what he might by industry and labour get the better of." Yet we do not find that any improvements in husbandry made in the first world were so great, but that the most. experienced in its later times acknowledged themselves. sensible of the heavy and universal burden of their lives; of the great toil and work of their hands; before they had a grant to make use of animal food, for a further supply, than what they could reap from the ground.

But the last part of the sentence denounced upon the man, was, that he should die; that as he had been taken out of the ground, so he should, after a laborious life, return unto the ground again, and become no better than his primitive dust.d

с

This sentence, we may observe, is not so particularly, repeated against Eve, as against the man. But as all, experience testifies that the woman is in no wise exempted from death, it must be remarked, that enough was said in the original denunciation of death, as well as acknowledged by Eve herself, to shew, that having transgressed, and the sentence of death against such transgression being in no wise reversed, it could not be supposed, that she could think it should not proceed against her. But there appears an evident reason, why the sentence of death should be thus repeated, and, as it were, re-established against Adam. He had thought,

b

Labor omnia vincit

Improbus, et duris urgens in rebus egestas.

- Gen. v. 29.

Gen. ii, 17,

VIRG. Georg, i. Gen. iii. 19.

Gen. iii, 3.

and offered it as a mitigation of his fault, that he was not the first in transgression; for that the woman had misled him to eat : God, therefore, denounced more particularly to him, that he should not escape the punishment denounced against what he had done; to tell him, that his plea was no excuse; for that, although he had been misled by hearkening unto the voice of his wife; yet, as he had done what had been commanded not to be done, he also should surely die.

It hath been thought by some, that the death decla red against the sin of our first parents, ought, according to the plain meaning of the words in which it was denounced, to have proceeded to an immediate execution. In the day that they ate of the tree, they were surely to die: Can it be said with any propriety, that when Adam died nine hundred and thirty years afterwards, that he died in the day that he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? This is a cavil too trifling to want confutation; for every one, who reads the Hebrew Bible, must see a manifest difference between the general expression beyom,' in the day, and beyom hazeth, in that very day, beyom hahua, in the same day." Had either of the latter expressions been

Gen. iii. 12.

m

It may be observed, that the particle ki may be even here rendered not because, but more elegantly although, as I have before observed it must be sometimes trans

used in the seventeenth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, it might have signified, that in the very day of their eating, they should, without further delay, have been put to death: but the general expression, in the day, may very obviously claim to have a larger signification, and intend no more, than that from the time of their transgression they should become mortal; have in themselves the sentence of death, sure to take effect and be executed in its time, which He who made them would appoint.

9

It was now determined, that they should inevitably die; but the instant, hour, or day when, was still left in God's power; and we may easily apprehend great and wise reasons why God was not pleased to bring our first parents, and their immediate descendants, to a more early dissolution. God in no wise made man for nought; and although he made not death for us, but man sought it in the error of his life, yet herein God's abundant goodness has provided for us. It could not be consistent with the liberty of reason, and the freedom of our natures, that he should absolutely force upon us either wisdom or virtue. Being such creatures as he intended, it was more suitable for us to be admitted to grow up, if we would, as our faculties were capable of improvement in both, under the universal influence of his Spirit, in and by which, agreeably to their respective natures, all things are, and do consist; and conse

• 2 Cor. i. 9. P Psalm lxxxix. 47.

Ver. 12.

2 Cor. iii. 5.

Vob. IV.

9 Wisdom i. 13.

See and consider John i. 9. Job xxxii. 8. Coloss. i. 17.

quently time would be necessary for our increasing in all knowledge as well as virtue. What I shall here offer, shall chiefly concern the former.

We have now, indeed, lives but as a shadow, short as a dream, in comparison of the duration of the first men; but we have much light from the experience of ages; all the knowledge we want for life, is not so far from us as it was from them, who lived in the beginning. Had our first parents, and their immediate descendants, come to decline as precipitately as we do; their knowledge of life would have been cut down too fast, for any shoots to be made which might yield a produce of arts and sciences necessary for the improvement of the world. Therefore, if we duly think of mankind, what we came from, and how we are come up to what we now are; we may see, respecting our present life, that it is long enough, ordinarily speaking, for what is to be our work in the world; and also that the early ages must have required a more extended period, for human attainments to be gradually opened and displayed; that man, as far as he was made capable, if he should have time to come up to it, might not absolutely be cut off from, in not being allowed a sufficient term to attain it. The complaint, that life is not long enough for man to reap all the fruits" of his labours under the sun, might be as sensibly felt by our earliest forefathers, as it is by us. They lived, as I may say, nearer the ground: their prospects were not so elevated, (things

t See Sherlock upon Death, c. 3. §. 2.

We commonly say, "Ars longa, vita brevis."

not having been tried for common use and benefit,) as our sight of things are. The schools of literature, or the shops of artificers, can at once put us, even in our younger years, upon a progress in science above what they could come near to in all their centuries; and excepting, that if they would fear God, and keep his commandments, they had herein all that they wanted for a life to come; and we in all our attainments, more than this, have nothing worthy to be compared with it; they must have felt concerning their life, when over, though, they did not feel it so soon as we do, that, in comparison of what they might have hoped from it, few, after all, and evil, were the days of their pilgrimage. A pilgrimage it was, which, however long we may think it, in counting over the days of the years of it, unquestionably seemed to them, when they had passed through it, but as a tale that was told; and it brake off, at last, short of that human perfection, which they might perceive was far more extensive than what they had attained; and that had their lives been shorter, they would not have had room to lay the foundation for what God intended they should contribute to human science, and the improvement of the world.

x

In the day that our first parents ate of the tree, they died, or became mortal. It is frivolously inquired by

* Jacob said this of his days, when he was one hundred and thirty years old: Gen. xlvii. 9. And can we think, that if he had lived to the days of the years of the life of his progenitors, he would have found in human life, to use Tully's language, the quod est diu? Cic. de Senectute.