commodiously placed, either for use or beauty. to find both parts of his composition menWhile the world shall last, genius and diligence will be producing fresh proofs that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made;" that "marvellous are the works," and, above all, this capital work, of the Almighty, and that the hand which made it must needs be verily and indeed divine.

Into the body of man, thus constructed, we learn from Moses, that God "breathed the breath of life, and man became a living soul." The question here will be, Whether these words are intended to denote the rational and immortal soul, or the sensitive and animal life?

They are certainly sometimes used in the lower of these acceptations. "Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils. All creatures in whose "nostrils was the breath of life died by the flood." By these texts it appears, that the terms spirit and breath are used to signify that animal life, which is supported, mechanically, by respiration through the nostrils.

But they are likewise used for the rational and immortal soul; witness those words of the Psalmist, adopted by our Lord when expiring on the cross; "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." So again "The spirit||| shall return to God, who gave it." And "The spirit of man T is the candle of the Lord."

tioned; and that a personal act of the Deity, that of inspiring the breath of life, is recorded with regard to him, which is not said of the other creatures; we can hardly do otherwise than conclude, that the words were intended to denote, not the animal life only, but also another life communicated with it, and represented by it: in a word, that man consisteth of a body so organized as to be sustained in life by the action of the material elements upon it, and a rational, immortal soul, supported, in a similar manner, by the influence of a superior and spiritual agency.

We had occasion to observe above, that when the knowledge of the Creator, furnished at the beginning by revelation, had been lost in the Heathen world, men paid to the works of his hands that adoration which was due to him. The material elements were invested with divinity and immortality, and worshipped as gods. It may now be farther observed, that to the soul of man, considered as a portion of these elements, was attributed the same divinity and immortality; and thus things natural were substituted in the place of things spiritual, a proper notion of which, could not then be attained, for want of that instruction from above, which directs us how to transfer our ideas from one to the other, aud to believe in the latter as conceived through the medium of the former. So diffi Spiritual essences and operations come cult has it ever been found, for the human not under the cognizance of those senses, mind to pass the bounds of matter, and to exwhich, during the present state of proba-plore the invisible wonders of the spiritual tion, God has been pleased to make the world. And whoever observes the progress inlets of our ideas. They must, therefore, of that scheme which is once more set up be represented and described to us, in the way of comparison and analogy, by such language as is commonly styled figurative, or metaphorical. Of animal life, begun and continued by respiration, we have a proper and sufficient knowledge. From a contemplation of that life, and the 'manner in which it is supported by the air, we are directed to frame our notions of a higher life, maintained by the influence of a higher principle. For this purpose, the terms which denote the former But to return to the Mosaic account of are borrowed to express the latter; and we man, of whose distinguishing excellencies we find the words translated spirit and breath, are taught to entertain the most exalted sensometimes used for one, and sometimes for timents, when we are told, that he was made the other. But when we consider that man," in the image and likeness of God." For as other Scriptures do testify, has within him what more can be said of a creature, than a rational soul, an immortal spirit, which, on that he is made after the similitude of his the dissolution of the body, returns to God Creator? who gave it; that, in this original description of his formation, we may reasonably expect

against revelation, by some, in our own and a neighboring nation, who affect the title of philosophers in opposition to that of Christians, and whose abilities one cannot but lament to see employed in this manner, will perceive its tendency to introduce material ism, and to carry us back again to that state of darkness, from which it pleased the Father of lights in mercy to deliver us by the Gospel of his Son.

As "God is a Spirit," the similitude here spoken of must be a spiritual similitude; and the subject to which it relates must be the spiritual part of man, his rational and immortal soul.

To discover wherein such image and like

ness consisted, what better method can we take than to inquire, wherein consist that divine image and likeness, which, as the Scriptures of the New Testament inform us, were restored in human nature, through the redemption and grace of Christ, who was manifested for that purpose? The image restored was the image lost; and the image lost was that in which Adam was created.

The expressions employed by the penmen of the New Testament, plainly point out to us this method of proceeding. We read of the new man, "which after God is created;"* and of man being "renewed after the image of him that created him; "+ and the like. The use of the term created, naturally refers us to man's first creation, and leads us to parallel that with his renovation, or new creation, by which he re-obtained those excellencies possessed at the beginning, but afterwards unhappily forfeited.

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And what are these?" Renewed in knowledge, after the image of him that created him-Put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness, OGIOTTI TIS aλμÕcias, the holiness of, or according to, truth." The divine image, then, is to be found in the understanding and the will; in the understanding which knows the truth, and in the will which loves it. For when the understanding judges that to be true which with God is true, the man is " renewed in knowledge after the image of him; when the will loves the truth, and all its affections move in the pursuit and practice of it, the man is "new created, after God, in righteousness and holiness." This divine image is restored in human nature by the word of Christ enlightening the understanding, and the grace of Christ rectifying the will. These are, in the end, to render man what he was at first created, according to that passage the writings of king Solomon, which is the shortest and best comment upon the words of Moses "God made man upright "-the original word signifies straight, direct, there was no error in his understanding, no obliquity in his will. He who says this, says every thing. It is a full and comprehensive account of man in his original state; nothing can be added to it, or taken from it.

in

Such, then, was Adam, in the day when God crowned him king in Eden, and invested him with sovereignty over the works of his hands; giving him 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."

It appears to have been the order of Providence, that while the flesh continued in subjection to the spirit, and man to God, so long the creatures should continue in subjection to man, as servants are subject to their lord and master. This original subjection we must suppose to have been universal and absolute. From the creatures man had much to learn, but nothing to fear. If, to answer the purposes of creation, or to convey to his mind ideas of his invisible enemies, any were at that time wild and noxious, with regard to him they were tame and harmless. In perfect security he saw, he considered, he admired. But when he rebelled against his God, the creatures renounced their allegiance to him, and became, in the hands of their common Creator, instruments of his punishment.-" The beasts of the field" were no longer "at peace with him." Yet, in consequence of the new covenant and promise to redeem man and the world, we find it said after the flood-"The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon the fishes of the sea." So far is the superiority of the human species still preserved, that every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind." In some cases, for the sake of eminently holy persons, favored by Heaven on that account, the instincts of the most savage and ravenous have been suspended; as when some of every kind assembled and lodged together in the ark, and when the mouths of the lions were stopped in the den of Babylon, while the righteous and greatly beloved Daniel was there. The Redeemer of the world endued his disciples with the original privilege-"Behold I give you power to tread on serpents, and on scorpions; and nothing shall by any means hurt you." And, agreeably to such promise, St. Paul "shook off the viper into the fire, and felt no harm." The eighth Psalm is a beautiful representation of the extent of this privilege, as it was possessed, at the beginning, by the first Adam, and as it hath been since restored by the second-"O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man,

that thou art mindful of him? and the son of | he will awake to behold the never-fading man, thou visitest him? For thou hast made glories of a world which "will have no need him a little lower than the angels, and hast of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in crowned him with glory and honor. Thou it; for the Lord God and the Lamb," those madest him to have dominion over the works brighter and inextinguishable luminaries, shall of thy hands; thou hast put all things under enlighten it for ever.* The Almighty shall his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the again with complacency survey the works of beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and his hands, and pronouce every thing he has the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth made to be "very good;" he shall again rest through the paths of the seas. O Lord, our on the seventh day; the children of the reLord, how excellent is thy name in all the surrection shall enter into his rest, and keep an eternal sabbath. Let us "comfort one another with these words."

earth!"

Let us indulge a few reflections on the foregoing particulars.

A view of the different materials of which The imagination naturally endeavors to man is composed, may teach us to form a form some idea of the sensations that must proper estimate of him. He stands between have arisen in the mind of the first man, when, the two worlds, the natural and the spiritual, awaking into existence, with all his senses and and partakes of both. His body is material, " faculties perfect, he beheld the glory and but its inhabitant descends from another sysbeauty of the new-created world. Faded as tem. His soul, like the world from which it we must suppose its glory and its beauty now comes, is immortal; but his body, like the to be, enough still remains to excite continual world to which it belongs, is frail and perwonder, praise, and adoration. Yet it is re-ishable. From its birth it contains in it the presented in the Scriptures of truth, as lying seeds and principles of dissolution, towards under a curse, as groaning and travailing in which it tends every day and hour, by the pain, and as little better than a prison, from very means that nourish and maintain it, and which all, who are truly sensible of its con- which no art can protract beyond a certain dition and their own, wish and pray to be term. In spite of precaution and medicine, delivered, into the liberty of the children of "the evil days will come, and the years draw God. But if such be our prison, what notions nigh, when he shall say, I have no pleasure are we led to form of those mansions, which in them." Pains and sorrows will succeed our Lord is gone before to prepare for us in each other, as "the clouds return after the his Father's house? Creation was finished in rain," blackening the face of heaven, and six days; and we read that, " on the seventh, darkening the sources of light and joy. The God rested from all his work which he created hands, those once active and vigorous "keepand made." But the transgression of man ers of the house," grown paralytic, "shall would not suffer him to rest. "My Father," tremble; " and "the strong men," those firm says the blessed Jesus, "worketh hitherto, and able columns which supported it, shall and I work." Sin made its way into the "bow themselves," and sink under the weight. first creation, and is gradually destroying it, The external "grinders" of the food, the as a moth fretteth a garment. "Lift up your teeth, "shall cease, because they are few," eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth and the work of mastication shall be imperbeneath; for the heavens shall vanish away fectly performed. Dim suffusion shall veil like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like the organs of sight," they that look out of the a garment, and they that dwell therein shall windows shall be darkened." The doors, or die in like manner."İ "But we, according valves," shall be shut in the streets" or alleys to his promise, look for new heavens and a of the body, when the digestive powers are new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." weakened, and "the sound of the" internal We read of one who, in vision, "saw a new "grinding is low." Sleep, if it light upon heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven the eyelids of age, will quickly remove again, and the first earth were passed away." When and he will rise up" at the time when the the new creation shall be finished and pre- first "voice of the bird" proclaims the appared, an act of omnipotence will be exerted, proach of the morning. "All the daughters similar to that which passed at the formation of music shall be brought low;" he will hear of Adam. The Lord God will again "form no more the voice of singing men and singman out of the dust of the ground, and breathe ing women. Timidity and distrust will preinto his nostrils the breath of life." From dominate, and he will be alarmed at every his long sleep in the chamber of the grave, thing; "he shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way." As the

* Gen. ii. 2. § 2 Peter, iii. 3.

+ John, v. 17.

|| Rev, xxi.

Isa. li. 16

Rev. xxi. 23.

early "almond tree," when it flourishes in generation in the most effectual manner. And full blossom, his hoary head shall be conspicu- though, when this is done, we must close our ous in the congregation, the sure prognostic, eyes in death, and sleep with our fathers; not of spring, alas! but of winter; he who, yet the hour cometh, in which we shall open like "the grasshopper," in the season of youth them again, to "behold thy face, O God, in was so sprightly in his motions, now scarce rightousness; we shall be satisfied, when we able to crawl upon the earth, "shall be a awake with thy likeness."* burden" to himself; and, the organs of sense being vitiated and impaired, "desire" and appetite "shall fail.” The spinal marrow, that "silver cord," with the infinite ramifications of the nerves thence derived, will be relaxed, and lose its tone; "and the golden bowl," the receptacle of the brain, from which it proceeds, " shall be broken." The vessel, by which, as a "pitcher," the blood is carried back to the heart for a fresh supply, "shall be broken at the fountain, and the wheel," or instrument of circulation, which throws it forth again to the extremities of the oody, "shall be broken at the cistern."* When this highly finished piece of mechanism shall be thus disjoined and dissolved, "then shall the dust," of which it was framed, "return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it." Learn we, from hence, to bestow on each part of our conposition, that proportion of time and attention, which, upon a due consideration of its nature and importance, it shall appear to claim at our hands.

Was Adam invested with sovereignty over the creatures? Observe we from hence, that man was made to rule. Majestic in his form, he was ordained to trample upon earth, and aspire to heaven, which, without putting a force upon nature, he cannot but behold and regard. In the original subjection of the creatures, we see what ought to be that of every desire and appetite, terrestrial and animal, to the ruling principle within us. The subtilty of some creatures, and the fierceness of others, now exhibit to us the difficulty of subduing and governing the passions, broken loose, like them, from the dominion of their master; insomuch that the apostle, who asserts that every creature may be, and has been, tamed of man, yet says of one part of man, the tongue," it is a deadly evil, which no man can tame," meaning by his own powers. Through the redemption and grace which are by Christ Jesus, this dominion, as well as the other, is restored, not only over our own passions, but over still more formidable opponents, the evil spirits in arms against To stamp on man his own image, was the us. For thus our Lord gave his disciples design of God in creating him; to restore power not only over the natural " serpents that image, when lost, was the design of God and scorpions," but over some whose venom in redeeming him. Could greater honor is of a more malignant and fatal kind; have been done to human nature? Never all the power of THE ENEMY." The apostles the guilt be ours of debasing our nature returned, accordingly, crying out, "Lord, the and obliterating "this image and superscrip- very DEVILS are subject unto us, through thy tion; "a species surely of treason against the name!" And we have a general promise, majesty of heaven. Sloth will obscure the that, in our combats with them, God will give fair impression; its attendants, ignorance and us victory, and bruise their leader, Satan himvice, will destroy it. Let diligence, there- self, under our feet. Our Redeemer is exalted fore, be appointed to watch over it, and to above the heavens ; and human nature, in the retouch, from time to time, the lines that are second Adam, restored to dominion over all faded; till, the whole standing confessed in the earth. And though, at present, the aposknowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, tle's lot may be ours, to "fight with beasts," men may glorify our Father which is in with evil men, evil passions, and evil spirits, heaven, while they behold his resemblance yet, through God, we shall do great acts; it upon earth. So shall we answer the ends of is he that shall tread down those that rise up our creation and redemption, and serve our against us; till, finally triumphant over the last enemy, and exalted to the eternal throne, we shall view the earth beneath us, and the sun and stars shall be dust under our feet.

may

* See the Portrait of Old, Age, in a Paraphrase on the six former verses of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, by John Smith, M. D., of the College of Physicians; reprinted in 1752, for E. Withers, at the Seven Stars, between the two Temple Gates, Fleet-street.

Psal. xvii. 15.

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VOL. II.

DISCOURSE II.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

GENESIS, II. 8.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

By bringing these forth to view, and comparing them together, we may possibly be led to some agreeable speculations concerning the situation of Adam in the garden of Eden, the nature of his employment, and the felicity he there experienced.

In a preceding discourse some considera- | are found many references and allusions to it. tions were offered, tending to elucidate the particulars related by Moses concerning the origination of man; namely, the time of his formation; the resolution taken by the Deity on the occasion; the materials of which he was composed; the divine image in which he was created; and the dominion over the creatures with which he was invested.

On a subject so remote, and confessedly difficult, demonstration will not be expected. Much of what is advanced, must be advanced rather as probable than certain; and where there is little positive information, the candor so often experienced will accept of such notices as can be obtained by inference and deduction.

The words now read mark out the history of that habitation in which it pleased the Almighty to place him at the beginning, for the subject of our present inquiries-a subject not only curious but highly interesting. For if Levi be said to have paid tithes to Melchizedek, as being in the loins of Abraham, at When we think of Paradise, we think of the time of that transaction; we may, in like it as the seat of delight. The name EDEN manner, regard ourselves as having taken authorizes us so to do. It signifies PLEASURE; possession of Eden, being in the loins of our and the idea of pleasure is inseparable from ancestor when he did so. And though it that of a garden, where man still seeks after can afford but small comfort, to reflect upon lost happiness, and where, perhaps, a good the excellence of an inheritance which we man finds the nearest resemblance of it which have lost, it may inspire into us due senti- this world affords. "What is requisite," exments of gratitude and love towards that claims a great and original genius, " to make blessed Person who hath recovered it for us. a wise and a happy man, but reflection and And thus every consideration which enhances peace? And both are the natural growth of the value of the possession, will probably a garden. A garden to the virtuous, is a magnify the goodness of our great Benefactor. Paradise still extant; a Paradise unlost."* For these reasons, we sometimes, perhaps, The culture of a garden, as it was the first find ourselves disposed to lament the concise- employment of man, so it is that to which ness and obscurity of that account which Moses hath left us of man's primeval estate in Paradise. But when we recollect, that to this account we owe all the information we have upon so important a point, it will become us to be thankful that we have been told so much, rather than to murmur because we have been told no more; and, instead of lamenting the obscurity of the Mosaic account, to try whether, by diligence and attention, that obscurity may not be, in part, dispelled. For though Moses hath only given us a compendious relation of facts (and facts of the utmost importance may be related in very few words,) that relation is ratified and confirmed in the Scriptures of both Testaments, in which

the most eminent persons in different ages have retired, from the camp and the cabinet, to pass the interval between a life of action and a rer:oval hence. When old Dioclesian was invited from his retreat to resume the purple which he had laid down some years before, "Ah," said he, "could you but see those fruits and herbs of my own raising at Salona, you would never talk to me of empire!" An accomplished statesman of our own country, who spent the latter part of his life in this manner, hath so well described the advantages of it, that it would be injustice to communicate his ideas in any words but

*

Dr. Young-Centaur not Fabulous, p. 61.