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becoming God to frustrate such a desire, commanded and excited by himself? Moreover we have said, that it is a contradiction, for any to suppose God addressing himself to a holy soul in the following words: Hunger after me, but on condition you do not enjoy me. Yet in the moment we conceive the holy creature just sinking into annihilation, it would, in consequence of that divine command, hunger and thirst after God, without any hope of enjoying him again for ever. Unless one would chuse to affirm, that God at length will say to that soul, Long not for me any more, but acquiesce in this demonstration of my supreme dominion, by which I order thee to return to nothing. But I confess I cannot comprehend, how it is possible, that a holy creature is not bound to consider God as its supreme good, and consequently pant after the enjoyment of him.

XXIII. O Lord JEHOVAH, how little is it that we poor mortals know of thy supreme Deity, and thy incomprehensible perfections! How little do our thougts of thee correspond to the immesity of thy essence, of thy perfections, and of thy sovereignty over the creatures! What mortal can take upon him to circumscribe within his own limits, where thou dost not lead the way! This we know, Lord, that thou art indebted to none, and that there is none who can say to thee, What dost thou, and why doest thou so that thou art also holy, and infinitely good, and therefore a lover and rewarder of holiness. May the consciousness of our ignorance in other things kindle in our hearts an ineffable desire of that beatific vision, by which, knowing as we are known, we may, in the abyss of thy infinity, behold those things, which we cannot now reach by any thought.

CHAP. V.

Of the Penal Sanction of the Covenant of Works.

IT remains, that we consider the penal sanction, expressed by the Lord in these words: For in the day that thou eatest thereof (the tree of knowledge of good and evil) thou shalt surely die.*

II. Several things are here to be distinctly noted. 1. That all that God here threatens, is the consequence and punishment of sin, to be inflicted on none but the rebellious and disobedient: and therefore Socinus and his followers most absurdly make the death mentioned in the threatening, a consequence not so much of sin, as of nature. The words of God are plain to any man's conscience, which derive death from the eating of the forbidden tree. 2. That the sin here expressed, is a violation not of the natural, but of the symbolical law, given to man for the trial of his most perfect obedience. From whence nevertheless he could most easily gather, that if the transgression of a precept, whose universal goodness depends only on the good pleasure of God, was thus to be punished, what punishment does not the transgression of that law, which is a transcript of the most holy nature of God, deserve? 3. That it is altogether agreeable to God's authority and most righteous will, that there be a certain connection between the sin and the punishment, pointed out by these words. This also is indicated by the ingemination, Dying thou shalt die; that is, thou shalt verily, surely, most certainly die. So that it is not possible for the sinner to escape death, unless perhaps a proper sponsor (of which this is not the place) should undergo it in his stead. 4. That the words of the threatening are general, and that therefore by the term death ought here to be understood, whatever the scripture any where signifies by that name. For who * Gen. ii. 17.

will dare take upon him to limit the extent of the divine threatening, by a certain prerogative of his own? Nay, the words are not only general, but ingeminated too, that we may well know they are to be taken in their full emphasis or signification. 5. That they are spoken to Adam, in such a manner as to be verified in his posterity also a certain evidence, that Adam sustained the person of all his posterity. 6. That on the very day the sin should be committed, this evil would befal man. Justice required this, and the event has verified it. For in the very moment that man sinned, he became liable to death, and immediately, after finishing his sin, felt the beginnings both of corporal and spiritual death. These things are expressed with far greater simplicity than in the fictions of the Jewish doctors, according to the account of Ben' Jacchi, who speaks thus: "A thousand years are as one time, and one day in the sight of the holy and blessed God, as it is said,† For a thousand years are in thy sight but as yesterday. And our doctors of blessed memory have said, that Gen. ii. 17. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, is to be understood of the holy and blessed; and that therefore the first man did not complete his day (did not arrive at his thousandth year ;) for that of that day he wanted seventy years." But this is far fetched, and savours of rabbinical ingenuity.

III. It will be far more useful, a little more accurately to examine, what is here meant by the word death. And first, it is most obvious, that by that term is denoted that corrupt disposition of the body, by which the soul is constrained to a separation from it, now unfit for its residence. By this separation, the good things of the body, which are unhappily doted on, the fruits of sin, and the sinner's ill-grounded hope, are snatched away at once. God intimates this Till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt I Dan. vii. 25. † Psalm. xc. 4. Gen. iii. 19.

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thou return. That is, thy body, which was formed out of the earth, shall return to its principles, and be reduced to earth again, into which, by its nature, it is resolvable, as being taken out of the earth. And the reason why it is actually to be resolved into earth, is, because it really is what God said, Thou art dust, now corrupted with earthly desires, a slave to a body prone to sin, and taken from dust. In this sense Abraham confesses himself to be dust and ashes,* that is a sinner and a mortal. And David says,† He knoweth JITZRENU our frame (called, Gen. viii. 21. JETZER HARANG an evil frame, which passage Kimchi properly directs to be compared with this) he remembereth that we are dust, that is, attached to the ground, and viciously addicted to the good things of the earth. From this consideration the prophet amplifies the mercy of God, in exercising it towards sinners, in whom he finds nothing to deserve his love. And by dust is clearly signified, the body of sin, Is. lxv. 25. where it is said of the serpent, the devil, now overcome by the kingdom of the Messiah, Dust shall be his food; he shall only have the pleasure to destroy the body, and men of carnal dispositions. When therefore God, after the entrance of sin, and on account of sin, condemned Adam to the death of the body, it is not to be doubted, but he also compris-" ed this death in the commination. Unless we would venture to affirm, that God has inflicted greater punishments on the sinner, than he threatened before the commission of sin.

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this land, to paradise, the state of happy souls, from which LEKACHTA, thou wast carried captive. For thus Solomon LEKUCHIM LEMUTH, captivated to death, and Jeremiah LAKECHU, thy children carried into captivity. And he thinks, that the opinion of the Jews concerning the gathering the souls of the pious into paradise, has no other passage or foundation to support it. But this is the shameful sally of a wanton imagination. We take pleasure in what is sound and sober, and yields satisfaction to the conscience. But to return to our subject.

V. It is no wise strange, that the Socinians, whose practice it is to wrest the scriptures, should contradict this truth, and deny the death of the body to be the punishment of sin. Their other perverse hypothesis require this. For, by denying this, they imagine, they can more easily answer our arguments, for original sin taken from the death of infants, and for the satisfaction of the Lord Christ from his own death. And as they impiously deny the true Godhead of Christ, they extol this as the most excellent sign of his fictious divinity, that he was the first preacher, author, and bestower of immortality. Their blasphemies have been largely and solidly refuted by others. But I am sorry, that any learned person of our own should deny, that by the death denounced, Gen. ii. 17, the death of the body ought to be understood; and who thinks he grants a great deal, when he thus writes: "From which passage, if any insist that they can prove a manifold kind of death, eternal, spiritual, and corporal, and other afflictions, I can easily suffer them to fight with their own weapons against their enemies, provided they can extort from them what they want. t." These are none of the best expressions, Why do we without necessity grant so much to our adversaries? What praise is it for us, to weaken those atguments which have been happily made use of in defence of the truth? This learned person owns, that death is the punishment of sin, and that it may be evi

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