influence, and doomed to extermination. It is not as if man in sin were altogether ignorant of what God requires, but because he is unwilling to obey, that he does not yield it. His disobedience is not as if that requirement were inconsistent with his natural powers, but as opposed by their tendency. It is not as if obedience were foreign to his nature, but because it is repugnant to his will. But when the sinner is renewed, the requirement of the duty takes effect. The result upon the man proclaims the adaptation of the claim to his state; and the nature of that claim shows that he is prepared for the exercise which it urges. The law of God demands of all what all ought to give, but what man, in consequence of sin, because he is unwilling, is unable to give. That law demands of all what believers are desirous to render, but which of themselves they are unable to implement, and the part of which that is accepted they are enabled by Divine grace alone to perform. Calls to the exercise of Covenanting addressed to men, whether in a state of sin or in a state of grace, though differently apprehended by them, being in a varied manner understood by both, must be in accordance with what is common to the nature of each, and also to that of man in innocence. The wicked show that they know what these calls imply; for they often refuse to attend to them after any manner, and when they attempt to act according to them, they aim at an end that is not elevated above deliverance merely from the effects of sin, not to say comprehensive of the glory of God. And the righteous do in measure understand them. After some manner they obey them. They arrive at their full import progressively. Their feelings are inadequate to them, not in kind, but in measure. As they make progress in holiness they will be more thoroughly conformed to them in fact. When about to enter upon the heavenly inheritance of the promise

itself, their conformity with these will be complete. Hence,

First. The reality of the Covenant of Works appears. It was not unworthy of God to enter into covenant with man in innocence. He was the workmanship of his own hands. The constitution given to him admitted of intercourse on his part with his Creator. It was not unbecoming the dignity of God's character to give to man a law. It was becoming his character to give him a moral constitution that would lead him to obey it. It was equally becoming the glory of his nature to accept of obedience to it. His entering into covenant with him was the accepting of Covenanting-a part of that obedience, and was therefore in perfect consistency with the excellency of His being. It is not allowable to suppose that in order to a covenant relation between God and his creatures, these should be able to give something of their own which might be esteemed as a meritorious condition of a covenant; nor is it warrantable to maintain that because man in innocence was unable to make such a communication, therefore he was not in that state taken into covenant. Neither man in innocence, nor man in a state of grace, was required to make such a tender; nay, no creature is able to afford it. If it is admitted, then, that a covenant exists between God and man redeemed on the footing of the merits of the Saviour, how can it be denied that man in innocence could be taken into a covenant with God on account of the merit or worth of Himself as the Creator and righteous moral Governor of all? In the case of the Covenant of Grace, the merit on account of which man is accepted was displayed in a manifestation of the mercy of God in the obedience and sufferings of Christ. In the case of what is rightly held to have been a covenant between God and Adam as the representative of the human family, the merit for

which man was accepted was not his own, but the merit or worth of the Divine character exhibited, in giving him a constitution fitting him for acquiescing in what the Divine law required, and in affording him every facility for glorifying God by yielding obedience to all his commands.

And, besides, various are the considerations that tend to show, that from the constitution of man there is reason to conclude that the representative character and state that are attributed to Adam as a covenant head, and therefore also what is called the Covenant of Works, though in a certain sense a covenant of grace-but not of grace through a mediator, are not inconsistent with the glory of the Divine character.

It would not have been inconsistent with the glory of God to have made any one of the human family its representative head. No one of them would have refused to represent their race. And since therefore Adam would not have refused, it is not warrantable, on the assumption that he would have refused, to deny that he was commanded to undertake the duties of a federal head.

The interests of men were better provided for on the principle of representation than they would have been, had it been given to every member of the human family individually to undergo a trial, on which would have pended their eternal condition. Had the whole human family been together when sin entered into the world, they had all been as liable to seduction by the enemy as the first of men. But the resistance of him by Adam would have been equal to the resistance of the whole human race. Had all the human family at once been present in the very circumstances of temptation in which Adam was placed, would they have acted differently from what he did? They could have done so; but what evidence have we that they would? God did not vouchsafe an extraordinary power in

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order to keep Adam from falling: such would have interfered with his state as a free moral responsible being. Would he have done so, then, to the whole human race, had they been then present together? But had Adam continued for an appointed period to obey, life to all his posterity would have been the result, and thus benefits through one as a representative would have come to the many with certainty, without all having individually, by being put into a state of probation, in the midst of temptation, to endeavour to secure title to life for themselves. It is sinful for men to arraign the procedure according to which men come into the world in a state of condemnation, or to deny it. The Scriptures reveal it, and it is a necessary effect of the operation of Divine justice. Had it not been right, God would not have instituted such a relation between Adam and his descendants as would have admitted of the fact; nay, had not that arrangement in itself been preferable to every other, Divine wisdom would not have made it. It therefore has a reason for it the most satisfactory, however little we may be able to apprehend it. Nothing that we know is inconsistent with that arrangement, but it may be but a small part of its reason that we yet observe. Man was not doomed, but permitted to fall. It was not necessary that he should be prevented from sinning, and his fall was the necessary effect of his transgression. Is it urged-Is it not dreadful to think of man being brought into existence in a state of sin and misery?-of a nature being given to him which never had the power to make one endeavour to live for ever? It is answered, God did not create men in a state of condemnation, but sin invaded them, and in one all fell. God is righteous, and his justice finds every one of the family of man guilty. The rectitude of God's character did not require that he should create any

one with a title to eternal life; but because of sin, it forbade that any of the children of fallen man represented by him should come into existence in a state of acceptance with him. The case of the sinner coming into the world under condemnation, is not worse than that of him, who, first having had power to stand, was tempted, and sinned, and fell. No less consistent with the excellence of the character of God and the sovereignty of his procedures, is the state of one fallen even at the very origin of his being, than that of one who had had an opportunity to avoid falling, but after a short trial really fell. Adam at first had not a right, independently of the sovereign gift of God, to come into existence in a state of acceptance. He had not a right to continue in it when he sinned. And in like manner, no sinner can say that he had a claim upon the Creator to be brought into being free from the curse. The same argument that would suffice to establish that men should not be implicated in the rebellion of Adam, would go to prove that he should not have been allowed himself to fall. And hence the repugnance of men to the doctrine of original sin is unwarranted, and affords no proper ground on which to deny the Covenant of Works.

Secondly. The wicked, whether individuals or communities, and these alone, are not in covenant. Man in innocence was never under the law of God merely as a law. The will of God, promulgated as the terms both of a covenant and a law, had the sacredness of a law; acceded to by man, it had all the sanctity of a covenant. The will of God was propounded as a law, to be received both as a law and as a covenant; the acceptance of it engaged man to it as possessed of both characters. Because of God's authority dictating it as a law, his will revealed conferred obligation. Because of God's will and providential arrangements as to the constitution of man, he acquiescing in the requirement of the