such a degree of inspiration as this, which raises mere men to a temporary equality with God, we know not; but leaving them to settle the dispute with their master, we shall produce one or two passages in which personal attributes are given to the Spirit of God, when it is impossible to conceive that Spirit, either as a power inherent in the Divine Father, or as the person on whom that power is operating. We need not bring new texts into view, as some of those already quoted will serve our purpose. When our Saviour promises that the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, should be sent by the Father and the Son to the apostles, we have seen, that by this Spirit he could not mean the Father or a property of the Father; neither could he possibly mean the apostles themselves, unless we are to suppose that the Father and the Son sent St Peter to St Peter, and that St Peter, so sent, came to St Peter! Again, when Christ saith of the Holy Ghost, "he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you," he could not, for the reason already assigned, mean by the Holy Ghost the Father or the power of the Father; and surely his meaning was not, that the apostles, under the influence of the power of the Father, should receive something and shew it each to himself! The Holy Ghost therefore is unquestionably a person; for though there are many passages of scripture in which the gifts of the Holy Ghost are called the Holy Ghost, they are so called by a very common figure of speech, in which the effect receives the name of its cause: and since this person is joined with the Father and the Son in the formula of Christian baptism; since they who lied to the Holy Ghost are said Acts vii. 51 to have lied unto God; since blasphemy Acts xxiii. 13 against him is a more heinous offence than the same sin against even the Father or the Son; and since it was by the operation of the Holy Ghost that Jesus Christ Acts ii. 22 was conceived of the Virgin Mary, and even on that account called the Son of God—it follows that the Holy Ghost is God, of the same substance with the Father and Son.

It was this Divine Spirit which, on the day of Pentecost, inspired the apostles with the knowledge of different languages; and as these were given only to enable them to preach the gospel to every creature, it can admit of no doubt but that he, who so amply provided the means of preaching, would take care that the gospel should be preached in purity. Our Saviour had told his apostles, that the Comforter would guide them into all the truth Acts xvii. 31, and bring all things to their remembrance, whatsoever he had said unto them; but if they had not comprehended the meaning of what he said, the bare remembrance of his sayings would have been of little importance. That before this miraculous shedding abroad of the Spirit they had but a very imperfect knowledge of his doctrines, and of the purpose for which he had come into the world, is apparent from that unseasonable question which they put to him when assembled to witness his glorious ascension; "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?"

Their minds still cherished with fondness the vain prospect of temporal power; but after the day of Pentecost they were directed to nobler objects. From the same Spirit they received diversities of gifts besides that of language; for we are assured by St Paul Acts ii. speaking of the early converts to Christianity in gen... that "to one was given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:" and these gifts, which were severally divided either among private Christians or among the inferior orders of ministers in the church, we have reason to believe were all bestowed in a greater or less degree upon each of the apostles.

Men thus endowed were well qualified to declare unto the world all the counsel of God. By the word of wisdom they communicated to the Gentile nations a pure system of what is called natural religion; turning them from the vanity of idols to the worship of the living God: by the word of knowledge, they preached the great doctrines of revelation both to Jews and Gentiles, shewing them that there is none other name under heaven given unto men whereby they may be saved than the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12); and by their gifts of healing and of miracles, &c.; they were enabled to prove unanswerably, that their doctrines were divine. They taught everywhere the unity of God, the creation of the world, the fall of man, the necessity of redemption, the divinity of the Redeemer, his sacrifice on the cross to restore mankind to their forfeited immortality, and the terms of the new covenant into which they had through him been graciously admitted by God.

Such a view as our limits would admit of we have given of all these doctrines, except that which respects the terms of the gospel covenant; but these being explicitly stated only by St Paul and St James, we could not till now investigate them, without violating the historical order into which, for the sake of perspicuity, we have digested the several parts of this short system. Our Savior himself has indeed taught with great plainness the necessity of faith and baptism to the salvation of those who have an opportunity of hearing the gospel preached with power (see Baptism): and in his sermon on the mount, which is such a lecture of ethics founded on religion as the Son of God only could have delivered, we learn, that "unless our righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, we shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven; that not every one who saith unto Christ, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who doth the will of the Father who is in heaven: and that many will say to him at the day of judgment, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name done many wonderful works?" which could not be done without faith; Theology to whom he will, notwithstanding, say, "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity." St Paul, however, seems fairly Christ to attribute our justification to the bare act of believing; for he repeatedly assures us, "that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law;" while St James, on v. 25, vii. the other hand, affirms, "that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." This apparent difference in the language of the two apostles, has produced among divines opinions really different respecting the justification of Christians; and the principal of these opinions it is our duty to state.

Between pardon of sin and justification there is so close a connection, that many writers seem to consider the terms as synonymous, and to infer, that he who is pardoned is ipso facto justified. That every Christian, who shall be pardoned at the judgment of the great day, will likewise be justified, is indeed true; but in propriety of speech, justification is a word of very different import from pardon, and will entitle the Christian to what mere pardon could not lead him to expect. An innocent person, when falsely accused and acquitted, is justified but not pardoned; and a criminal may be pardoned, though he cannot be justified or declared innocent. A man whose sins are pardoned is free from punishment; but the justified Christian is entitled to everlasting life, happiness, and glory. If we were only pardoned through Christ, we should indeed escape the pains of hell, but could have no claim to the enjoyments of heaven; for these, being more than the most perfect human virtue can merit, must be, what in the scriptures they are always said to be, "the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Hence it is that St Paul, distinguishing, as we have done upon his authority, between mere remission of sins and justification of life, declares, that Romans 3:24, "Jesus our Lord was delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification."

The word justification, as used both by St Paul and St James, has been very generally considered as a forensic term expressing the sentence of a judge. The most eminent reformed divines of all denominations, even many of the Romanists themselves, have strenuously contended, that this is its genuine sense, when it is distinguished from mere remission of sins, regeneration, and sanctification; and if so, it will signify God's pronouncing a per-on-fust, either as being perfectly blameless, or as having fulfilled certain conditions required of him in the Christian covenant. But that "there is not a just man upon earth, who doth good and sinneth not," is made known to us by the most complete evidence possible, the joint dictates of our own consciences and of divine

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(1) It is not perhaps easy to determine what is here meant by the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge, as distinguished from each other. By the former (λόγος σοφίας), Bishop Warburton understands all the great principles of natural religion. "The ancients (says he) used the word σοφία in this peculiar sense; it is used in the same sense by St Paul in Col. iv. 5; and we can hardly give it any other in the place before us, where we see the word of wisdom distinguished from the word of knowledge (λόγος γνώσεως), which evidently means all the great principles of revelation; the term γνώσις being as peculiarly applied by Christian writers to revealed religion as σοφία is by the Gentiles to the natural. St Paul uses the word in this sense in 2 Cor. xi. 6, where he says, ἐν δὲ τῷ λόγῳ τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῆς γνώσεως; and St Peter in his first epistle, chap. iii. verse 7. Hence those early heretics who so much deformed the simplicity and purity of the Christian faith by visionary pretences to superior knowledge of revelation, took from this word the name of Gnostics." See Warburton's Sermon on the Office and Operation of the Holy Ghost. divine revelation; and therefore whosoever is pronounced just by the Judge of all the earth, must be so, either because, though not absolutely blameless, he has performed the conditions required of him in the covenant of grace, or because Christ has fulfilled all righteousness in his stead.

If this be the Scripture notion of justification, it must be wholly the act of God, and cannot be the effect either of our faith or of our virtue. Accordingly, we are said by the apostle to be justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. The act of justification therefore proceeds from the divine philanthropy, and cannot be performed by the instrumentality of faith; for it is not God, but man, who believes; and man is not the justifier of himself. To talk of any kind of instrument of justification besides the propitiation set forth by God, is indeed to make use of very improper language: "Omnis causa instrumentalis (says Bishop Bull†), seu modo in effectum influit, eique effecti producito propriè attribui potest. Jam vero, cum justificatio nihil aliud sit quam gratiosus Dei actos, quo peccata nostra nobis concedet, ac nos ad salutem acceptet, valde absurdum esset dicere, vel fidem, vel opera nostra, vel quidvis aliud, nostrì aut remittere peccata nostra, aut personas nostras acceptare: quod tamen, si instrumentalis causa justificationis fides sit, plane dicendum esset."

In this sentiment of the bishop of St David's some of the most eminent divines both among the Calvinists and Arminians agree. Many, however, have chosen to treat of justification not only in the active sense, as it is the act of God, for all admit that it is he who justifies; but likewise in a passive sense, as it means our privilege or possession holden of him, when we are said to be justified by his grace. In this view of the subject they may talk with sufficient propriety, of an instrument of justification, not as the mean by which it is conveyed, but as the medium through which it is received by the true Christian. And hence it follows, that Waterland and Warburton strenuously maintain the doctrine of the Westminster Confession, "that faith receiving and resting on Christ is the alone instrument of justification; though it cannot be alone in the person justified, but must ever be accompanied with all other saving graces, and be a faith which worketh by love."

But notwithstanding this agreement between the leaders of the rival sects, they have found abundant matter of controversy respecting faith and works, in deciding the great question, "Whether, when God justifies man, he considers him as absolutely righteous on account of Christ's righteousness performed in his stead; or only as just, because he has fulfilled the conditions of the covenant of grace, which does not require of him perfect righteousness?" The former is the doctrine of the more rigid Calvinists, the latter that of the Arminians or Remonstrants.

"A nation (says Dr Gill†) obtained some years ago, that a relaxation of the law and the severities of it has been obtained by Christ; and a new law, a remedial law, a law of milder terms, been introduced by him, which is the gospel; the terms of which are, faith, repentance, and new obedience; and though these be imperfect, yet, being sincere, they are accepted by God in the room of perfect righteousness. But every article of this scheme (continues he) is wrong; for the law is not relaxed, nor any of its severities abated; Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil it; and therefore it requires the same holy, just, and good things, as ever. Nor is the gospel a new law. There is nothing in it (he says) which looks like a law; for it has no commands in it, but all promises, being a pure declaration of grace and salvation by Christ; nor are faith, repentance, and a new obedience, required by it as conditions of man's acceptance with God. Faith and repentance are gospel doctrines, and parts of the gospel ministry; they are graces, and not terms required to be performed by men of themselves. Faith is the gift of God, and repentance is a grant from him. It is not true (continues our author) that God will accept of an imperfect righteousness in the room of a perfect one; nor can any thing more highly reflect upon the justice and truth of God, who is the judge of all the earth, than to suppose that he can ever account that as a righteousness which is not one."

Having thus proved by arguments which were almost in the same words stated long before by Bishop Beveridge*, that the gospel is no relaxation of the law, he proceeds to lay down his own notions of justification, of which (he says) "the sole matter, or that for the sake of which a sinner is justified before God, is the righteousness of Christ—that which he did and suffered on earth, in our nature, in our stead, and as our representative. This is commonly called his active and passive obedience; and when the purity and holiness of his own nature was added to it, the whole made up the example of the righteousness of the law, which was fulfilled by him as the head and representative of his people; for whatever the law required is necessary to a sinner's justification before God, and it required of sinners more than it did of man in innocence. Man was created with a pure and holy nature, conformable to the pure and holy law of God; and it was incumbent on him to continue so, and to yield in it perfect and sinless obedience, in the failure whereof he was threatened with death. Man did fail, by which his nature was vitiated and corrupted, and his obedience became faulty and imperfect. He therefore became liable to the penalty of the law, and still perfect obedience was required him. To the justification of a sinner therefore is required the most complete obedience, active and passive; or, in other words, purity of nature, perfect obedience, and the sufferings of death; all which meet in Christ, the representative of his people, in whom they are justified. There are indeed some divines (continues our author) who exclude the active obedience of Christ from being any part of the righteousness by which men are justified. They allow it to have been a condition requisite in him as a Mediator, qualifying him for his office; but deny that it is the matter of justification, or reckoned for righteousness to man. But without the active obedience of Christ the law would not be satisfied; the language of which is, Do and live; and unless its precepts be obeyed, as well as its penalty endured, it cannot be satisfied; and unless it be satisfied there can be no justification. If therefore men are justified by the righteousness of Christ, it must be by his active obedience imputed and made over to them, so as to become their's, even as David describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works†. That this is really the way in which men are justified, our author thinks evident, evident, because they must be justified either by an inherent or by an imputed righteousness; but they cannot be justified by their own inherent righteousness, for that is imperfect, and therefore not justifying. Hence the apostle counts all things but dung, that he may win Christ and be found in him; not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. But by such a righteousness as this a man cannot be justified in any other way than by an imputation of it to him. Whence it follows, that "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners by imputation, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous, by having that obedience placed to their own account."

As this author properly considers justification as the act of God, he does not approve of the language in which faith is called the instrument either of conferring or receiving it. "Faith (says he) is merely the evidence of justification to the person justified; for faith is the evidence of things not seen." The righteousness of God, of the God-man and Mediator Jesus Christ, is revealed from faith to faith in the everlasting gospel; and therefore must be before it is revealed, and before the faith to which it is revealed. Faith is that grace whereby a soul, having seen its want of righteousness, beholds in the light of the Divine Spirit a complete righteousness in Christ, renounces its own, lays hold on that, puts it on as a garment, rejoices in it, and glories of it; the Spirit of God witnessing to his spirit that he is a justified person; and so he is evidently and declaratively justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the spirit of our God. Faith adds nothing to the case, only to this bare case of justification; which is a complete act in the eternal mind of God, without the being or consideration of faith, or any foresight of it. In the account of God, a man is as much justified before his faith as after it; and after he does believe, his justification depends not on his acts of faith, for though we believe not, yet God abides faithful to his covenant engagements with his Son, by whose suretyship-righteousness the elect are justified; but by faith men have a comfortable sense, perception, and apprehension, of their justification, and enjoy that peace of soul which results from it. It is by that only, under the testimony of the Divine Spirit, that they know their interest in it, and can claim it, and so have the comfort of it.

Though this language differs from that of the Westminster Confession, the author seems not to teach a different doctrine; for if faith be that grace by which a soul renounces its own righteousness, and lays hold of Christ's, which it puts on as a garment, it must be that very thing which the compilers of the Confession meant by their definition of faith receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, when they called it "the alone instrument of justification." Accordingly our author elsewhere teaches, that "true faith in sensible sinners assents to Christ and embraces him, not merely as a Saviour of man in general, but as a special suitable Saviour for them in particular. It proceeds upon Christ's being revealed in them as well as to them, by the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of him as a Saviour that becomes them. It comes not merely through external teachings by the hearing of the word from men; for no man, with our blessed Lord, can come to me except the Father draw him; but such souls as are thus drawn, having heard and learned of the Father, believe not only in the doctrine of Christ, but also in himself, trusting in him alone for everlasting more peculiarly Christian life and salvation."

Were it not that this author, in every thing that he writes, has an eye to the doctrine of election and reprobation, which he carries to a greater height than almost any other divine with whose works we are acquainted, more moderate Arminians would differ little in his notions of justification from the more moderate Arminians. "Justification (says Limpich) is the merciful and gracious act of God, whereby he fully absolves from all guilt the truly penitent and believing soul, through, and for the sake of Christ apprehended by a true faith; or gratuitously remits sins upon the account of faith in Jesus Christ, and graciously imparts that faith for righteousness." Here indeed the imputation of Christ's righteousness is expressly denied; but Dr Waterland, who can hardly be considered as a Calvinist, seems to contend for the imputation of that righteousness to the sinner, as well as for faith being the instrument by which it is received.

"It cannot be for nothing (says that able writer) that St Paul so often and so emphatically speaks of man being justified by faith, or through faith in Christ's blood; and that he particularly notes it of Abraham, that he believed, and that his faith was counted to him for justification, when he might as easily have said that Abraham, to whom the gospel was preached, was justified by gospel-faith and obedience, had he thought faith and obedience equally instruments of justification. Besides, it is on all hands allowed, that though St Paul did not directly oppose faith to evangelical works, yet he comprehended the works of the moral law under those which he excluded from the office of justifying, in his sense of the word justification. He even used such arguments as extended to all kinds of works; for Abraham's works were excluded, though they were undoubtedly evangelical. To prove that he interprets the apostle's doctrine fairly, our author quotes, from the genuine epistle of Clemens of Rome, a passage, in which it appears beyond a doubt that this fellow-labourer of St Paul so understood the doctrine of justifying faith as to oppose it even to evangelical works, however exalted. It is true (continues our author), Clemens elsewhere, and St Paul almost everywhere, insists upon true holiness of heart and obedience of life as indispensable conditions of salvation or justification; and of that, one would think, there could be no question among men of any judgment or probity. But the question about conditions is very distinct from the other question about instruments; and therefore both parts may be true, viz. that faith and obedience are equally conditions, and equally indispensable where opportunities permit; and yet faith over and above is emphatically the instrument both of receiving and holding justification, or a title to salvation.

"To explain this matter more distinctly, let it be remembered, that God may be considered either as a party contracting with man on very gracious terms, or as a Judge to pronounce sentence on him. Man can enter into the covenant, supposing him adult, only by assenting to it, and accepting it, to have and to hold it on such kind of tenure as God proposes: that is to say, upon a self-denying tenure, considering himself as a guilty man standing in need of pardon, and of borrowed merits, and at length resting upon mercy. So here, the previous question is, Whether a person shall consent to hold a privilege upon this submissive kind of tenure or not?" not? Such assent or consent, if he comes into it, is the very thing which St Paul and St Clemens call faith. And this previous and general question is the question which both of them determine against any proud claimants who would hold by a more self-admiring tenure.

"Or if we next consider God as sitting in judgment, and man before the tribunal going to plead his cause; here the question is, What kind of plea shall a man resolve to trust his salvation upon? Shall he stand upon his innocence, and rest upon strict law? or shall he plead guilty, and rest in an act of grace? If he chooses the former, he is proud, and sure to be cast: if he chooses the latter, he is safe so far in throwing himself upon an act of grace. Now this question also, which St Paul has decided, is previous to the question, What conditions even the act of grace itself finally insists upon? A question which St James in particular, and the general tenor of the whole Scripture, has abundantly satisfied; and which could never have been made a question by any considerate or impartial Christian. None of our works are good enough to stand by themselves before him who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Christ only is pure enough for it at first hand, and they that are Christ's at second hand in and through him. Now because it is by faith that we thus interpose, as it were, Christ between God and us, in order to gain acceptance by him; therefore faith is emphatically the instrument whereby we receive the grant of justification. Obedience is equally a condition or qualification, but not an instrument, not being that act of the mind whereby we look up to God and Christ, and whereby we embrace the promises."

But though our author contends that faith is the instrument of justification, he does not, like the Antinomians, teach that it will save men without works. "The covenant of grace (says he) has conditions annexed to it of great importance, for without them no instruments can avail. These are faith and obedience, as St James hath particularly maintained. St Paul had before determined the general and previous question respecting the plea by which we ought to abide; and when some libertines, as is probable, had perverted his doctrine of faith and grace, St James showed that the very faith which rests in a covenant of grace implies a cordial submission to the conditions of that covenant, otherwise it would be nothing but an empty ceremony. The perfect agreement between St Paul and St James in the article of justification, appears very clear and certain. St Paul declares, that in order to come at justification, it is necessary to stand upon grace, not upon merit; which St James does not deny, but rather confirms, in what he says of the perfect law of liberty (James i. 25, ii. 12.). St Paul makes faith the instrument of receiving that grace; which St James does not dispute, but approves by what he says of Abraham (ii. 23); only he maintains also, that in the conditionate sense, justification depends equally upon faith and good works; which St Paul also teaches and inculcates, in effect, or, in other words, through all his writings. If St Paul had had precisely the same question before him which St James happened to have, he would have decided just as St James did; and if St James had had precisely the same question before him which St Paul had, he would have determined just as St Paul did. Their principles were exactly the same, but the questions were diverse; and they had different adversaries to deal with, and opposite extremes to encounter, which is a common case.

"It may be noted, that that faith which is here called a condition, is of much wider compass than that particular kind of faith which is precisely the instrument of justification. For faith as a condition means the whole complex of Christian belief, as expressed in the creeds; while faith as an instrument means only the laying hold on grace, and resting in Christ's merits, in opposition to our own deservings: though this also, if it is a vital and operative principle (and if it is not, it is nothing worth), must of course draw after it an hearty submission to, and observance of, all the necessary conditions of that covenant of grace wherein we repose our whole trust and confidence. So that St Paul might well say, 'Do we then make void the law (the moral law) through faith? God forbid, Yea, we establish the law.' We exempt no man from religious duties; which are duties still, though they do not merit nor are practicable to such a degree as to be above the need of pardon: they are necessary conditions in their measure of justification, though not sufficient in themselves to justify, nor perfect enough to stand before God or to abide trial: therefore Christ's merits must be taken to supply their defects: and so our resting in Christ's atonement by a humble self-denying faith is our last resort, our anchor of salvation both sure and steadfast, after we have otherwise done our utmost towards the fulfilling of God's sacred laws, towards the performing of all the conditions required.

"That good works, internal and external, are according as opportunities offer and circumstances permit, conditions properly so called, is clear from the whole tenor of Scripture, as hath been often and abundantly proved by our own divines (m), and is admitted by the most judicious among the foreign Reformers (n). Yet some have been very scrupulous as to this innocent name, even while they allow the absolute necessity of good works as indispensable qualifications for future blessedness. Why not conditions therefore as well as qualifications? Perhaps because that name might appear to strike at absolute predestination, or unconditional election; and there may lie the scruple: otherwise the difference appears to lie rather in words than in things.

"Some will have them called not conditions, but fruits or consequents of justification. If they mean by justification the same as the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the first grace of faith springing from it, they say true; and then there is nothing more in it than an improper use of the word justification, except that from abuse of words very frequently arises some corruption of doctrine. If they mean only, that outward acts of righteousness are fruits of inward habits or dispositions; that also is undoubtedly true; but that is no reason why internal acts, virtues, graces (good works of the mind), should not be called conditions of justification; or why the outward acts should not be justly thought conditions of preserving it. But if they mean that justification is ordinarily given to adults, without any preparative or previous conditions of faith and repentance, that indeed is very new doctrine and dangerous, and opens a wide door to carnal security and to all ungodliness."

Such is the doctrine of Christian justification as it has been taught by the followers of Calvin, and by some of the most eminent Arminians who flourished in the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. They appear not, from this view of their opinions, to differ so widely as some of them have wished the world to believe. It is evident that Dr Waterland, though he rejects some of the distinguishing tenets of Calvinism, lays greater stress upon faith in his scheme of justification than Dr Gill himself; and that they both consider it as the instrument by which the adult Christian must receive the imputed righteousness of Christ. The greater part of modern Arminians, however, exclaim against the imputation of Christ's righteousness, as a doctrine false in itself, and fraught with the most pernicious consequences; and they would be ready to tell Dr Gill, in his own words, that of his scheme every article is wrong.

It is not true (say they) that God exacts of man, or ever did exact of him, an obedience absolutely perfect; for under every dispensation man was in a state of discipline, and had habits of virtue and piety to acquire; and it is probable that his progress in piety, virtue, and wisdom, will continue for ever, as none but God is perfect and stationary, and incapable of deviating from the line of rectitude. Most of them, after Bishop Bull, dislike the use of such unscriptural phrases as instrument of justification, applied either to faith or to works; and think, that by considering God as the sole justifier of man, upon certain conditions, they can more precisely ascertain the distinct provinces of faith and obedience in the scheme of justification, than either their brethren of the old school of Arminius, or their rivals of the school of Calvin.

By the very constitution of man, piety and virtue are duties which, if he do not sincerely perform, he must of course forfeit the favour of his Maker; but the most perfect performance of his natural duties would not entitle him to a supernatural and eternal reward. Eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ; and it is surely unreasonable that we should acknowledge it to be so, and not claim it as a debt due to our merits. The pious and virtuous man has a natural claim to more happiness than misery during the period of his existence, a claim founded on the attributes of that God who called him into being; but he has no natural claim to a future life, and still less to a perpetuity of existence. This is a truth not more clearly taught in the holy scripture than consonant to the soundest philosophy: and yet, by not attending to it, have St Paul and St James been set at variance, and the most opposite doctrines taught respecting the justification of Christians.

Because faith in Christ cannot entitle a wicked man to eternal happiness, one class of divines seem to infer that such faith is not necessary to Christian justification, and that "his faith cannot be wrong whose life is in the right." They proceed upon the supposition that man is naturally immoral; that piety and virtue are entitled to reward; and that therefore the pious and virtuous man, whatever be his belief, must undoubtedly inherit an eternal reward. But this is very fallacious reasoning. That piety and virtue are through the divine justice and benevolence entitled to reward, is indeed a truth incontrovertible; but that man who is of yesterday is naturally immortal; that a being who began to exist by the mere good will of his Maker, has in himself a principle of perpetual existence independent of that will—is a direct contradiction. Whatever began to be, can be continued in being only by the power, and according to the pleasure, of the infinite Creator; but it pleased the Creator of his free grace at first to promise mankind eternal life, on the single condition of their first father's observing one positive precept. That precept was violated, and the free gift lost; but the covenant was renewed in Christ, who "by his death hath abolished death, and by his resurrection hath brought Faith to light life and immortality." The condition annexed sole condition, but the sole condition, of that justification which is peculiarly Christian; for since Christ, without any co-operation of ours, hath purchased for us the free gift of eternal life, we shall be guilty of the grossest ingratitude to our Divine Benefactor, and impiously claim an independence on God, if we look upon that gift either as a right inherent in our nature, or as a debt due to our meritorious deeds.

But though faith be the condition of justification, as but not that implies the inheritance of eternal life, there are obtaining other conditions to be performed before a man can be put in possession of eternal felicity. By a law long prior to the promulgation of the gospel—a law interwoven with our very being—no man can enjoy the favour of his Maker, who does not make it his constant endeavour "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God." This law was in force before man fell; it continues to be in force now that he is redeemed; and it will not be abrogated even at that period when faith shall give place to vision, and hope to enjoyment.

By the grace of the Christian covenant, all mankind are rendered immortal in consequence of the death and resurrection of Christ, who is the Lamb slain, in the decrees of divine decree, from the foundation of the world; but to obtain immortal happiness, they must observe the conditions both of nature and of revealed religion, which are repentance from dead works, and faith in Christ the Redeemer. The former is that condition upon which alone we can retain the Divine favour, and of course enjoy either present or future happiness; the latter is a most equitable acknowledgement required of us, that perpetual conscious existence is neither a right inherent in our nature, nor a debt due to our virtuous obedience, but merely the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

"To make the distinct provinces of faith and works in the business of justification clear, let us suppose (says Bishop Warburton), that, at the publication of the book of the gospel, all to whom the glad tidings of immortality chap. 3. Vol. XX. Part I. were offered on the condition of faith in Jesus had been more pecu- moral or virtuous men, and on that account entitled (as fairly Chri- natural religion teacheth) to the favour of God and an abundant reward; is it not self-evident that faith alone, exclusive of the condition of good works, would, in that case, have been the very thing which justified or entitled them to life everlasting? But are good works, therefore, of no use in the Christian system? So far from it, that those only who serve God in sincerity and in truth are capable of the justification which faith alone embraces; for, to illustrate this matter by a familiar instance, suppose a British monarch to bestow, in free gift, a certain portion of his own domains, to which immortality may well be compared, upon such of his subjects as should perform a certain service to which they were not obliged by the laws of the kingdom; it is evident that the performance of this last service only would be the thing which entitled them to the free gift. Yet it is obvious that obedience to the laws, which gave them a claim to protection as subjects, in the enjoyment of their own property (to which the reward offered by natural religion may be compared), would be a previous and necessary qualification to their enjoyment of their new possession; since it is absurd to suppose that such a gift could be intended for rebels and traitors, or indeed for any but good and faithful servants of their king and country." Well therefore might the apostle reprove the ignorance or licentiousness of certain of his converts at Rome, in his question—"Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! yea, we establish the law," obedience to it being the previous qualification of all who are entitled to the fruits of justifying faith—LIFE AND IMMORTALITY.

Had proper attention been paid to this distinction, which St Paul everywhere makes between such duties as are common to all religions that are true, and those which are peculiar to the Christian revelation, many useless controversies might have been avoided respecting the instrument of justification and the conditions of the Christian covenant. By not attending to it, the divines of one school, who perceive that the mere belief of any truth whatever cannot entitle a man to eternal felicity, have almost dropt faith from their system of Christianity, and taught moral duties like Pagan philosophers; whilst another party, who err almost as far in their interpretations of scripture, finding eternal life represented as the gift of God, and faith in Christ as the instrument or means by which that gift must be accepted, have expunged from their system the necessity of good works, forgetting surely that wicked believers, like believing devils, may be doomed to an eternity of torments. But the sum of Christianity, as we are taught by the beloved disciple, is comprehended in this one commandment of God, "that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment." In perfect harmony with him, the great apostle of the Gentiles assures us, that "in Christ Jesus nothing can avail to our eternal happiness but faith which worketh by love;" and he informs Titus, that it "is a true saying, and what he wills to be constantly affirmed, that they who have believed in God be careful to maintain good works."

Indeed no man can have complete faith in Christ who believes not the promises of the gospel; but all those promises, except the single one of resurrection from the dead to perpetual conscious existence, are made to us upon the express condition that we obey the law of the gospel; "for God will render to every man according to his deeds: to them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath; tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour, and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile."

Such are the notions of justification entertained by those who in the present age have been considered as the leaders of the sect of Arminians. How far they are just, the reader must decide for himself; but under every view of this doctrine which we have taken, the Christian covenant appears much more glorious than that into which Adam was admitted in paradise: since it affords room for repentance, even to that man, who may be so unhappy as to be drawn for a time into apostasy from the terms of the covenant. Whether the actual sins of men, or only operated as such indirectly by procuring for them repeated opportunities of repentance, it is an undoubted truth, that "if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was of one offence to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences to justification."

Thus graciously has the divine goodness displayed itself in the restoration of our lost inheritance. But it stopt not here. The same bountiful Lord of life, for its further security, imparts to every true believer the strength and light of his holy spirit to support faith in working out our own salvation. Our blessed Saviour promised, before he left this world, to send to his followers the Holy Ghost or Comforter to abide with them for ever, to guide them into all truth, to bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever he had said unto them, and, as we learn from other passages of scripture, to "work in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure." How amply this promise was fulfilled to the apostles, we have already seen; but we are not to suppose that it was restricted to them. As man is designed for a supernatural state in heaven, he stands in need of supernatural direction to guide him to that state. "No man (says our Saviour) can come to me except the Father draw him; for as no man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him, even so none knoweth the things of God but the Spirit of God." This omniscient Spirit indeed searcheth all things, yea even the deep things of God," and revealeth them to the sons of men, to enlighten their understandings and purify their hearts. The grace which he sheds abroad is either external and general, or internal and particular. The former has been extended to the whole church of God under the patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations, in such a revelation of the divine will as was sufficient to instruct men unto eternal life, whether they had a clear view or not of that stupendous plan of redemption, by which the kingdom of heaven was opened to them after the forfeiture of the terrestrial paradise; for there have been "holy prophets ever since the world began;" A third office of the Holy Spirit is to lead, direct, and govern us through all the periods of our lives, more particularly Christians. Without such a leader and guide, the temptations with which we are surrounded would certainly overcome us, and we should faint long before we arrive at the end of our journey. By the very constitution of our nature we guides are subjected in some degree to the influence of sense; them of which the objects are present, whilst the enjoyments through of heaven are future, and seen, as at a distance, only by the eye of faith; but "the law of the Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath made us free from the law of sin and death;" for God worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure; and as many as are thus led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God; and while they walk in the Spirit, they do not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Without the aid of the same Spirit, we could not even make our prayers acceptable; for since "our confidence in God is, that he heareth us only when we ask any thing according to his will; and since we know not what we should pray for as we ought, the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."

A fourth operation of the Holy Ghost, as he is the sanctifier of Christians, is to join them to Christ, and make them members of that one body of which he is the head. "For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body; and as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ." "Hereby we know that God abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us;" and as, in the ordinary course of his dealings with Christians, this Spirit is first given in baptism, so is it continued to the faithful by the instrumentality of the Lord's supper. That ordinance we have elsewhere (see Supper of the Lord) proved to be a federal rite; and surely no time can be supposed so highly sanctified for the reception of the graces of the Holy Spirit, as that in which we renew our federal union with our Lord and Master in the communion of his body and blood.

It is likewise the office of the Holy Ghost to give us an earnest of our everlasting inheritance, to create in us a sense of the paternal love of God, and thereby to assure us of the adoption of sons. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God; and because we are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts. For we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but we have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba Father; the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God."

As the gifts of grace are generally annexed to means, Romans viii., to the proper use of the word and sacraments, it is a sixth office of the same Spirit to sanctify such persons as are regularly set apart for the work of the ministry, and ordained to offer up the public prayers of the people; to sanctify them in the name of God; to teach the doctrines of the gospel; to administer the sacraments instituted by ministers of Christ; and to perform all things necessary "for the ministers perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." The same holy Spirit which illuminated the apostles, and endowed them with power from above to perform personally their apostolic functions, fitted them also for sending others, as they were sent by their Divine Masters; and for establishing... blishing such a constitution of the church as was best adapted for preserving Christians in the unity of the Spirit and bond of peace. They committed a standing power to a successive ministry to be conveyed down to the end of the world; and those who are vested with that power are obliged to "take heed unto themselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made them overseers, to feed the church of God, and to contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints." See Episcopacy, Independents, Presbyterians, Pope, and Quakers.

By these, and the like means, both the Spirit of God sanctify the sons of men; and in consequence of this sanctification proceeding immediately from his office, he is called the Holy Spirit and the Comforter. This is such a provision "for renewing us in the spirit of our minds, and enabling us to put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness," as, when made known by revelation, appears to have been expedient, may be conceived to have been even necessary, and though reason could hardly have hoped for it, is contradicted by none of our natural notions either of God or of man. Many, however, are the controversies to which it has given rise in the church of God; some contending that it is given only unto the elect, upon whom it operates with irresistible efficacy; others affirming that it is offered to all, but in such a manner as that, by the abuse of their free will, it may be "resisted, grieved, and quenched;" and some few, still intoxicated with the pride of Pelagius, think it is not necessary, and of course is not bestowed.

The questions concerning election, the efficacy of grace, and the final perseverance of the saints, we have stated elsewhere, and given a summary view of the arguments by which the contending parties maintain their respective opinions (see Predestination); and the texts of Scripture which we have just quoted, under the different heads of sanctification, show sufficiently that the opinion of Pelagius is directly contrary to the doctrine of the apostles. It may not be improper to enquire whether it be as agreeable to reason and experience as its patrons seem to imagine.

If it be unreasonable to expect any assistance from the Spirit of God in carrying on the work of our own salvation, how came so many of the wisest and best of men in all ages to believe, that he who sincerely endeavours to discharge his duty is supported in that endeavour by assistance from heaven? That such was the popular belief of the early Greeks, is evident from the poems of Homer; in which we everywhere find some god calming the passions of the heroes, altering their determinations when improper, and inspiring them with wisdom. Nor was this the sentiment of the poets only. Socrates, it is well known, professed to believe that his own conduct was under the direction of a superior spirit, which he called a daemon; and Plutarch, as we find him quoted by Wollaston, speaks of the gods assisting men, by "exciting the powers or faculties of the soul; by suggesting secret principles, imaginations, or thoughts; or, on the contrary, by diverting or stopping them." Of the same opinion must Cicero have been, when he said, "stabit illud quidem, quod locum hunc continet, de quo agimus, esse Deos, et eorum providentia mun- dum administrari, eodemque consilere rebus humanis, nec solum universis, verum etiam SINGULIS†;" for it is not conceivable that a particular providence can be administered without the influence of the Deity on the minds of men. That the poets and philosophers of the heathen world derived these notions from primeval tradition, cannot, we think, be questioned; but if they were absurd in themselves, or apparently contradictory to the laws of nature, they would not surely have been so universally embraced; for it will scarcely be denied, that Socrates and Cicero were men of as great natural sagacity as Pelagius or any of his followers. It is indeed so far from being incredible that the Father of spirits occasionally directs the thoughts and actions of men, that we believe there are very few who have made observations on themselves and their own affairs, who have not found, on reflection, many instances in which their usual judgment and sense of things were overruled, they know not how, or why; and that the actions which they performed in those circumstances have had consequences very remarkable in their general history. See Providence, No 18, 19.

This being the case, why should the pride of Christians make them hesitate to admit, on the authority of divine revelation, what Socrates, and Plutarch, and Cicero, and all the virtuous and wise men of antiquity, admitted in effect, on no better evidence than that of oral tradition, supported by their own meditations on their own thoughts, and the principles of their own conduct? Is it that they see not such beneficial effects of Christianity as to induce them to believe the professors of that religion to be indeed "chosen to salvation through the sanctification of the Spirit?" Let them study the practical precepts of the gospel, consider the consequences which they have had on the peace and happiness of society, and compare the general conduct of Christians with that of the Jews, Pagans, and Mahometans (see Religion), and they will doubtless find reason to alter their opinion; and let those who embrace the truth remember, that as they are the temple of God, if the Spirit of God dwell in them, "it is their indispensable duty to cleanse themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit; to follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which, no man shall see the Lord; and to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, since it is God who worketh in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure."

From this short view of the several dispensations of the revealed religion, it is evident that the gospel is not only the best but the last gift of the kind which man has to expect from his Maker; that the scheme of revelation is completed; and that the pretences of Mahomet and of more modern enthusiasts to divine inspiration are not only false, but fraught with contradictions. All these men admit the divine origin of the Mosaic and Christian religions; but it appears from the scriptures, in which those religions are taught, that the system of revealed truths which constitute the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian revelations, commenced with the fall of man, and that it must therefore necessarily end with his restoration to life and immortality by the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. A new revelation therefore like that of Mahomet cannot be admitted without rejecting the whole Bible, though the impostor himself everywhere acknowledges the inspiration of Abraham, of Moses, and of Christ. Nor is greater regard due to the claims of Christian enthusiasts. Such as pretend to