LECTURE V.

THE SACRAMENTS OF THE COVENANT OF WORKS.

Having considered the contracting parties, the conditions, the reward promised, and the penalty, we shall now

V. Examine the sacraments of the covenant of works. For as the covenant of grace has its sacraments, viz., in that administration of it under which it is our happiness to live, the sacred seals and symbols of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, so the covenant under consideration had its confirmatory seals, commonly called sacraments, and which, like all other sacraments, were intended both as seals to confirm, and as signs to teach. That is, solemnly to confirm the truth of the promise, and penalty of the compact, to which they were attached:-and further, to instruct our first parents in the nature of the truths revealed in that contract-the duties on which they had entered and which it enjoined. And this being the design of God in their appointment, these sacraments are indications of that wisdom and goodness of God discoverable in all his dispensations and works, for by means of those sacred symbols Adam was per

petually reminded, and most impressively instructed, concerning the nature and value of the felicity which he should finally obtain if he persevered in making the will of God the only rule of his duty. To remind him of which, he thus had a monitor perpetually before his eyes, and likewise to confirm his faith, and to keep his watchfulness awake. Thus was Adam fenced both within and without-within by perfect holiness, without by various dispensations, which expressed the righteousness not less than the wisdom of God.

But not further to indulge in such reflections as these, we proceed to remark, that many learned divines consider the sacraments of the covenant of works to have been these, viz.: 1. Paradise. 2. The tree of life. 3. The tree of knowledge of good and evil. 4. The sabbath.

1 We say Paradise was a sacrament of the covenant of works. And if, as already observed, we consider that this sacred symbol was designed as a sign to teach our first parents the nature of the reward promised, and also as a seal to confirm their faith in the promise itself, we shall presently see cause to admire the wisdom of God in its adaptation. For Paradise itself considered as a place, Adam's original state in it, and the expressions with which both abounded of the unbounded good ness of God, were admirably adapted to intimate to to Adam, that in case he obeyed, the state in which he should be finally and for ever fixed, would be most glorious.

*

1. Of this, Paradise itself was a wonderful type. For that the garden of Eden was a place of matchless, and as it were, transporting beauty, there is every reason to believe. For even now that sin has entered and rendered us so undeserving of them, what delightful spots are to be found on this our earth. What a terrestrial heaven then must this world have been before sin defaced its beauty, made the weeds to grow, and the flowers to fade! What then must the garden have been of such a world the place that was formed for man in a state of perfection, and which, had he stood, would have been the seat of empire, and the metropolis of a world? Besides, the garden of Eden is a type of heaven itself, considered both as a place and state of unutterable delights. For it is with reference to man's first abode, that heaven is called, both by the

'Eden,'

* Where was this wonderful garden of Eden? says Brown,' a country on the banks of the Euphrates, a little northward of where it runs into the Persian Gulph, and near Haran and Gozan, 2 Kings xix. 12, 13. Here is still the fattest soil in the Turkish empire, and one of the most pleasant places in nature, were it properly cultivated. Here probably the earthly paradise stood, on the spot where the Euphrates and Hiddekel or Tigris are joined into one river, and which a little below is parted into two streams, the Pison which compasseth or rather runs along the east of Havilah, a country on the north east of Arabia Felix, and Gihon, which runs along the west of Cush, Ethiopia, or Chuzestan in Persia.' The inquisitive reader may find this statement confirmed in Dr. Wells's Historical Geography of the Old and New Testament, vol. 1, page 1, &c.

Saviour and the Apostle, Paradise. Luke xxiii. 43. -2 Cor. xii. 4. Was it an emblem of heaven? Then no doubt Adam's residence was a place of incomparable glory. With this agrees the inspired description of it, Gen. ii. 8, 9. It was a garden created, and laid out, and planted by infinite wisdom and goodness, Eden was its name, which in the Hebrew language signifies pleasure, delight. And the Greek word for Paradise used, we are informed, to be applied by the Easterns, to an enclosure full of all the beautiful and valuable products of the earth. This was pre-eminently the case with the garden of Eden, for we are informed that there was not a tree in the whole world which was either pleasant to the sight or good for food, which did not here luxuriantly grow. To these remarks, add, that like another garden, we mean the church of God, Eden was pro vided with a river which ran through, and no doubt by many an enchanting rill watered it, at once securing its fertility, and perfecting its beauty. And to sum up the whole, this was at first the abode of perfect innocence and love. The place where God himself, in a human form, we suppose, conversed with man, as well before as after the fall. And hither it is highly probable, that angles from the upper Eden came on visits of friendship to man-came perhaps to teach, perhaps likewise to learn. With a little alteration therefore, what the Poet says of our beloved country, would emphatically apply to the primeval residence of man, corresponding as it did with the moral and other excellencies of his first

estate' So fair a spot as Eden, never sun viewed in his wide career.' So far, therefore, as it is possible for earthly things to adumbrate heavenly, our first parents, in the paradise of exquisite elegance and unnumbered delights which possibly for leagues spread itself around them, had, as it were, a soul-ravishing emblem of that still more wonderful habitation, ready to receive them if they finished the work given them to perform. And thus the glory of their final rest was not only pictured to them, but sacramentally sealed.

2. Apart however, from the state of the possessor, it is not in the capacity of any thing earthly to bestow happiness, although outward things have a great influence in making us sometimes more miserable, and at others less happy. But as to man in his original condition, his moral state was a heaven to him, and calculated, as well as his earthly lot, to remind him in whispers more enrapturing than the songs of angels- Adam, how blissful will be thy everlasting state!' An inference which he no doubt likewise drew, from the innumerable expressions of the exuberance of the Divine goodness by which he was surrounded and pervaded, and which represented the Almighty as a Being of infinite beauty, in the everlasting possession of whom they should, in the appointed time and way, realize a fountain of bliss 'full beyond measure, lasting beyond bounds.' Thus far concerning Paradise as a sign and seal to our first parents of the heavenly felicity.