to have been " possessed by the Lord in the beginning of his way, before his works of old; to have been set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was." Forsaking then the vagueness, and the error of the speculation of the human intellect, and attempting our knowledge by the organ of faith, which is the proper eye of reason, these passages do teach us that Adam was made after an idea in the Divine Mind, which is Christ the true likeness and indefeasible image of God; and that the constituting of the Christ, or the bringing in of the only begotten in the form of a creature, was the great purpose and end of creation, without which creation is a disordered chaos, an unstable infirmity, a mass of unredeemed iniquity, a thing out of God, and consequently unable to stand in any blessedness. For who is the likeness and image of God? who is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his subsistency? who but Christ, in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead in a body? and who could say, "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." If then Christ be the only manifestation of the invisible Godhead, the only limitation of that unlimited Being, which yet must be limited in order that limited creatures may apprehend it, what else can be meant by Adam's being made in the likeness and after the image of God, but that he was that form of creature, that type of created being and bounded subsistence, which God would yet appear in, and in it manifest forth his glory for ever; or, as Paul simply expresseth it, that he was the type of him about to be. This was to express in one word the true dignity of the human creature, and his difference from all the creatures which God had yet created and made. And, if you inquire wherein the constitution of man did shadow forth the constitution of Christ, I observe these two things:-First, Adam was a body and a soul, capable of being separated as the event of death proved, and of which the former, when separated, could undergo a change of state, from the corruptible into the incorruptible, from the mortal into the immortal. Now, as it was of the essence of the Divine purpose, that Christ should first be the Lamb slain, before he was the first-begotten from the dead, that he should be a mortal before he was an immortal body; for in the character of the Lamb slain was he contemplated from the foundation of the world; therefore was it also necessary that the creature type to which his Divine Person was to be united, should have a part, capable of being slain, before it was made immortal. And because the two natures, Divine and human, in the Christ, must never be separated after they had been once united, it was likewise necessary that there should be another part, which should still exist, preserving the identity of the person, while the body being separated, underwent this great change. If man had not possessed a body, the great mystery of

the fall into sin, death, and corruption, and the rising again into righteousness, life, and immortality, would have been impossible; and consequently the grace of God would still have been an unopened, unrevealed mystery of his being. There might have been a destruction, but there could not have been a redemption through death. And if man had not had a soul which could exist apart from the body, then would the union of the Divine and human natures in Christ have had to be interrupted, while the body underwent death, and transmutation into glory, and if that union of the Divine and human natures had ever undergone interruption, though but for an instant, then would its necessity, its eternity, its unchangeableness, have been shaken, and the whole purpose of God to manifest himself for ever in a creature form, would have been defeated. Such I conceive to be the true meaning of man's being created in the image and after the likeness of God, that he did contain in him that two-fold constitution of being which was from all eternity foreseen and predestinated, as the very form which Christ should assume. Adam, as he was created, contained in himself this fitness and suitableness to shadow forth the Christ, not under the reality, but only under the possibility of a fall; for as yet there was no separation of his body and soul threatened upon him, nor to be done upon him, because as yet he was without sin and spotless. He was, until he fell, a type of the Christ, not as he hath been exhibited in suffering flesh, but as he is yet to be exhibited in eternal glory; who shall then be body and soul of man that once were parted, but now are to be no more parted for ever, even as Adam was body and soul of man not yet parted, and never to be parted, but upon the condition of sin; possessing an indissoluble union in the constitution of God then set up, yet capable of dissolution, under another constitution not yet set up, namely, the constitution of fallen humanity: even as Christ under his first constitution was liable to dissolution, but under his present constitution, yet to be manifested, is liable to none; and therefore Adam, in his innocence and spotlessness, and so long as he continued so, having in him no ground of dissolution, was the true type of the Son of Man, as he hath been since the resurrection, and shall be through the age to come, and for ever. This is what can be said of no one creature but of Adam, during his state of innocence; for every other son of man hath upon him the fiat of the curse; being a type indeed of Christ's constitution before the resurrection, but no type of the same since the resurrection: for Christ was made in the likeness of sinful flesh; but he is now, and ever shall be, in the likeness of sinless flesh, that is, of Adam before he fell. And so much have I to say in general concerning the constitution of Adam's being.

From which I draw this conclusion, that if Christ's manifestation in the flesh was the great and ultimate end of God, then

Adam, as he came from the hand of God, was no expression of the Divine purpose, nor type of the Jehovah-man in his eternal and consummated form of being; but if the great and ultimate end of God be, as hath been said, to manifest his Son, in an unchangeable form, and the head of an unchangeable creation, then indeed Adam in his creation, and until he conceived sin, was the true expression and type of that form of creature in which the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his subsistence was to be manifested for ever. And this is the nature of our proof; and indeed the only kind of proof whereof our proposition is capable, as hath been said: for no man can handle the Divine purpose a priori; we can but discover it by what he hath been pleased to constitute and create for the manifestation of the same.

There is yet a deeper mystery in these words, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," which we shall essay to open. The creation of the first Adam, we have seen, from the promise had respect unto the Second Man, who, though after the first in the order of manifestation, is before him in the order of the purpose; for in Christ was all the purpose laid before the foundation of the world. As of the tabernacle, so of Adam, he was made in all things after the fashion which was shewn unto Christ within the secret of his Father's bosom, where he dwelt from eternity. The constitution of man standeth in a will, a reasonable word and a body for outwardly effecting the same; wherein he is a figure of God; the will answering to the Father, in that it is a cause unto itself, not caused by things without or motives within, but free in its proper constitution to originate all thought and action, whose teeming variety doth all issue forth of the unexhaustible fountain of the will. The will hath come into the bondage both of the carnal mind and the fleshly members, and of evil spirits and of the natural world; but it was not so from the beginning, and is so now only in punishment of its own base selling of its birthright, which is liberty, into which liberty Christ also hath redeemed us.-Secondly, The originating fountain of the will doth ever seek to pour itself out into the various forms of reason, which all uniting together in the personality of a man, constitute what we call I myself. This is the mystery, of the absolute Godhead expressing itself in the unity of the Word, or Logos, who is also a person, and properly the Person, in whom the invisible and incomprehensible substance of the Godhead doth body itself into form, for the purposes and ends of creation.-Thirdly, The various forms of the reason, the ideas of the mind, and the desires of the heart, have all the power of giving to themselves an outward subsistence in workmanship, whence come families and societies, and acts and works of every kind; first uttered in a word, and then fashioned into form by generation and by action. This is the Spirit going

forth from the Father and the Word, in order to express their will and their mind in outward creation, to generate creatures, and to build up their habitation in peace and blessedness. So that man in his constitution as a creature, is a type of the constitution of the Creator, three subsistences in one substance, each complete and perfect in itself, yet inseparable and indivisible from one another. This revelation of the invisible God in man, the type, is greatly marred and hidden; but in the Christ, the antitype, it is gloriously displayed; in whom there is first the Word made flesh, one Divine Person subsisting within the bounds of man's being; then the fulness of the Father dwelling ever in this holy vessel, the Father ever generating the Son, and in the Son appearing in his glory, the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in the man Christ Jesus, the Father shewing himself in the Son made man and for the expression of the Spirit there is the church, the body, into which the fulness of the Godhead, of the Father and the Son, is poured; the Godhead of the Son in the form of holy flesh and blood, the Godhead of the Father in the form of Divine power and glory; the will, the reason, and the powers of the body for expressing in outward things the reasonable will. Such is the Christ, of which Adam was the similitude; not the man Adam, but the man and the woman created in the one Adam: for it is added, "Let THEM have dominion." Now Eve, created out of a rib from Adam's side, of his substance, not by generation but by impartation, is the perfect similitude of the church taken out of Christ's substance, consisting of his flesh and blood, fashioned, builded up into a separate subsistence, yet bound back again to him by the Divine tie of marriage; a union which embraceth relations of one to another; the man the head, the woman the body; the man the worshipful ruler, the woman the obedient partner of his rule. And these two, being brought into the oneness of wedlock, do multiply and people the earth, and have dominion over it. This cometh by generation, and sheweth forth the great mystery, parent of all other mysteries, the Father generating the Son not out of himself but within himself; "the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father," between whom all relations of love and obligation, of perfect satisfaction, self-contentment, and blessedness subsist. And this inwardness of the Son is shewn forth in the mystery of infant circumcision and infant baptism, whereby the child no sooner becometh physically parted from the parents, than he is bound back into a spiritual oneness of responsibility and blessing. So that a family is also a perfect bodying forth of the Godhead within itself, three separate subsistences, man, woman, and children, bound back into unity by all the bands of love. These things may seem to some fanciful, and to others abstruse; but they lie at the roots of all truth, and are the principles of man's beautiful being. Also they make

man's feelings, and man's words, and man's acts, and man's ways to be not a volatile changeable thing which might have been otherwise, but the very living features of God's invisible being; not formalities but realities, not phenomena but noumena; and settle the great question between the Nominalists and the Realists, which modern philosophers affect to despise, because they do not understand what it was about: but it is in fact the greatest of all questions, being simply this, Whether the words of the holy Scriptures are accommodations for making a guess at God, or whether they be the very expression of the very being of God. They are the latter, because man in his thoughts and in his words is a standing similitude of God, being made so in his creation, in providence preserved so, and in redemption fixed so for ever.

II. We now proceed to treat, in the second place, of the dominion, or the power, or the estate of Adam; as it is expressed in these words: "And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." With respect to this dominion, these words contain the constitution of Adam's being, and the definition of his estate, while as yet he was only contemplated, in the purpose of God; and they contain also the blessing which was pronounced upon the creature man, contemplated as many subsistences incorporated in one person, "Let them have dominion." A curious parallel to which occurreth in the xiith of the Apocalypse, where the man-child born of the woman is first spoken of as one, and immediately after as many. "They overcame him by the blood of their testimony." So also of the communion of saints it is said (1 Cor. x. 17), "We being many.. are one body." And in Eph. i. 4, the elect are represented as chosen in Christ and being in him before the foundation of the world. And the Lord, in his intercessory prayer, (John xvii.) presenteth the oneness of his church with himself as surpassed by no degree of oneness, and equalled only by his own oneness with the Father in the indivisible unity of God; so that Paul could say, "Christ liveth in me." These instances of the oneness of being and substance in a plurality of persons shew out the proper mystery of manhood, as distinct from the angelic nature; whose numbers were never thus recapitulated into one person as mankind were heretofore into Adam, and the saints are hereafter to be into Christ.

But this the constitution of Adam in the divine word and purpose doth not contemplate or provide for his being put in paradise. The Lord did not say, And let us plant a garden, and place him in it; and let us make a help meet for him, who shall be taken from his bleeding side; but simply, Let us make man, and let them have dominion, &c. Adam was one, as Christ also is one; Adam's wife was in himself, as Christ's wife is likewise in himself from