When Adam, undeceived, 1 Tim. ii. 14, broke through the bounds of the law, contrary to his own judgment, his better knowledge and confcience, the Holy Ghoft and his divine love left him; God gathered unto himfelf his spirit, and Adam died, Job. xxxiv. 14. And, having finned, en mity and hatred to God took place in him, and he was left in full poffeffion of it. The word of God makes this divine love to be three things to men. 1. It is called the bond of all perfectness, Colofs. iii. 14. It was the bond of union between God and Adam, and all their communion was founded on it: but, when enmity was conceived in Adam's heart, this union was diffolved, God was displeased with man, and man's mind was enmity against God. And God himself asks, "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" Amos iii. 3. And Adam immediately made this difagreement manifeft; for, as foon as he heard the voice of God in the garden, he fled from him, and hid himself: he loved darkness, and hated the light of God's countenance, defiring no more union nor communion with him, and therefore fled to fhun it and escape it. 2. I have before obferved that God's love in Adam was the image of God in Adam's foul, and his robe of righteousness: hence it is that Adam felt himself naked when he loft it, and immedi ately began to fubftitute fomething instead of it, which was a drefs made of leaves, fetting a fad example to all his children, which to this day tread in the fame fteps, by clothing themselves with a covering, but not of God's Spirit, Ifaiah xxx.1. 3. Love, according to fcripture, is the way of God, and a way that excels all others: hence Paul calls charity the more excellent way, 1 Cor. xii. 31; and declares that all gifts, knowledge, language, and miraculous faith, are nothing without it but noise and fhew. In complete happiness, and in perfect freedom, were our first parents turned adrift on this moft excellent way at the beginning. And I have often obferved that way, in the fingular, not ways in the plural, is to be met with in the complaints of God upon this head. "The earth alfo was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth," Gen. vi. 11, 12, I come now to fhew what this corruption is, Adam's tranfgreffion of God's law brought the fentence of the law, which is death, into his confcience; at the entrance of which Satan took occafion to fill Adam's mind with his own infernal enmity against God, which was not a difficult work for fatanic wisdom to perform, seeing the Holy Spirit and his divine love was gone, and Adam's mind was carnalized by fin, a proper foil for Satan to fow his defperate enmity in. The image of God in Adam is exprefsly called the glory of God; "Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man," 1 Cor. xi. 7: This glory of God being loft by fin, we are all faid to fail or come fhort of it; " All have finned, and come short of the glory of God," Rom. iii. 23. Infiead of God's glory being on us, we are become moft inglorious by fin; and, instead of being in God's image, which was fpiritual, and which the law of God, being fpiritual, requires, the apoftle fays we are carnal, fold under fin, Rom. vii. 14; and this difparity is manifeft enough between a spiritual law and a carnal man, fold under fin. God's love by the Spirit in Adam set him on a level with this fpiritual law of God; but, when this image or love of God was loft, then the difparity between the law and man took place; nor could all the pureft natural affections in the world, if they met and centered in one foul, amount to a fingle act of obedience to the first and great command of the moral law; for the law being fpiritual, natural affections cannot attain unto it. The Holy Ghoft in Adam, adorning and enrobing his foul with divine love, fet him on a level with God's law: and, if the authority of an apostle may be depended upon, nothing less can fulfil the law than "the love of God fhed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghoft given unto us," Rom v. 5: for fo he fays; "That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit," Rom. viii. 4. By this fulfilling principle Paul does not mean the righteousness of Chrift imputed, for that is without us, and not in us, and is faid to be put on, and not into us: by this fulfilling principle he means the love of God in the heart, “Love is," as he says, "the fulfilling of the law," Rom. xiii. 10; and this is not done by us, but God does it in us. This love is the image of God in his faints; and every discovery of God's love to us is inflaming the foul with fresh love to God, which Paul calls changing us "into the fame image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord," 2 Cor. iii. 18. Nor does the apostle Paul, when contrafting Christ with Adam, as the two covenant heads, and heads of two different families, contradict what I have faid of Adam. It is highly neceffary to dif tinguish the Creator from the creature, and be tween Adam and the Lord from heaven, between Adam dead and the quickening Spirit. Paul, in that whole chapter, the xvth of the first book of the Corinthians, never once mentions the image of God in Adam, nor Adam as standing in God's image. He begins with Adam as fallen; "Since by man came death, by man came alfo the refur-. rection of the dead; for, as in Adam all die, even fo in Chrift fhall all be made alive." Then Paul goes on to the creation of Adam; "And fo it is written, the first man Adam was made a living foul, the last Adam a quickening Spirit." Here is no mention of God's image in Adam, but of his being made a living foul; and this foul Adam had after the fall, for the foul is the life of the body, the body without the fpirit being dead. And the foul of Paul was alive without the law until the commandment came; for, although the sentence was paffed upon Adam, and entered into his confcience by fin, yet that sentence was not then, nor is it yet, fully executed; for God fays, "The foul that finneth it shall die," which shews that the execution of death's fentence is yet to come. Moreover, Paul's contrafting Adam as made a living foul, with the laft Adam a quickening Spirit, fhews that Paul's contraft was between Adam as dead and the quickening Spirit as giving life; for all the time that the Spirit of God, the love of God, and the life of God, abode in Adam, there was no room for the quickening Spirit to give newness of life, because the old life was not loft; but, when death entered, and man became condemned, and alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in him, Eph. vi. 18, then, but not till then, was life and immortality by Chrift needed. Furthermore, Paul calling |