who unhesitatingly maintain that God might have created man, without elevating him to a supernatural state, and of course, without adorning him with sanctifying grace and other supernatural gifts; that moreover he might have created man mortal, and subject to the evils of this world: for man has nothing in his nature that can strictly entitle him to a super natural destination, or to an exemption from those miseries which are the connatural appendages of his nature.

LXXIII. Granting, continues the Unitarian, that there is nothing in this mystery incompatible with the justice of God, still does not reason discover in it something irreconcilable with his bounty: how could a God, infinitely good, annex the destiny of all mankind to the free will of their first parent, when he foresaw that he would fall?

In order to vindicate the equity and the bountiful views of Divine Providence upon mankind, suppose, for a moment, all men had been actually present, when God was about to place their destiny in the hands of Adam, by appointing him to represent all mankind on this occasion, so that his will should be deemed, in a moral sense, the will of all men, and his fate morally the fate of all men. Now I ask, would we not all, had we been then in actual existence, have hailed such a de sign as most desirable and advantageous to us, and as most worthy of the infinite goodness of our Creator? Would we not, in case God had left the matter to our own free option, have accepted the proposed condition with feelings of the liveliest gratitude and admiration? For when we take it into consideration on the one side, how richly Adam was endowed by the liberal hand of God with the most extraordinary gifts both of nature and grace, and on the other the easy condition which God exacted, viz. his obedience to one single precept, and that a most easy one, there was not a shadow of proba bility, that Adam, on such a solemn occasion, on which he well knew the infinite importance of what was at stake, should not keep so easy a commandment. Thus, instead of blaspheming his infinite goodness, we have reason to admire the excess of his paternal love towards mankind, in annexing to so de No. III.

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sirable a condition the transmission of original justice; the more so, as the prerogatives of original integrity were by no means due to men, and that he might in justice have refused them, even if Adam had not prevaricated.

LXXIV. Men, indeed, replies the Unitarian, if actually existing then, would have had reason gladly to accept such a proposal on the part of God, because every thing would have led them to believe, that Adam would undoubtedly keep so easy a precept, and thus merit for them original justice; but how could God propose it, He who infallibly knew that Adam would not keep it, and thus render himself, with his posterity, unhappy?

God could propose this condition, although he had an infallible foreknowledge that Adam would not fulfil it, for the very same reasons for which he grants liberty or free will to men, although he foresees that men will abuse it. Does free will, thus bestowed upon them with the certain foresight of the future abuse thereof, cease to be a gift of God, does it cease to be a true benefit? It does not, and the reason of it is this: because God, notwithstanding the future abuse of the free will of men, bestows free will upon them, not to the end, that they should make an ill use of it, but with a most sincere desire, that they should make use of it for the advancement of his glory and their own salvation. God, indeed, has it in his power to prevent the abuse of free will, and, of course, sin, by depriving man of his liberty, but as on that supposition man would not be able to give any degree of glory to God, or to acquire any merit for himself, he deems it more consonant to his infinite wisdom and justice, (as St. Augustine observes,) not to prevent evils, than, not to draw greater good from them.Therefore, when he permits sin to be committed, it is always with a view of drawing greater good from it, viz. a greater manifestation of his infinite perfections, a thing which none but an infinite power and wisdom are able to do. What has been said here on sin at large, is perfectly applicable to original sin in particular. The prescience which God had of the fall of Adam, does by no means lessen the infinite kindness

of God towards men, in proposing so easy a condition to merit for us such extraordinary and gratuitous favours; because when God attached the fate of men to the accomplishment of so easy a condition, it was with a most serious and sincere intention, that Adam should keep the commandment, and thus bring on his posterity the same supernatural gifts, with which the liberal hand of God had so copiously and so gratuitously adorned him.

LXXV. But would not he have shown greater kindness to men, if he had hindered the downfall of Adam, and, of course, that train of evils, which, in consequence of it, rushed in upon his race?

It might appear so to men, who are in the habit of considering the fall of Adam in itself, and insulated from the admirable designs which God, in the secret counsels of his infinite wisdom and goodness, had conceived for the restoration of fallen man; but the Christian philosopher, who knows it to be a bad method of judging of the merit and beauty of a painting, to consider each part in itself, and as unconnected with the other parts or with the whole; the Christian philosopher views the memorable event of the fall of Adam, not insulated, but connected with the whole order and plan of the bounteous dispensations of Heaven, and thus embracing at once the tout ensemble of the admirable counsels of the Most High on fallen man, his mind is enlarged, astonished, enraptured, at the wonderful inventions of the eternal love of God towards man, he is lost in admiration, at the most perfect symmetry, harmony, and beauty, which reign through all the works of God and through all the plans of his all-wise and bountiful providence; in fine, thus contemplating the dispensations of Heaven in their totality and connection, he discovers at every step the strongest motives to admire the mercy of his God, in the very permission of that original fall, which has been heretofore the object of anti-christian sarcasm, and is now made an object of censure by the Unitarian.

Yes, I am bold to assert, that there is scarce a mystery in the Christian code, in which all the perfections of the Al

mighty, and especially his infinite mercy and goodness, are displayed with more lustre than in the very permission of original sin. For why, and with what views, did God permit it? With views most worthy of his infinite wisdom and mercy; with a design of drawing from that sin infinitely more good, and of raising fallen man to a state of glory and bliss incomparably higher than that which he would have enjoyed in the condition of his original justice. No sooner was the prevarication committed, than God made known his gracious designs to fallen man by this memorable and solemn promise of a future Redeemer, "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel."* Thus God graciously designed from the beginning of the world, to send a Redeemer," in the plenitude of time," for the redemption of mankind. But what species of redemption? a redemption which has astonished heaven and earth, and which will fill men and angels with rapturous admiration, for all eternity; a redemption the most glorious to God, the most plentiful, the most honourable, and the most advantageous to guilty man. For this gracious promise, after the lapse of four thousand years, was accomplished by the ineffable mystery of the incarnation, in which the eternal word, the only begotten Son of God, the second person of the adorable Trinity, was made flesh, and uniting to his divine nature, the very nature of fallen man in the unity of his divine person, was true God and true man, and as such paid to the divine justice, by the death of the cross, that rigorous and condign satisfaction and atonement for sin, which guilty man of himself was unable to pay. From that moment heaven is reconciled with the earth, hitherto accursed,† mercy and justice meet in the kiss

"Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum, et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus." The Hebrew, ipsum, the seed, or as others read, ipse, the son of the woman, have exactly the same meaning.

+"And through him to reconcile all things unto himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, both as to the things that are on earth, and the things that are in Heaven. Coloss. i. 25,

of peace, the gates of heaven are expanded to all men: from that moment all the attributes of God blaze forth with an unparalleled splendour; his infinite mercy, in not abandoning sinful and ungrateful man in his forlorn condition, but in rescuing him from all his miseries, and in restoring him to his former rights,† his awful justice, in receiving by the bloody sacrifice of the cross, an infinite satisfaction, a satisfaction strictly commensurate to the injury offered to God by sin; his infinite love towards men, "in so loving the world as to give his only-begotten Son, that every one that believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting;" his infinite liberality, wisdom, and power, in contriving for the restoration of mankind, so ineffable a mystery as that of the incarnation, in consequence of which one and the same person is capable of suffering as man, and of giving infinite dignity to his sufferings as God, and likewise in inventing such a mode of redemption, as should be at once the most painful and ignominious to the Redeemer, and the most lenient and most glorious to guilty and ungrateful men. From this moment God is honoured and adored after such a manner as would never have taken place in the state of original justice; for he is honoured and adored by a God-man; he receives infinite adorations in him that adores him as man, and who gives infinite dignity to his adorations as God. From this moment the nature of man is exalted to the very throne of the divinity, in the person of the incarnate word, and man being incorporated and united with the word made flesh, as a

"Mercy and truth have met each other; justice and peace have kissed.” Psalms, lxxxiv. 11.

+"He has received Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy." St. Luke, i. 54. "But God, who is rich in mercy, through his exceeding charity with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ, (by whose grace you are saved.)" Ephes. i. 4, 5.

"But when the goodness and kindness of our Saviour God appeared, not by the works of justice which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the laver of regeneration, and the renovation of the Holy Ghost." Titus, iii. 5. "He has showed might in his arm." St. Luke, i. 51.