divine; and His existence, instead of being subject to death, is that by which death is swallowed up and destroyed. So, in exact agreement with all this but still as a mere shadowy representation of it, Adam naturally had dominion over the inferior animals; was married to Eve, at once his daughter and wife; was constituted the ancestor of the human race; was ori ginally possessed of a soulical or creature righteousness; and had an existence over which, except through the medium of transgression, death could have had no power, In being made in or according to the image of God, it is thus obvious, that Adam neither was, nor could have been, that very image. Am I wrong, then, when I assert, that the present objection is suicidal, or that it actually recoils on and refutes itself? It admits, that Adam was made merely in the image of one necessarily possessing spiritual and eternal life. But if so, then the natural life of Adam, as at best

merely the type, or figure, or image, of Christ's life, is necessarily degraded to a rank inferior to it: that is, as at best only the type of the life of the Son of God, in whatever respects it may have resembled that life, it never by any possibility could have been the same with it; which, if spiritual and eternal, it nevertheless would have been.*

* Without pledging myself to support the unscriptural theories and vagaries which Osiander and others may have entertained, I have no hesitation in saying, that the celebrated Calvin, in his Institutes, Book 1, chapter 15, section 3; and Book 2, chapter 12, section 6, et sequen; has completely failed in his attempts to overthrow the position, "that Adam was created after or according to the image of God, because he was created like to the future Messiah, who is God's

In these objections, to which I have given their full weight and importance, lies the strength of the ordinary hypothesis, that the death which Adam incurred, in consequence of his first transgression, was not merely the loss of natural principles, but was also spiritual and eternal. If, as arguments, they shall appear to any of my readers to be excessively weak, I cannot help it. They are the best which the cause of my opponents hitherto has been able to produce.

At this point I might stop, satisfied that, by overturning every objection which can be brought against it, I have virtually established my own position. But that nothing may be omitted which is calculated to throw light on this all-important subject, and by way of turning the tables on my opponents, I now proceed to shew, that the idea of Adam's having incurred by the fall spiritual and eternal death, is liable to objections which are absolutely insurmountable, on the supposition of scripture being true and consistent with itself. These objections, for the sake of brevity, I reduce to three; one or two of which it is my intention to dwell on and illustrate at some length.

only authorized image," which he ascribes to them. That Osiander, and those who coincided with him in opinion, held sentiments at variance with this plain and scriptural view of matters, which afforded their redoubtable antagonist a handle against them, upon the supposition of their language being fairly quoted, I allow; but when Calvin is strip ped of the advantage which he derives from their concessions, and when his own concessions are taken into account, the arguments by which he attempts to confute their doctrine, relative to the point in question, will be found to be extremely futile.

First. If Adam died spiritually and eternally, he must have incurred the loss of spiritual and eternal life.

Secondly. If he died spiritually and eternally, he must have incurred a severer punishment than that with which he had been threatened.

Thirdly. If the threatening to him and all his posterity was spiritual and eternal death, then, neither he nor they can attain spiritual and eternal life without exposing the Supreme Being to a charge of having threatened what He does not execute.

First. If Adam died spiritually and eternally, he must have incurred the loss of spiritual and eternal life. Death, in common parlance as well as according to scriptural usage, signifies, not the want of destitution of life, but the loss of it: in other words, it always implies, that life had been previously possessed. That it does so in common parlance, without recurring to the sovereign authority of Dr. Johnson, I at once assume. That this is its meaning in scripture, whether employed literally or metaphorically, may be sufficiently established by referring to an instance or two. When in Rom. vi. 2, and vii. 4, believers are spoken of as being dead to sin and dead to the law, their having been previously alive to sin and alive to the law is clearly implied in the phrases themselves, independently even of this being the very language used by the Apostle, as well as the manifest scope of his reasoning. Life and death, it thus appears, are relative terms, not in the sense of the one being simply the negation of

the other, but in the sense of the one implying the deprivation or loss of the other. If, then, it be assumed, that Adam when he transgressed incurred spiritual and eternal death, is it not obvious, that as natural death implies the loss of natural life, so must spiritual and eternal death imply the loss of spiritual and eternal life? But the assumption of spiritual and eternal life having been lost is inadmissible, because:—

1. What is spiritual or eternal cannot be lost or forfeited. Spiritual and eternal are terms evidently of the same import, and consequently convertible, with the term divine. As God is defined by the Lord Jesus, in John iv. 24, to be a spirit, or rather spirit itself,* it follows, that spiritual, or the word when used in its adjective form, signifies that which belongs to or can be predicated of the divine nature: and as to eternal, eternity is too obviously a divine attribute to admit of any dispute with regard to the Being to whom it is solely and properly applicable. Spiritual and eternal life, then, is the life of God, or the divine nature; and as, wherever spiritual and eternal life is enjoyed by any creature, it must be in consequence of the divine nature having been communicated to that creature,† to maintain that such a life may terminate or be forfeited, would be to maintain, that the divine nature may come to an end-a proposition too extravagantly absurd to be for a single moment listened to.

That believers are partakers of the divine nature, is proved directly by 2 Peter i. 4; and indirectly by Rom. viii. 8, 9; and 2 Corinth. v. 17..

This indefeasibility of spiritual and eternal life may be shewn likewise in another way.-Spiritual life is that which proceeds from the Spirit of God, or that which the Spirit of God communicates. John iii, 6, and vi. 63. But as this-which is also the spirit of Jesus, John xv, 26, and Gal. iv. 6-was unquestionably neither revealed nor bestowed till after the fall, therefore, nothing proceeding from or connected with the spirit, whether life or knowledge, could have been forfeited by the fall. Besides, if Adam originally possessed the spirit, it must have abode with him for ever, according to John xiv. 16; and must have produced in him love to God and confidence in Him, its necessary fruits, according to Gal. v. 22, and 1 John iv. 8-10, 18, 19: whereas, whatever was the nature of the pure principles originally possessed by Adam, the result proves that he could lose them; Gen. iii. 6; and even while he continued upright it was not his love, but his fears, which God addressed and operated on. Gen. ii, 16, 17.-Eternal life stands exactly in the same predicament. There is no mention made of it in scripture, except in connection with a state of things which succeeded the fall; Gen. iii. 15.; nay, further, a state of things which was not introduced and fully manifested till the coming of the Messiah. 2 Tim. i. 10. But, independently of all this, the very phrase eternal life signifies life which cannot terminate; and, therefore, it neither was, nor could have been, the life which Adam originally possessed and which by his transgression he forfeited. It will not detract from the force of this remark to al