On the day of transgression, sentence was pronounced upon the criminals. In all its parts it was terrible, but our concern is with the curse expressed to Adam, unto whom God said, "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring: and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground: for out of it thou wast taken for dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return." Infidels have objected to the tree of knowledge, as the seal of the covenant of works, that it was unworthy of God to punish so small a transgression, as plucking and eating a forbidden fruit, with a penalty so dreadful as that of death. But it is worthy of remark in this view of the case, that Adam was under no temptation to commit those crimes, which now constitute the transgressions of his descendants against the moral law. Some other test of obedience, therefore, was suitable as the seal of the covenant of works; and it is utterly vain to urge the smallness of the test against the justice of God; since it was more easily kept, and, therefore, in proportion to the smallness of the test, must we estimate the lenity of the legislator, and the greatness of the offence.

It is further observable, that the covenant was republished at Sinai with peculiar solemnity, and in that circumstance, as well as from many portions of New Testament Scripture, we have decisive proof, that it is in full force against all the descendants of Adam, except those who are relieved by the covenant of grace. We read, that "all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain

smoking: and when the people saw it they removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us lest we die." But whence did their terror arise? Was it not from a guilty cause similar to that for which our first parents fled to hide themselves among the trees in the garden. They felt themselves to be transgressors and dreading the wrath of that Omnipotent and just Being, whose covenant they had broken, they entreated that God would not any more speak unto them without the intervention of a Mediator; and this event in Jewish history most beautifully illus trates the importance of the mediatorial scheme in the moral government of the world.

From this brief historic review of the design of the covenant of works, we may advance, secondly, to notice the parties concerned.

On the one side, we behold the self-existent Jehovah, Creator of all things, and their rightful governor. He, therefore, justly assumes the rank and authority of a lawgiver, and it was his prerogative to prescribe the terms of the covenant. His unerring wisdom qualified him to arrange its conditions; his almighty power rendered him able to enforce and fulfil them; his omniscience precludes the possibility of evasion; his goodness assures us, that the covenant in its original constitution was calculated for the benefit of his creatures; while his truth and justice secures the fulfilment of all its conditions according to the principles of strict equity. The parties on the other side were Adam and his descendants. Our venerable first father was a holy man; and was by his Creator pronounced

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very good." In this holy state, he stood as the federal head of all his descendants. It seems probable, that had he maintained a sinless perfection, all his posterity

would, by virtue of their union to him, have been confirmed in a similar state, but, if not, that at least, sin would have descended in the line in which it originated. It is, however, unquestionable, that the posterity of Adam were so implicated in his acts as a federal head, that in consequence of his transgression, the whole race were brought into a state of general ruin. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Hence again, it is written, " In Adam all die." It is only on the principle of this direct federative relationship, that we can account for the imputation of Adam's sin, and this is yet more evident from the fact at tested by inspiration, that none of the sins of Adam's subsequent life were imputed to his posterity, the imputation of sin being merely from the first transgression. That first sin destroyed his federal relationship, and while it brought ruin upon all his descendants, it reduced him from the rank of head of the covenant to the situation of a private person under that covenant. That this was the case, is evident from the language of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, v. 15th and 16th verses. "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification." In this passage extracted from the common English Bible, the sentiment is not very perspicuously expressed; but in the Latin Vulgate, in Beza's Latin Testament, and in some of the old English versions, the sense of the original is very correctly retained. The sentence on occasion of one offence was to condemnation, but the

gift is of many offences unto justification. But while we consider Adam as the covenant head of the · whole human race, and, therefore, by his transgression, as entailing ruin upon them, we must not be unmindful of the fact, that all mankind are born under obligations to fulfil the requirements of the covenant, although they labour under a moral incapacity for obedience. It would be most absurd to suppose, that Adam's transgression on the one part, or any of our personal sins on the other, can annul the obligation of the creature to obey the divine law, or exonerate men from the duties of the covenant under which they are placed by the Creator. This would be to suppose, that men by their sins had rendered themselves independent of God, and had verified the promise of the devil, "ye shall be as gods." Man, therefore, necessarily remained under obligation to yield perfect obedience to God while he rendered himself incapable of it, and being thus incapacitated, he was doomed to suffer the whole penalty of the violated covenant.

We advance to another leading branch of the subject, thirdly, In the requirements of the covenant of works. It must not be supposed, that because eating of the forbidden fruit was the act that brought ruin upon man, therefore no other obligation was included in man's primitive condition. We find, on the contrary, that according as breaches of the principles contained in the law of the ten- commands occurred, they were strongly censured, and severely punished. Fratricide was as criminal when Cain slew his brother, as it is at this day; yet St. Paul says, "Sin is not imputed, where there is no law." This, therefore, will lead us at once to the conclusion, that the principles of the moral law were well understood by Adam, although at that time not formally promulged; indeed, in his state of in

nocency they must have been incorporated into his moral constitution, as the moral law is but the transcript of the Divine will, and God made man in his own image. But as man was under no temptation to transgress those first principles of his nature, a test of obedience was ordained under the form of a positive institute. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, prohibited to Adam, was that test; and the tree of life, with its attendant benefits, the appointed reward of obedience: these, therefore, are the seals of the covenant of works. If we turn to passages of Scripture which speak of this covenant, we shall find that they all pre-suppose universal obedience to be an indispensable pre-requisite to the Divine favour; and that such obedience can avail only as it is perpetuated through the whole term of a man's continuance in a

probationary state. "As many as

are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all." David therefore, with great propriety, might say, Thy commandment is exceeding broad." Unsullied purity of heart is required; and the precepts of the law of God, how well soever observed in the external deportment, if not influential upon the heart, are considered entirely broken. To shew the utmost strictness of the covenant, and the indispensableness of love to God, as the governing principle of every action of man, and of every movement of his mind, it is written, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might."

Our attention must be directed, Fourthly, to the sanctions of the covenant of works. Every law CONG. MAG. No. 55.

must be fenced with its penalties, and every covenant with its own sanctions. God's covenant, therefore, has its penal clauses, and they are such as correspond with the dignity of the party prescribing, and perfectly suit the nature of the engagement. Divine favour, connected with the observance of the covenant, and Divine displeasure, consequent upon the breach of it, are the two great sanctions; and they comprehend, on the one part, all that is blissful, and, to a creature, desirable; and on the other, all that is calamitous and awful. Our motive to obedience is the favour of God, and with it the promise of life and happiness. Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, "that the man which doeth those things shall live by them." Had man retained his primitive innocency, death would have been unknown; and probability favours the conjecture, that after dwelling a longtime, perhaps a millennium, upon earth, his nature would have undergone some change to its advantage; and that each of the human race, in regular succession, would have been translated, like Enoch and Elijah, to the heavenly state. But it would be idle to enter on fruitless speculations concerning probabilities in the circumstances of a sinless human race. Unhappily, we are constrained to know the operation of a sanction to the Divine law of a deeply awful kind. It was said in the first interdiction, "Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." As sinners, therefore, we are naturally in a state of death. This sentiment has many opponents: it levels a blow at the first principles of self-adulation, by disclaiming all inherent excellence in the creature, by imputing to the sinner whatever is degrading, and by ascribing to God alone, all the 2 Z

praise of our recovery from the ruins of the fall. But whether men believe the testimony of Scripture or reject it, facts remain the same; and every attempt to controvert the proposition, that man by nature is dead in trespasses and sins, affords a fresh proof that sin possesses an universal influence on the heart of the opposing party.

The interdiction laid upon Adam not to eat the forbidden fruit, was positive and unequivocal: " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” To this some have objected, that the punishment amexed in the Divine statute to disobedience, was not infiicted according to the tenor of the denunciation, since natural death did not ensue to our first parents immediately upon the commission of the atrocious deed. But surely there would remain small cause for infidels to object against the Divine veracity on the one part, or the authenticity of the narrative on the other, if Adam had known no other kind of death than that of moral privation and spiritual insensibility. By losing these, he lost the means of being happy; and that loss was death to all the felicities of life in the very day of his transgression. Yet these were not the only consequences of his sin: a sentence of legal death was pronounced upon him and all his descendants. To this sentence of legal death, I consider the words of the curse in their primary sense to apply. A law was promulged; the penalty annexed to the breach of that law was death. "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." The Mosaic account of the fall of man goes on to relate, that" in the evening of the day," of that same day in which the act was perpetrated, God de scended into the garden, summoned the delinquents to his tribunal, exacted from them a confession of their crime, demanded their plea in bar of judgment, and having

heard it, pronounced sentence against them, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." In consequence of that sentence they were legally dead, and daily exposed to the execution of the curse in its fullest extent. It is a universally admitted principle under human laws, that from the moment the judgment of death is pronounced against a criminal, he is legally dead. It must, therefore, be admitted in this case, that the denunciation was fulfilled. We see, in the history of the whole human species, that the sentence of death is perpetually in force against them, but that God has reserved the time when the fact shall take place to his own sovereign appointment. Legal death therefore entailed mortality on the body, and eventually on body and soul that dreadful punishment which the Scripture describes as eternal death. Such, then, were the awful sanctions by which the covenant of works was originally enforced, and they remain in full operation against every unpardoned sinner.

(To be continued.)

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ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. (To the Editors.) GENTLEMEN,-As juvenile delinquency has, of late years, increased to an alarming magnitude, notwithstanding all the efforts of the wise, the great, and the good; although our government has manifested a general readiness to listen to the well-meant suggestions of all denominations of Christians to check vice in its infancy and growth; and although numberless institutions have been formed, having for their objects personal protection and the security of public property, yet iniquity abounds: public executions continue, our prisons are filled, our property is insecure, and our lives are continually in danger. We cannot walk the streets of London with

our wives and daughters, but we are put to the blush by what is exhibited to our eyes and ears. Parents are always in a state of alarm if their children leave their homes or go out of their sight; our sons are liable to be entrapped, and our daughters insulted. Many a grey head has been brought with sorrow to the grave, or a premature death has been caused, by the evils which stalk abroad at noon-day, and salute us at the corner of every street. Is it not astonishing, Gentlemen, that these evils have not been traced to some of their sources? for, alas! they are many. One of the most fruitful and intoxicating of these sources springs from the fairs held in our neighbourhood; I therefore entreat you to make my views public through your valuable miscellany; and should it be the means of rousing the inhabitants of this great City to combine their efforts, and lay the axe to the root of this overgrown tree, whose fruit conveys contagion and death to the vitals of the public, I shall feel sincerely thankful.

To describe the bareful consequences of these fairs, would perhaps be to attempt impossibilities; but I will give some of the outlines of this masterpiece of the devil to delude the unwary visitants of these haunts of vice. Instead of these fairs being the receptacles of lawful merchandize the product of the industrious artizan, the mart of the humble peasant and the careful house-wife, it is an acknowledged fact, that no honest persons can ap proach them, but at the risk of violent outrage on property or life; and while they are continued in their present pestilential state, little hope of a decrease in depravity can be expected: they may be fairly said to be the sources of employment for the hangman; the fruitful spring from whence our jails derive a constant supply; and the irretrievable ruin of thousands.

If this be admitted, then allow me earnestly to recommend all denominations to take the baneful tendency of these fairs into their most serious consideration; and if each denomination, or indeed, each separate congregation, together with every society, having in view the suppression of vice, would prepare separate petitions to parliament to do away, by a legislative act, the holding of fairs within the city of London, and within ten miles of its environs; and if this cannot be done on account of the strength of their charters, then let us press for a strong enactment to prohibit the exhibition of plays, interludes, wild beasts, and extraordinary characters of whatever description, forbidding every species of gambling, with all other diversions of an immoral tendency, confining the fairs to the sale of merchandize, and other commodities for the benefit of the public; interdicting music and dancing at the public houses in the immediate vicinity of the fairs, on pain of losing their licences. And if it can be said that there are laws in being sufficient to suppress all that is complained of, then, it is humbly presumed, that some steps are necessary to be taken to put them in force; perhaps a memorial to the magistrates will effect all that can be desired; but it is high time that something be done to counteract the excesses too fatally practised at these fairs.

I am confident that government will listen to an application of this kind, if respectfully made; or if any better mode can be adopted to obtain the desired end, I shall rejoice in being the humble means, with you, of bringing it before the public; and if our efforts should be crowned with success, I shall, with every serious family, with every pious parent, and every moral individual, rejoice that another step is taken to bring about the fulfilment of that blessed promise, to which all good men have been