The Apostle leads us into a further view of this fame imputation of righteoufnefs, by the comparison he ftates between the two heads of mankind; Jefus Chrift, and Adam, who, he fays, was the figure or defigned reprefentation of him. I do not remember that our firft father's fin is ever faid to be imputed to his pofterity; but the thing is afferted in the strongest terms, That "by one man's tranfgreffion, many

were made finners," and fubjected to that very punishment which was inflicted on the tranfgreffor. Precifely, in the fame manner, we are told, that "by the obedience. "of one, many were made righteous;" and they were made righteous by the gift of grace coming to them, and upon them, founded in the perfect obedience of Chrift, and his fulfilling the terms of life, by which the gift comes to them perfectly free, and nothing is left to them but to receive what God freely gives in his ever-bleffed Son.

It has been warmly difputed, whether the righteoufnefs of Chrift is imputed to the believer in itfelf, or only in its effects. On an impartial view of the righteousness the Apostle speaks of, one fhould think, that if there ever was fuch a thing as lo

gomachy

gomachy among difputants, this must be one. Surely no man ever imagined, that God, who fees all things as they are, fhould ever reckon, that the righteousness of Christ is really the righteousness of the believer; for that is the fame as to reckon that the believer himself performed it. It can be no otherwife his, than as the Apoftle fays it is, viz. by free gift; and the only way it can be conferred, is by giving the finner the full benefit of it; putting this righteousness to his account, and thus transferring Chrift's right to him; that whatever he receives is the reward, not of what he, but of what Chrift has done. The promises made to Abraham, and the bleffings conveyed in them, it is evident, were not the rewards or effects of Abraham's faith, or any righteoufnefs of his; but the grounds and foundation on which his faith ftood. So far as God had spoken and promifed, fo far had he a good right to believe. But it was not his believing that gave him a right to expect the bleflings. And well would it be for men, if they contented themselves to take things in that plain fimple light in which perfect wisdom has left them to us, without pretending to model them into the

form

form of a human fcience, or attempting an answer to every how and why that ignorance or malice may caft in our way.

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15. Abraham's Covenant.

Braham's faith we find very highly commended by the Apostle; and he fays no more of it than he gives good reafons for. Never was faith more feverely tried; no, not even theirs who fuffered the most cruel deaths, in the hope, or rather the certain profpect of eternal life. To fay nothing of his leaving his native country, and all his connections there, (and in these lie all the comforts of life); though that was a great matter, the trying command he received was, to go and facrifice his only fon, and that fon too in whom all the promises, and what is called particularly God's covenant given him, were to be fulfilled. Nothing could fupport faith in thefe circumstances, but the firm perfuafion that God was able to raise him from the dead, and that he certainly would do it. But however ftrong his faith was in the great effential points, as we may call the promises

promises of that covenant; yet it failed him shamefully in leffer inftances: for though God had affured him, that he was his fhield or protector, yet on a mere furmife that his life might be in danger, he twice ventured to ward it off by a lie, or at least by a filly equivocation: A useful piece of inftruction to all that hear of it, that the strongest and most approved faith in God will not be fufficient to fupport the poffeffors of it, even in the most ordinary cafes, when God is pleased to leave them to themselves; and a ftrong experimental confirmation of what our Lord fays to his difciples, "Without me ye can do nothing." Though all the promises made to Abraham ftood on the fame bottom, the faithfulnefs of the promiser; yet it is very evident from the tenor of the history, that what God calls his covenant, and which he promifes to establish with him, is fomething different from, and of a higher nature than the promise of a numerous feed, and the inheritance of the land of Canaan. The grant is expreffed in the fame terms with that made to Noah; and both most evidently had a reference to the original pro

mife, or declaration, if any one chufes to call it fo, that the woman fhould have a feed which fhould bruife the ferpent's head, and fhed the blood of him who had fhed man's blood, who brought in and propagated death among them, as he had promised to Noah, and now renewed to Abraham, under the notion of a feed in whom all the families of the earth fhould be bleffed.

The terms in which this promise or grant was expreffed, have evidently fomething very fingular in them; the cutting off or flaying BeRiTH; for fo the word joined with BeRiTH and tranflated, making a covenant, evidently fignifies, and is acknowledged fo to do by all who know any thing of the language, and appears to be the original of the feemingly odd phrase ufed in later languages for making mutual covenants and agreements; and there was fome good foundation for it, as in the hiftory written in that language we find the fame terms made use of in fuch covenants or agreements. But the reafon commonly given for that strange phrafeology will hardly be thought a good one by impartial judges: for though it may be true VOL. I. Sf

that