it would naturally involve fewest repetitions, would be to classify, first the primary heads of doctrine and duty, and then arrange under them the successive exhibitions given of each in the future enactments and dealings of God, without adhering rigidly to the period of their appearance. This plan was partially followed in our first edition, but was found impracticable as a whole. We deem it necessary to keep by the historical order, though it may be occasionally attended with the disadvantage of having the same truths brought anew before us. For, thus alone can we mark aright the course of developement, which, in a work of this nature, is too important an element to be sacrificed to the fear of at times trenching on ground, that may have been partially trodden before.

CHAPTER FIRST.

THE DIVINE TRUTHS EMBODIED IN THE HISTORICAL TRANSACTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE FALL, BEING THOSE ON WHICH THE FIRST SYMBOLICAL RELIGION WAS BASED.

THE religion of man, as it falls under our consideration at present, must be viewed as taking its commencement at the fall. What knowledge Adam possessed of the character and ways of God, before he fell; or with what forms of worship he gave expression to the thoughts and feelings which were called forth by his relation to God, and the circumstances of his condition, it is not possible for us now exactly to determine. Nor does it much concern us to know. Our interest in his religious views and prospects properly begins with the new aspect and constitution of things which arose with the entrance of sin. Then, too, for the first time, did an occasion arise for the introduction of typical acts and institutions, which otherwise should have had no proper foundation to rest on. From their very nature and object, they bear respect to another and better state of things preparing to be introduced; and hence necessarily imply, that man's existing condition already partook of evils and dangers which required to be met by the provisions of divine grace and benevolence, as necessary to prepare the way for a state of ultimate rest and satisfaction.

The opinion certainly began to be broached at an early period in the Christian church, and has often been formally propounded since, "That Paradise was to Adam a type of heaven; and that the never-ending life of happiness promised to our first parents, if they had continued obedient, and grown up to perfection under that economy wherein they were placed, should not have continued in the earthly paradise, but only have commenced there, and

been perpetuated in a higher state." It is possible, indeed, that such might have been the destination of man in the case supposed; but it is a point upon which Scripture is altogether silent, and in its original form too plainly bore the impress of the Eastern philosophy, which associated with matter in every form. imperfection and evil. Those who were tinctured with this philosophy could not imagine, that Adam should feel himself to be in a state of proper satisfaction, so long as he was clothed upon with a body formed of the dust of earth, and dependent upon earthly productions for its support; and that he must, from the outset, have had his eye directed toward a higher and more ethereal state of being, of which the enjoyments he actually possessed could present him with nothing more than an image and a foretaste. Whatever elements of truth there might be in such ideas, they belong entirely to the region of speculation, and are so far at variance with the representations of Scripture, as there the original frame and constitution of things appears as the relatively perfect, and what is to be hereafter as the recovery of what has been lost-the restoration of what was at the beginning. It will, no doubt, be more than this; but its being so, is the incidental result of the way in which the good has been achieved, rather than its direct and professed object.

It was from an entirely different tendency-from a disposition to multiply typical meanings without rule or limit-that most writers of the Cocceian school were led to give a typical interpretation to many things in the primeval world—such as the mode of Adam's creation, the formation of Eve from his side while he slept, his relation to the trees in the midst of the garden. An eminent writer of that school, however, has justly remarked, that "in the state of innocence there were no typical rites adumbrating Christ and his merits, whereof there was then neither know

1

This proposition, with the Patristic authorities that support it, may be found in the discourses of Bishop Bull. His proofs from the earlier Fathers-Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenæus, are very general. The first explicit proof is from Theophilus of Antioch, who speaks of Adam being "at length canonized or.consecrated, and ascending to heaven,” if he had gone on to perfection. The testimony becomes more full, as the speculative influence of the Greek philosophy gains strength in the Church. And Clement of Alexandria expressly says in his Liturgy, that "if Adam had kept the commandments, he would have received immortality as the reward of his obedience”—that is, immortality in heaven.

ledge nor need; as the very word creation imports, which has nothing to do with a restoration or a restorer. All typical ceremonies were subsequent to the fall, and the promise of grace in Christ." This was said by Alting with immediate reference to the Sabbath, and for the purpose of proving the Sabbath, in respect to its typical foreshadowing of the final rest of the redeemed, to have been instituted after the fall. In which case, the whole series of transactions connected with the formation of Eve, her presentation to Adam, and their joint participation of the forbidden fruit, must have taken place on the very day on which Adam himself was created. This is altogether an improbable opinion; although it appears to have obtained some prevalence in Alting's age, and the times immediately succeeding. A typical employment of the Sabbath with reference to better things to come, by no means inferred its original and primary establishment for such a purpose. It may only have inferred, that the institution was now invested with a new meaning and importance, and brought within the circle of God's purposes of grace; precisely as in later times was done with articles of food and circumcision, and other things taken from the field of nature or of history, and associated with the hopes of salvation. Still, the general principle announced by Alting is undoubtedly correct. Nothing belonging to the garden of Eden could possess, in the theological sense, a typical character, till it had ceased to be the abode of man, and his relation to it had undergone an essential change. Till then the physical and moral constitution of this world must be regarded as in itself good, without any evil existing in it to call for the intervention of a Mediator, and consequently without any reference appearing to the work or benefits of redemption. Yet this by no means hinders, that all may have been so planned and arranged by the foreseeing eye of God, as to have readily admitted of various typical applications to the interests of redemption, after the entrance of sin required the things of redemption to be provided for. Nay, as the work of redemption is itself a creation—a new work of God fashioning after a higher ideal the materials of the old-we may reasonably expect that much in the second

Altingi Opera, tom. v. p. 327.

should be made to assume the form and image of what had originally appeared in the first. It is on this ground, indeed, that the argument from analogy is based.

But this is not our present theme. We have to do simply with man as fallen-man as standing in need of redemption. And contemplating from this point of view his religious condition and prospects, we have first of all to take into account what has ever been, and what must necessarily be, a fundamental characteristic of the true religion-the historical nature of its origin. It does not come forth with a kind of independent and theoretical completeness, but grows, by successive stages, out of the actual manifestations God gives of himself, and the circumstances in which his creatures are placed. Its primary elements of truth and duty are but deductions such as naturally force themselves on reflective minds-from facts already known, and relations actually established in the course of providence. It is by no means necessary, therefore, that they should appear in the shape of formal enunciations or authoritative precepts, to give them a claim on the heart and conscience. That claim may both exist, and be distinctly recognised and felt, where it has not been legislatively imposed. Indeed, direct and explicit enactments are rather a mark of imperfection than otherwise-of imperfection either in the objective grounds of religious instruction, or in the spiritual capacity and disposition to make an adequate use of those that exist. And hence it is that, as compared with Old Testament times, they are not to be found in the New. Believers in Christ are not under the law, but under grace. And yet, so far from being thereby released from the obligations of duty, they are placed in that respect on a higher level, and called to a more spiritual life. The law in its very form is an evidence of abounding iniquity. It contemplates a state of ignorance and depravity which it seeks to regulate and restrain by specific directions that presuppose an utter inability to discover the right, and a prevailing tendency to depart from it.

This, however, required time and opportunity for developement; and the world was at first no more prepared for the introduction of the Law than for the introduction of the Gospel. Man had fallen, indeed, from his original rectitude; but he had not therefore sunk into total blindness and corruption. Nor was he, in fact,