was of fuch importance as to require the greatest meffenger the Father had to fend. The works which were performed at this time were fully competent, and only responsible to the great God our Saviour.

2. THE condition in which the perfonal Word found the guilty pair was truly pitiable and wretched. They were engaged in the moft wicked rebellion,-involved in the most attrocious guilt; and fhame, the inevitable effect of confcious guiltinefs, covered them, instead of that innocence with which they were originally adorned. The nakedness of guilt was infinitely greater than the paltry garment of fig-leaves could hide or cover.

Sorrow

and revenge, horror and despair, strike with infinitely greater torment than all the pleasures of Paradife could poffibly allay. Now God thunders forth all the curfes of a broken covenant: Confcience fubfcribes the awful indictment; the hand of Justice is lifted to fetch the fatal blow! For ought that Adam could either imagine or expect, as he had ingulfed himself, and all his pofterity, in the depths of fin, and an abyfs fo there was nothing for him but

of wo

the

the execution of the threatening! He had made God his enemy, Where was the angel in heaven, or the creature on earth, which durft ftand his friend!

3. THE work accomplished by the Perfonal Word, on this important occafion, was amazingly gracious and merciful. He examined the criminals of the human kind, as to where they now were, and what they had done. They, on the other hand, acknowledge the fact, indeed, but extenuate the guilt-laying the blame, the man upon the woman, and the woman on the ferpent. It is worthy of our notice, that the ferpent was neither examined nor convicted, as there were no defigns of mercy towards him.He fentenced the ferpent unto punishment: The brute is degraded from its dignity and excellence, because it had been proftituted as an inftrument of feduction: It is alfo doomed to go upon its belly, and lick duft for its meat; and this is an ænigmatical reprefentation, perhaps, of the devil's punishment, who had abused the serpent on this occafion. Though he was originally among the flowers of the creation, formed for re

lishing

lifhing the moft exquifitely refined and fpiritual pleasures, now he is debased to the greatest wretchednefs; all the delights of which he can participate are base, as the duft of the ftreet.He denounced a threatening against the old ferpent, which implied a promife of falvation unto a felect company of the human family, through the incarnation and death of Chrift. Man had nothing to expect but to share in the fame lot with the devil, and to be made fubject to his tyranny, feeing he had joined in confederacy with him, and made him his Lord and mafter. But, to the eternal admiration of men and angels, the Judge infures liberty to the captive, and deftruction to the tyrant : "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy feed and her Seed; and he fhall bruife thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This is the, firft gleam of gofpellight upon a benighted world; therefore it deferves our special confideration. First, The publisher of this promife is alfo the performer of it: The Son of God is, at once, the herald to proclaim, and the hero to profecute the war. Secondly, The parties between whom this war obtains are,

the

the old ferpent, with all devils and finallywicked men, on the one hand; for they are the brood of the ferpent, or a GENERATION OF VIPERS: And the Meffiah, as the extraordinary SEED OF THE WOMAN, with the Woman herfelf, whom the devil had feduced, with all her believing SEED, on the other hand; for Eve was the MOTHER OF ALL LIVING: That is, of all who are made fpiritually alive, as Abraham was the FATHER OF THE FAITHFUL. This arrangement of the parties instructs us of Wisdom's triumph over the devil, in that very instrument by which he had difhonoured God, and introduced evil into this world; woman was firft in the tranfgreffion, and firft a fubject of faving grace. As alfo of the mysterious incarnation of the Son of God, by the power of the Holy Ghoft. He is called the SEED OF THE WOMAN, as he was without father as man. "When the fulness of the time was come, God fent forth his Son, made of a woman.' Thirdly, He engaged to put ENMITY between the parties fpecified; and to profecute fuch a war as fhould iffue in deftruction to one of the parties, and prove eminently afflictive to the other, though completely

pletely victorious, and, finally, glorious. He threatens enmity, in direct oppofition to that friendship which fubfifted between the ferpent and the woman. The deliver

er threatened to break her covenant with death, and her agreement with hell, which could not be accomplished but by flaying. her enmity against God,-infusing a hatred of fin and fatan, and infpiring with love to God; for there was no change at all on the devil. The change was folely on the part of the woman; of a friend, fhe becomes an enemy unto the ferpent, therefore he hates her. When the promife is accomplished on her foul, fhe adores that juftice at which fhe trembled, fhe admires that holinefs which the formerly detefted. Thus, fhe became a pattern unto all her believing feed, as well as an emblem of the Church in every fucceeding age. Hence, Chrift feems to allude to her, when he speaks of the " WoMAN, and the remnant of her feed which keep the commandments of God, and have the Testimony of Jefus Chrift *." He alfo

"Quamvis enim oraculo illo ad Serpentem fit infti"tutus fermo, eique pœna denuncietur, loquitur tamen

"Deus