But not as the Son of God in our Nature as was before set out in the Life of Righteousness Christ is the Lord of Life and Glory the Resurrection and the Life which Adam could not be but when that Life God Gave Him was Lost as He 〈◊〉 not keep it so He could not restore it but in Adam All Dye All in Christ are made Alive 1 Cor. 15. 21 22. But that we may … ther Understand the Great Wiâ—â—â—m of God in making such a Head as Adam was at first who thereby became a Figure of Him that was to Be and that It was to the Great Good of Mankind considered in it self will thus Appear 1. God who certainly Knows what was Best for his own Creation and particularly for the Humane Creation dispos'd it thus as most secure for it under a Common Head and Mediator therein Fore-shewing the Lasting Happiness of Mankind in Christ For thus no single Person would be in danger to be Lost but the whole secur'd in One viz. in one Common Head Answering for All. 2. This One was the Common Parent of all Mankind and so had a Parental Love and Care ingrafted into Him by God for his Posterity the Remains of which we see now how strongly It Acts among Men. 3. He was Accomplish'd with All Powers of Standing so that nothing lay upon Him but to Hold what He Had and to Live in the Constant Exercise and display of it 4. It was but One Instance or Act of Obedience upon which the whole Righteousness and Happiness of Man was suspended viz. His not Eating the Forbidden Fruit the singular Test and proof God put upon Him of his Love and Fidelity to Himself and in which All his Holy and Excellent State as by one unlooseable Knot if not Cut by Sin was kept strait and entire of which the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a Sacrament and standing Admonition 5. It is most Reasonable to believe there was a certain determinate Time and that but short wherein Adam's Obedience was to be Try'd and if He had stood that Shock and Resisted the Temptation He and his Posterity had been confirm'd for ever In him therefore Humane Nature had the fullest and fairest View It could have and the most ample Advantages for it self to be Happy for ever Adam therefore was thus every way Fit and most Advantageously and by the Infinite Goodness of the Creator plac'd as the Common Head of Mankind as a Type of Christ The Application and Use of this first Proposition is 1. The Consideration of Humane Nature Enstated at first in its Common Parent as its Head and Mediator Furnish'd with the Life of Righteousness and Holiness in a State of Favor with God and in the Assurance of a Blessed Immortality and yet so wofully Fallen by our First Parent should exceedingly Humble and Abase us before God in a just Sense of our Fallen Condition as being the effect of our own disloyalty in Adam our Representative and in whom we may see our own Falseness and the great Faithfulness of God to us 2. It Teaches us to Adore the Grace of God in Jesus Christ so Blessed a Mediator who cannot fail us to fly to Him as our onely security both from the Ruine we are fallen into by Adam and also from our own False Righteousness that seems to remain to us and from the Treachery and Falseness of our own Hearts and Resolutions in Holiness All our Security is in Christ alone and in dependency on Him 3. We should therefore look most diligently to this that we are Found in the Second Adam the Head of our Recovery who so much excells the First Adam though he had not fallen how much more when he is Fallen and become the Head of Ruine and Apostacy For he onely who by being in the Son hath the Son He only hath Life but who hath not the Son hath not 1 John â— 12. John 3. 〈◊〉 Life but the Wrath of God abides upon Him I have under the foregoing Proposition given a Sum of the whole Context and laid the Foundation I shall now go on to give the Sum of every Proposition arising from it Propos 2. ADAM hath conveyed a Law of Righteousness to All his Posterity engrafted into their Hearts and It is so inseparable from Humane Nature that one cannot pass without the other but he hath not conveyed a Nature answerable and agreeable to that Law but sunk down from it into Sin which is the truest Account of Original Sin however It cannot be search'd in all the particulars in so short a summary but thus he hath conveyed Sin and Death to all his Posterity and thus the Rom. 5. 13 14. Apostle proves the Common Headship of Adam There cannot be Death without Sin there cannot be Sin without a Law there cannot be a Law without the giving that Law there was no universal Law till Moses There was universal Death of all Mankind even of Infants before Moses there must be therefore universal Sin and therefore also there must have been an universal Law given Such a Law being no way so Given till Moses but by that Law written in Mens Hearts Hereby it necessarily arises Adam must be a Head conveying an Vniversal Law But not conveying an universal Nature suitable to it as Righteous Holy and Good as Rom. 7. 12. that Law is He hath conveyed Sin and Death Universally 1. Adam was entrusted with a Nature perfectly agreeable to this Law but falling from it under the Justice of God He conveys this Law with the disagreeable Nature on which follows Sin and Condemnation He was in the best Circumstances any Man could be to have preserved the one with the other and as the Common Father of All the most obliged to look well to it and much stronger then if every single man had been to preserve it only for himself seeing the Care of an Universal Parent must needs be in Nature the highest Care and our daily Unfaithfulness to our selves in what is in our Power shews how little Reason there is to complain as if we would have done better each man for himself then Adam for us All. Herein how does Christ excell Adam as a Common Head or Mediator For He conveys a Law indeed but it is a Law of the Spirit of Life as to Justification and that carries with it an Efficacious Law to Sanctification as shall be shown Adam conveying a Law but not conveying a Fountain of Action agreeable hath convey'd a Law of Sin and Death because the Law condemns the Nature but Christ conveys nothing but Grace Righteousness and Life to All in Him Thus different a Head he is from Adam both ways who was a Figure and not a Figure of Christ who is to be that Head a Figure in conveying but not a Figure in conveying Sin and Death instead of Life and Righteousness as he was at first appointed 2. What Adam conveys he
Psal 51. 5. Ephes 2. 〈◊〉 c. 4. 22. conveys by Natural Generation and so especially by the Body as all evidence of Scripture assure us too many to need pointing to Hence Children of Wrath by Nature by Conception in Sin the Natural States call'd the Old Man a Body and Members of Sin The Soul coming with a Law of Righteousness engraven upon it immediately by Gods Creation into such a Body and sinking into its Corruption as descending from Adam and not keeping up to its Law of Creation sinks into Sin and Death But Christs Regeneration by his Spirit dwells as a higher 1 Cor. 6. 19. Rom. 8. 10 11. Spirit in the Regenerated Spirit and from thence making a Temple of the Body gives present Life to that Spirit by Righteousness when ever it separates from the Body and a Resurrection to the Body after Death 3. The Law of conveyance of Sin and Death is unrepealable upon All that is of Apostate Adam The Spirit or highest Soul of all the Children of Adam cemented with the Body is till recover'd by Christ under Condemnation notwithstanding It was given by Creation from God It cannot be renewed perfectly so as to be Life till separated from the Body by the Death of the Body The Body till it be a Body of the Resurrection is under Death and All this by vertue of that Decree upon Adam the Head But in Christ the head of recovery All is in its own order recovered into the Reign of Life the Spirit beginningly now perfectly at Death becomes Life The Body as the Temple of the Holy Ghost dwelling in the Soul shall be certainly rais'd by the Spirit of Christ dwelling in the Soul and by it in the Body also Vse All which teaches us to look to this that we be found in the Second Adam out of whom there is in from the First Adam as a Common Head nothing but Sin Death and Condemnation Proposition 3. Adam by his Fall and Observe the whole Context from verse to verse Conveyance of a Law of Holiness and of a Nature not agreeable to that Law of Holiness hath been a Head Common Person or Mediator of abundance of Sin Disobedience Offence Transgression Condemnation Death and the Reign of Death to the Posterity of Mankind The Law of Righteousness published in a fairer fuller clearer Edition in Scripture then as it is in the Heart of Man since the Fall hath made the Offence and the Death upon it much more to abound and Reign by the clearer Knowledge and more manifest Discoveries of them 1. Adam notwithstanding his Fall ceased not to be the prolifick and fruitful Head of millions of Mankind that have been and are yet to be 2. To All these He conveys the Nature of Men in all its vigour of Thoughts Words and Actions according to the variety of Degrees of Action whereunto the several Tempers Educations Stations and Ages of Men give them Opportunity 3. He hath no less conveyed that Law of Righteousness to be the Rule of the numberless Persons of Mankind and their far more numerous Actions of which the Fiery Law of God in Scripture now gives the clearest Beams 4. Hereupon by Reason of the unanswerableness of their Natures and Powers of Action and so of their Actions themselves to this Law a kind of Infinity of Actual Sin hath flown in upon the World much more discovered and aggravated by that Fiery Law 5. From thence Death in all its various shapes in this present World and the unsheathing Rev. 20. 14 15. of Death in the Second and Eternal Death of which the present Death is but the sheath or Scabbard hath had and must have a wonderful and triumphant Reign on the World of which all the Threats in the Word of God are a notorious Evidence 6. Besides the Evidence of the Word of God all the Experience all the Laws all the Writings all the common and ordinary Discourse in the World are the most known and familiar Assurances of the Abundance of Sin and Death 7. The close Attendance of Reason and its Enquiries will necessarily lead us to the First man as the original of both but the unquestionable Demonstration of it is this Word of God which best knows how Mankind began which hath given the most convictive Accounts of Sin and Death and which our own Sentiments of Mind most conspire with and so is most to be believ'd in the Original of them 8. In all this so abundant Communication of Sin and Death of which Adam by the accident of his own Sin is become a Head He is by that accident also yet the Figure of him who is to be the Second Adam in regard of the Exuberancies of Communication though not in regard of the Things Communicated as contrary and opposite one to another as Sin and Death are contrary to Righteousness and Life But to All that are in Christ Observe the much more along the Context Christ is a Mediator as much excelling Adam in the Power and Triumph of Communication of Righteousness Life and the Reign of it as the Antitype excells the Type as was before said and that not only in the Excellency of the Things Communicated but in the Richness and Plenty of the Communication Vse How Necessary is it we should All behold our selves in the First Adam in whom we certainly are by Natural Generation and that thereupon we should be filled with the Shame Horror Sorrow and Humiliation flowing from such a lost Nature and our innumerable Actual Transgressions upon it And that thereupon we should hasten into the Second Adam by Faith and Regeneration who is the Head of Life and Recovery Proposition 4. Jesus Christ is brought in One Man One Jesus Christ is oppos'd to One Man Adam throughout the Context by God the Second Last perfect Adam the most Excellent One Man the Common Head and Mediator of Humane Nature the Antitype to the Type the First Adam The First man Adam was before his Fall a Person of Great Value of Great Sufficiency when He was appointed a Mediator by God But by his own Sin He sunk and Fell and is become to all his Posterity a Head of Ruine Christ therefore comes as a Person of infinitely Greater value into the Humane Nature and into Adams Station to Raise Recover and Boy it up He came into the Nature so as to embrace the whole Nature in Himself without a Humane Person and so was more perfectly a Man then Adam not a Great Man but The Man 1 Tim. 2. 5. Christ Jesus As the Son of God He was Creator and Lord of the Nature and so had Right to Recover it as his own As the Phil. 2. v. 6. 8. Son of Man He bore the abstracted Humane Nature not limited to a Humane but united to the Divine Person and so was incomparably beyond Adam fit to be the Common Head because he had all the Nature so abstracted not bounded as in
Adam by a Humane Person that must look to it self as well as to the Nature So All he did and suffer'd ran out wholly to the Nature but He is the Head most properly especially to the Renewed Humane Nature entire in Him being conceived into it by the Holy Spirit Adam therefore left his publick Station and privately as a private Person retired into this Head looking as I said to Himself and not to the Nature in this Action The Ends of Gods Constituting this One Man as a Common Head even his Son our Lord Jesus Christ are 1. That He might have in Humane Nature an Adoption of many Sons to Glory in this Great Son of God and Son of Man Heb. 2. 10. 2. There is a Redundancy of Benefit Common Grace and other Advantages upon all parts of Humane Nature in preserving so much of the Remains of Conformity to the Law of Righteousness in the World which would only condemn as in Hell and not guide to any Thing Good but turn the World into a Hell were it not for Christ in whom also so much of Patience and Bounty is vouchsafed to men in outward Blessings essaying their Return to God by Repentance Rom. 2. 4. 2 Pet. 3. 9. in hopes of his Mercy to which this Patience and Bounty give so Great Encouragements Vse This shews the admirable Congruity to our Case to have our Help laid upon so mighty and near a Mediator as Emmanuel God with us Proposition 5. Jesus Christ is a Mediator of Compare v. 15. and v. 19. the double parallel lying on each side the Proposition v. 18. the Grace of God and of the Free Gift of Righteousness by Grace in its Great Abundance even as Adam was of the Offence and its Abundance yet so as that He is a Mediator of Righteousness in his own Obedience also The Grace of God is the Highest Manifestation of the Divine Glory and Goodness to us How High therefore is the Honour of Christ to be the Mediator of it Adam was at first intended to be the Mediator of Righteousness and of the Benignity of the Creator to his Creatures according to a Covenant of Works and Debt and proportionably Rom. 4. 4. by his Fall He becomes a Mediator of the Justice of God upon Sin and Sinners For Sin were it not for that Justice were only the Impotency and weakness and defect of a Creature made to be so Righteous not bearing up to Righteousness that Justice makes Sin so strong 1 Cor. 15. 56. Christ as a Mediator of Free Grace hath infinite Advantages in regard of us above a Mediator of Righteousness only for Righteousness walks by severe Rules and exact Steps Psal 145. 17. Adam being so and sinning could never Recover by Himself Nor any of his Posterity by any Power Receiv'd from Him who entailed Sin and Death But Grace is unlimimited Ephes 1. 6 7. 11. c. 2. 7 8 9. and unbounded in all its motions having no Cause but it self no bound but it self viz. It s own Wisdom and Holiness so is infinitely more potent then Sin It is True Justice in God is Infinite as Grace for in God They are one Grace therefore provides an infinite Satisfaction to Justice in the Obedience of Christ constituting Righteous Rom. 5. 19. of which being secure It triumphs as it pleases and Sin vanishes before it for the strength of Sin is the Justice of God in his Law That satisfied Sin is weak and is blotted out as a Cloud is sought for and not found Corruption dyes vanquished as Grace pleases That the Mediatorship of Christ may be more fully understood in its being a Mediatorship of Grace seeing Justice is infinite in God and his Grace and his Justice One in Him which Justice Judges acts and proceeds according to number weight and measure The Apostle hath joyn'd in an opposite parallel on the other side of the proposition v. 18. the Obedience of Christ so full and so perfect that he plainly asserts that even as by the Disobedience of one many were made or constituted that is judg'd and determin'd Sinners so by the Obedience of One many were not only pardoned and so accepted as Righteous but They are and shall be constituted decreed determined and justly judged to be Righteous by this Righteousness of Christ infinite in number weight and measure becoming theirs Vse This Obedience therefore is to be considered in the Mediator of it truly higher then the Heavens deeper in sufferings in their value and vertue then the lowest Hell broader then the Persons and Sins of All over whom and over which Adams Sin can extend it self in those for whom as in Christ It is accepted and longer then the whole Line of Adams Sin beginning with Time and running on for ever if not cut off by this Righteousness of Christ which is eternal or from Everlasting to Everlasting and nothing beyond it And thus was the Obedience of Jesus Christ an Obedience of infinite Purity and of unfathom'd sufferings of the Son of God a Priest for ever without beginning of Days or end of Life Eternal Propos 6. Upon this full and compleat verse 16. compared with 20. Satisfaction to Justice although the one Sin of Adam becomes Legions of Legions by Actual Transgressions and are seen in every Atom every aggravating Circumstance in the Beams of that Fiery Law yet the Free Gift of Grace in and upon this Righteousness blots them all out of this Light of Gods Countenance And this Righteousness and Obedience is as the Ark of Noah that was not overwhelm'd by the swelling of the Floods but Rode above them and the higher they were the higher the Ark was so the Soul enclos'd and ARKED in this Righteousness of Grace and the Free Gift Rides above all the surges of raging Guilt whether from just fears of Gods Righteous Judgment from the Turmoils of Conscience or the soming Accusations from Hell and stands Righteous notwithstanding All before God before Angels and to the Consternation and silence of lost Spirits For where Sin abounds Grace does much more abound and the Free Gift is of many never so many Offences to Justification Vse Behold then by way of Adoration and Holy Confidence the ample Rest of Consciences wash'd in the Blood of Jesus Proposition 7. The Great Question now arising will bee How can it be ever reconciled to Divine Justice or to Natural Conscience that the Righteousness of one should be made the Righteousness of so many To this the Apostle hath laid the Answer in the Center and even ballance of the whole Discourse As by the Offence of one Judgment came upon All to v. 18. Condemnation so to the Righteousness of one to the Justification of Life The infinite Righteousness and Truth of God hath determin'd the Case One Person may communicate to Many and to All in Him for the Many who are also the All in One Adam in whom the Man Christ Jesus was not