not, to his own destruction. When God says, "Saviours shall come down upon mount Zion, to judge the mount of Esau," Obad. 21; "And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their hosts shall fall down as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the figtree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse to judgment," Isa. xxxiv. 4, 5. Will this Arminian say that these awful denunciations have no reference to the eternal state of any of them? Then I should be glad to know what is meant by the hatred of God, the bathed sword of justice, the curse of the law, and the eternal indignation of the Lord; and what the comparative sense of these things is? These things seem to me to be sufficient to sink the strongest free-agent into hell and damnation. And Mr. Skinner's comparative sense, if we compare scripture with scripture, according to its proper meaning, amounts to this, that those whom God loves as he did Jacob, with an everlasting love, must be saved; and those that God hates, as he did Esau, and has an everlating indignation against, must be damned, if the Bible be true: this is the comparative sense, and is the true sense. And if we compare the elect and reprobate together, the comparison is awful, and is a tremendous display of mercy and judgment, of goodness and severity,

Nothing can be plainer than the scriptures are concerning the two covenants, that of works and that of grace; the two covenant heads, Adam the first, and Adam the second, are as conspicuous: the children of the flesh, and those of the promise, the curse of the one, and the blessing of the other, appear from one end to the other of divine revelation. And these two families have appeared as conspicuous in the world as in the Bible, ever since men began to multiply in the earth; and there will be the beloved city in the world, and the reprobate host compassing it about, and besieging it, till by the God of heaven the final conflagration raises the siege, blasts the conspiracy, routs the confederates, and drives them into the confines of everlasting darkness.

After the expulsion from Paradise, Adam stood with all the human race, elect and reprobate, in his loins; he had a promise to build his own hopes upon; but there were two seeds mentioned, the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman; and enmity was put by God between them; by the seed of the woman, Christ and his mystical body are intended; this is the bruised party, whose heels have ever been trampled upon, but God heals her that halteth; the other party is the old serpent the devil and his seed, which Christ calleth serpents, and a generation of vipers, and are said to be of their father the devil. This is the bruising party.

When Adam became the father of two sons;

Here

the two seeds, and the enmity God had put between them, appeared. Abel obtains the grace of faith, and witness that he was righteous: God testifying of his gifts. Cain appeared to be of that wicked one, the devil. God's sovereign respect to Abel, and disrespect to Cain and his offering, stirred up the enmity of his heart, and he slew his brother, because his works were righteous. began the religion of free-thinking, free-agency, justification by works, and free-will sovereignty, which was displayed in the slaughter of Abel. Cain was the founder of this human system, and it was founded in blood; he was cursed from the earth, banished from the church, and from the presence of God with a falling countenance-the visible mark of a reprobate. Adam, as an heir of promise, with Eve, now stood alone, until God raised up another seed; and after that, men began to call on the name of the Lord; and God continued the covenant line down to the days of Noah, and distinguished them all the way by the name of sons of God, opposed to the daughters of men, until the flood came; before which he took the righteous from that evil to come, deluged the fraternity of Cain, with other reprobates, and preserved righteous Noah and the whole militant church circumscribed within the family of that just man. After the deluge, not only Noah but Shem appears a visible heir of promise, and a future enlargement is predicted to Japheth; then Ham, the father of the Egyptians, seems to step

forward, with his son Canaan, as one of the reprobate, to inherit the curse of Cain: "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be." It is well known that God smote the chief of their strength in the tabernacle of Ham; and that he destroyed the seven nations of Canaan when their iniquity was full.

In the family of Abraham, Isaac appears an heir of promise; and Ishmael, that child of the flesh, that wild man, whose hand was to be against every man, stepped forth in the old enmity, mocking Isaac; or, as Paul says, persecuting him that was by promise, till by the command of God both he and his mother were banished from the church; and by his marriage with a woman of Egypt, he became, by affinity, one of the tabernacles of Ham. In Isaac's family Jacob appears an heir of promise; and Esau, the cunning hunter, the man of the field, steps forth in the shoes of Cain, and the old enmity works afresh till murder was conceived: "And Esau hated Jacob, because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand, then will I slay my brother Jacob." These chosen sons and rejected servants the Saviour found in his days: "The servant abideth not in the house ever, but the son abideth ever."

The reprobate part of the house of Levi, upon whose self-will, fierce anger, and cruel wrath, Jacob left the curse on his death bed; who slew a

man, and digged down a wall, for which he divided them in Jacob, and scattered them in Israel, Gen. xlix. 5, 6, 7; appeared in Christ's days in the image and enmity of Cain; the priests bought his blood, and killed the Lord of life; and by their appearing in Cain's cause, all the blood shed from the blood of righteous Abel, is to be required of that generation; and it is plain the judgment of God began to be executed first at the sanctuary; for from the priests prophaneness had gone out into all the land; and the rest of them, with the other reprobated Jews, are left desolate, in bondage with their children, with the blood of Abel, and, according to their request, the blood of Christ upon them and their children; and will remain so, until the time comes that they shall look at him whom they have pierced, and mourn, and be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born, Zech. xii. 10; which time certainly will come: but as yet they remain, as the Saviour calls them, the synagogue of Satan. For the elect's sake they were spared at the destruction of Jerusalem; and when those heirs of promise that are yet in their loins shall appear, then their fathers will fall in this wilderness, and leave their children to inherit the land of Canaan.

Thus it appears that there ever has been, now is, and ever will be, two seeds in the world, and an implacable enmity between them; and though we know not the one from the other, the Lord does, and will make manifest the children of God