tongues of the dumb, make the lame to walk, render the maimed perfect, opened the eyes of those who had been born blind, and raise the dead? It was not "by Beelzebub the prince of the devils," as the Jews blasphemously asserted, because Satan had no such power himself, nor was it ever delegated to him. But even admitting he had such a power the exercise of it in such actions as are ascribed to Jesus Christ, would have been extremely prejudicial to his best interest. "And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand." Matt. xii. 26. But, on the contrary, it was predicted that these very miracles should be performed by the Messiah. "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped: then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing." Isaiah xxxv. 5, 6.

The accomplishment of those events, which Christ predicted, prove him to have been the Messiah. 66 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, see ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." Matt. xxiv. 1, 2, 34. So Titus, with his Roman legions, forty years after the ascension of our Lord, before that generation had passed away, surrounded JerusaIem, and after he had put more than one million of men to the sword, caused the foundation of the temple to be dug up.

To conclude, his prediction of the success of the gospel is an irrefragable proof of his divine mission. "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail VOL. I.

against it." Matt. xvi. 18. "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. Had the Christian religion been a human contrivance, it could not possibly have existed during so many centuries: its propagators would certainly be exceedingly reproached, for exhibiting to the world, a religion, the author of which was ignominiously put to death, by a Roman procurator; and in addition to all these circumstances, its success would be still more improbable, when the very precepts it inculcated, were diametrically opposite, to the corruptions of the human heart. But the work was not of man but of God. He therefore by the power of miracles, (a power which was never granted in establishing any other religion) enabled the apostles to overcome all the powers of Satan. As our holy religion has, therefore, been more than a counterbalance against all its enemies until now, corroborating the prediction of our Lord, it will continue, overcoming all opposition, to the end of the world.

From the preceding arguments, we presume, the inference is obvious, that Christ who was promised to the Jews, has truly come.

JOHN A. GETTY. Poplar Town, (Md.) 4th Sept. 1821.

LECTURES ON BIBLICAL HISTORY: No. III.

"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."-GEN. iii. 6.

The fall of man, the introduction of sin, with its long train of 3 L

direful consequences, may be ranked among the deep things of God. Why was it permitted? how was it brought about? and what will be its issue? are questions which, when duly considered, can hardly fail to make us feel our intellectual weakness. "O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" The fact that mankind are a depraved race of beings, is undeniable; and to suppose that they came from the hand of the Creator in this depraved state, would be to impeach the glorious purity of the divine character. To account for the sad degeneracy of our nature, has long been a matter of laborious investigation with the learned and the inquisitive. Various opinions have been started, and, for a time, prevailed in the pagan world. One set of philosophers maintained the absurd and self-destructive notion of two independent principles, the one good, and the other evil-the latter aiming, perpetually, to mar and defeat the designs of the former: hence, they fancied, arose all the corruption, disorder, and infelicities of nature. Others talked about the perverseness and obliquity of matterits connexion with mind in the human species, unavoidably produced a deterioration of our intellectual powers and moral qualities. Indeed, one hypothesis has given place to another, in such long succession, and with so little additional light or probability, that it would seem philosophy and unaided reason can come to no satisfactory conclusion on the subject. The short account of Moses, comprised in the third chapter of Genesis, though not without its difficulties, will be found, on candid examination, even aside from its inspired authority, more rational, coherent, and consistent with the character of God and man, than any other that has ever been given to the

-as if

world. Let us attend to it, then, with an honest desire to know the truth, however humbling it may be to the pride of our hearts. And be it our fervent prayer to God, that, "as we have borne the image of the earthy, we may also bear the image of the heavenly." 1 Cor. xv. 49.

It will be proper, here, to recollect the leading points attempted to be established, in a preceding lecture, viz. that as man is a moral and accountable creature, he received his being under a law suited to his rational character, honourable grade, and high destination in the great kingdom of the Creator; that, as he was designed to propagate his species, it was fit and proper that any transactions between God and the original progenitor of the race, should have a bearing on his descendants; that the covenant formed with our first parents, by a promise of eternal life and felicity in case of their obedience, and a threatening of death in the contrary evert, imposed upon them no new or irksome obligation. That being already complete and undeniable from the law of their nature, it is plain that such a dispensation could be of no disadvantage, whatever benefits it might secure to them and their posterity. We have seen, also, that Adam and Eve were made in the divine image, were endued with knowledge, rectitude and holiness, indulged with divine communications,-invested with dominion over all other creatures in this lower world, loaded with a rich profusion of the bounties of Heaven, and placed in circumstances the most favourable that can be conceived, for holding fast their integrity and securing the blessings of the covenant; insomuch, that no person has any ground to think, he would have acted a wiser, or a better part, had his destiny been put at his own disposal.

Bearing these ideas along with us, proceed we now to contemplate our fallen nature, but the wreck

of what it was, "till one greater Man restore us, and regain the blissful seat." The subject naturally divides itself into three parts, which we shall consider briefly, in the following order: viz. First, the temptation which led to the breach of the covenant, in eating the forbidden fruit; secondly, the criminality of that act; and thirdly, the consequences that ensued.

I. The temptation. The visible instrument employed in this, according to the narrative of the sacred historian, was "the serpent." Of what species this serpent was, or how far its nature and properties may have been changed and degraded, as a memorial of God's hatred of sin, it were useless and vain to inquire. Some writers suppose, that, before the fall, serpents were beautiful, docile, and inoffensive creatures; that they inhabited trees, and fed on fruits; that they were endued with great sagacity; and that our first parents regarded them as favourites, in comparison of the other orders of inferior animals. The learned and ingenious Dr. Adam Clarke is of opinion, that, by the serpent is meant one of the ape or ouran-outang tribe; that those disgusting caricatures on human nature were, originally, gifted with speech and reason, walked erect, and possessed we know not how many other noble endowments; but upon their concurring with the prince of devils, in the ruin of our species, they were degraded to their present condition, deprived of articulate language, and in a great measure of reason, doomed to go on all-fours and lick the dust, "cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field." As the doctor has kindly licensed his readers to adopt or reject this opinion as they may see meet, no person can hesitate to give him all the credit due to such a novel and curious discovery. They who adopt this opinion to get rid of one set of difficulties, will have to encounter another

class, equally formidable and perplexing, if not more so. Moses remarks that "the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." Had it been, naturally, a speaking and reasoning creature, capable of referring so adroitly to the character of God, and of giving to his threatening, in the penal sanction of the covenant, so deceptive a gloss, its superior subtlety would not have been at all remarkable; for, in that case, it would have borne a stronger resemblance to a fallen angel than to any beast of the field. We prefer, therefore, the common understanding of the Mosaic account; i. e. that the visible agent, in this affair, was a serpent, in the usual import of the term, and that Satan, the prince of apostate spirits, was the efficient actor and foul instigator of the evil that ensued. How he made the sharp tongue of the reptile subservient to his nefarious purpose, we pretend not to explain. Neither do we know by what organs he spake when he assailed our Saviour in the wilderness of Jordan, or how he commanded the tongues of the demoniacs, of which we read in the evangelists. These were instances of extraordinary power, which the Almighty permitted him to exert, for reasons doubtless just and good, but which lie beyond the horizon of our limited view. That this apostate prince of darkness was the real tempter of our first parents, is perfectly evident from a variety of passages in the New Testament, where we find him mentioned by names and titles drawn from the malignity of his character, particularly as it was manifested in the sad tragedy of the garden of Eden. Our Saviour calls him a murderer, a liar, the father of lies, and an adversary. The apostle Paul speaks of the serpent that beguiled Eve, and in the same chapter tells us that he is sometimes transformed into an angel of light. In other

places, he speaks of his devices, || his fiery darts, and exhorts Christians to vigilance and prayer, from the consideration that Satan goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. The apostle John calls him a sinner from the beginning, the old serpent, a dragon, and a deceiver. These and the like expressions may be considered as incidental notes, explanatory of the text before us. Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ?" This abrupt sentence in the interrogatory form, is supposed to have been but a part of the serpent's address to Eve. However that may be, it is extremely artful and insinuating; as if he had said, expressly, "It cannot be that the bountiful Lord and proprietor of all things would forbid you the use of any fruit with which he has enriched this delightful garden. You must have mistaken his meaning. Such a restraint would be unreasonable and unworthy of God." Hereupon the woman repeated the law; but, as if half conquered already by the adversary's plausible speech, added a small comment of her own: "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." This "neither shall ye touch it," does not appear in the prohibition, as given by God in the 17th verse of chapter 2d. And "lest ye die," a soft and doubtful phrase, is substituted for the pointed and peremptory declaration, "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." Emboldened by this reply, as clearly indicating the beginning of pride and unbelief, the serpent lays aside his disguise, and declares roundly, "Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Here we have both

lying and perjury, with a successful appeal to the rising pride, self-will, and libertinism of the human heart. To "be as gods," was the overpowering charm, the fatal ambition, that ruined and degraded our species, as it had, probably, hurled the devil and his angels from the heights of heaven to the depths of misery and despair. The secret aim and supreme desire of our unsanctified nature is, to "snatch from God's hand the balance,-to rejudge his justice, and be the god of God."

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Perhaps Satan suggested that he had tasted the fruit, and derived extraordinary advantages from ithis subtlety, power of speech, great acuteness in discerning the properties of things, and, in one word, a knowledge and happiness nearly resembling the Creator himself. The result of the interview was a determination, on the part of our first parents, to break through the salutary restraint of the covenant. The woman took, and ate, and gave to her husband, and he ate also. "And what great wrong was there (says the unbeliever) in this act ?” What harm could there be in eating an apple, a fig, or a cluster of grapes This we are now to inquire into a little.

II. Any act, however indifferent in itself, may, by divine institution or appointment, become vastly important. The will of God is the standard of right. To oppose his will, whatever may be the matter or form of the opposition, is to do wrong. Our first parents had before them a clear and express revelation of their Maker's will in this case: Thou shalt not eat of it." Now the violation of this precept was a practical renunciation of

their allegiance to the great Lord of heaven and earth,-a foolish attempt to withdraw from the divine government, marked by the blackest ingratitude to their heavenly Benefactor, and by the most unequivocal contempt for infinite authority. And was there no wrong in all this? But let us look at this matter a little more closely. The prohibition in question, was not a mere display of arbitrary sovereignty. The holiness and benignity of God make it morally impossible that he should ever will or command any thing which is not wise and good. "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (says the learned and pious Vitringa) was chosen of God to be a visible, familiar, and permanent lesson, by which man was not only admonished of the eternal distinction between good and evil; but was put upon his guard as to the quarter from which alone evil could assail him." But why was the fruit of it forbidden? In answer to this question, we remark, that the prohibition answered three purposes, all tending to the honour of God and the good of the creature.

First, it served as a test of man's obedience. And this enters essentially into the very notion of a probationary state suited to the character of a rational and accountable creature. Here was a positive precept. The thing to which it related was simple and easily understood. It was well adapted to the existing circumstances of those whose obedience it demanded. They were in a garden of the Lord's own planting, with liberty to use all its productions, this only excepted.

Secondly, it served to keep man in mind of his dependance on the bountiful Giver of every good and perfect gift: it taught him to seek his happiness in the way which God had prescribed, and to expect higher and purer and holier enjoyments, than were to be found in the terrestrial Eden: that unqualified submission to the will of his Creator was, at once, his duty, his privilege, and safety. Thus that tree, whose touch

was death, was, untouched, a source of useful instruction and moral improvement.

Thirdly, it served as a sacramental pledge of faithfulness to the covenant, which God was pleased to form with them, and in them, with their posterity. In this covenant, there was a promise of life and happiness,. ratified by the tree of life, which they were allowed to use, while they continued obedient; and a threatening of death, in case of transgression, ratified and sealed, by the tree of knowledge, the fruit of which was forbidden to be used. "When, by a gratuitous promise of immortality, the law of duty was converted into a pacific covenant, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were the two sacraments of that covenant; the former being a visible document of God's faithfulness to his promise, and the latter a visible document of his faithfulness to his threatening. And thus the assurance of life or death being exhibited to our first parents, by sensible signs, they were constantly admonished of the interest staked in their hands, and of the infinitely happy or horrible issue of their probationary state." (Vitringa.)

If these views of the subject be correct, the criminality of eating the forbidden fruit must be abundantly evident. It was preferring self-will to God's will, and profanely denying his right to the homage of his intelligent creatures; it was an arrogant encroachment on the divine prerogative; it was a profanation of the seal of the covenant, and a forfeiture of life, temporal, spiritual, and eternal. Nor is that opinion extravagant, which makes it a virtual violation of every precept in the decalogue, an infraction of every tie that binds the rational creature to the Creator and Sovereign of the universe.

III. What then were the consequences of this high and heinous offence? To Adam and Eve, as might be expected, the immediate consequences were shame, fear, confusion, and expulsion from the garden of God. Vile affec