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Tree of life in the heavenly paradise, had brought forth his fruit. But what is the fruit that grows on this heavenly tree, the second Person of the Trinity, but the fruit of the Virgin Mary's womb, and that fruit of the earth spoken of Isai. iv. 2, and ix. 6? "In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely, for them that are escaped of Israel."-" For unto us a son is born, and unto us a child is given," &c. (how often are the children that are born in a family, compared in scripture to the fruit that grows on a tree!) when this holy child had gone through all his labours and sufferings, and had fulfilled all righteousness, and was perfected, as 'tis expressed in Luke, xiii. 32, Heb. ii. 10, and v. 9: then he was seen of angels, and received up into glory. then the fruit was gathered: Christ, as full ripe fruit, was gathered into the garner of God, into heaven, the country of angels, and so became angels' food then the angels fed upon the full ripe fruit of the tree of life, and received of the Father the reward of everlasting life. Christ did not become the author of eternal Salvation to man, till he was thus made perfect, neither did he become the author of confirmed eternal life to the angels, till he was made perfect. Thus the fruit of this tree of life did not become the food of life to either men or angels till it was ripe.

This tree of life did as it were blossom in the sight of the angels, when man was first created in an innocent, holy, pleasant, and happy state, and was that creature from whence this future fruit of the tree of life was to spring, the blossom out of which the fruit was to come. It was a fair and pleasant blossom, though weak When man and feeble, and proved a fading thing like a flower.

fell, then the blossom faded and fell off; man came forth like a flower, and was cut down, but the blossom fell in order to the succeeding fruit. The fall of man made way for the incarnation of Christ, it gave occasion to the production and ripening of that fruit, and to its blessed consequences.

Thus, though Christ God man be not the Saviour of the angels, as he is of men, yet he is the tree of life to the angels, and the bread of life as truly as to men.

[77] Gen. ii. thou shalt die." of death, but the

17. "In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying This expression denotes not only the certainty extremity of it. Thou shalt die, in the superlative, and to the utmost degree; and so it properly extends to the second death, the death of the soul, for damnation is nothing but extreme death, and I am ready to think that God, by mentioning dying twice over, had respect to two deaths, the first and the second, and that it is to those words the apostle John refers in Revelation xx. 14, when he says, "This is the second death." It is

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much such a reference as he made in the 2d verse of that chapter. There he explains to us who the serpent was that beguiled Eve, viz., the dragon, that old serpent who is the devil and Satan: so here he explains what the second of those deaths, that was threatened to Adam, was. See notes on Rev. xx. 14.

[325] Gen. ii. 17. "Dying thou'shalt die." If we sometimes find such kind of doubled expressions, and also this very expression, dying thou shalt die, as in Solomon's threatening to Shimei, when no more is intended than only the certainty of the event, yet this is no argument that this does not signify more than the certainty, even the extremity as well as certainty of it. Because such a repetition or doubling of a word, according to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue, is as much as our speaking a word once with a very extraordinary emphasis. But such a great emphasis, as we often use, signifies variously; it sometimes signifies certainty, at other times extremity, and sometimes both.

[320] Gen. ii. 17. "In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." This, in addition to notes in blank bible, and besides Adam died that day, for he was ruined and undone that day, his nature was ruined—the nature of his soul-which ruin is called death in scripture, Eph. ii. 1. 5. Colos. ii. 13. Matth. viii. 22. John v. 25. The nature of his body was ruined that day, and became mortal, began to die, his whole man became subject to condemnation, to death; he was guilty of death, and yet that all was not executed; that day was a token of his deliverance; and his not dying that day a natural death, is no more difficult to reconcile with truth, than his never suffering at all that death that was principally intended, viz., eternal damnation; and probably there were beasts slain the same day by God's appointment in their stead, of which God made them coats of skins, for it is probable God's thus clothing them was not long delayed after that they saw that they were naked.

[110] Gen. ii. 21. "Adam received Eve as he awaked out of a deep sleep;" so Christ receives his church as he rises from the dead. Dr. Goodwin speaks of this deep sleep of Adam as a type of Christ's death, 1st vol. of his works, part iii. p. 58.

[251] Gen. iii., at the beginning. "Now the serpent was more subtle," &c. What is an argument ex posteriori of the devil's having assumed the form of a serpent in his temptation of our first parents, is the pride he has ever since taken of being worshipped under that form, to insult as it were, and trample upon fallen man. To this purpose we may observe that the serpent has all along

been the common symbol and representation of the heathen deities, Jul Firmic de errore Profan. Relig. p. 15. That the Babylonians worshipped a dragon, we may learn from the Apocrypha, and that they had images of serpents in the temple of Belus, Didodorus Siculus, lib. ii. chap. 4, informs us. Grotius

out of several ancient authors, has made it appear that in the old Greek mysteries they used to carry about a serpent, and cry Eva the devil, thereby expressing his triumph in the unhappy deception of our first mother. The story of Ophis among the heathen was taken from the devil's assuming the body of a serpent in his tempting of Eve. Orig. contra Celsus, lib. vi. And to name no more what Philip Melancton tells us of some priests in Asia, is very wonderful, viz. that they carry about a serpent in a brazen vessel, which they attend with a great deal of music, and many choruses in verse, while the serpent every now and then lifts up himself, opens his mouth, and thrusts out the head of a beautiful virgin,' (as having swallowed her,) 'to show the devil's triumph in this miscarriage among those poor deluded idolaters.' Nicol's Conference with a Theist, vol. I.

[452] Gen. iii. 14. "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." This doubtless has respect not only to the beast that the devil made use of as his instrument, but to the devil, that old serpent, to whom God is speaking, chiefly as is evident by the words immediately following. The words, On thy belly shalt thou go, as they respect the devil, refer to the low and mean exercises and employments, that the devil shall pursue; and signify that he should be debased to the lowest and most sordid measures to compass his ends, so that nothing should be too mean and vile for him to do to reach his aims. The words, Dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life, have respect to the mean gratifications that Satan should henceforth have for his greatest good, instead of the high and glorious enjoyments of which heretofore he was the subject in heaven; and that even in those gratifications he should find himself sorely disappointed, and so his gratifications should from time to time in all that he obtained as long as he lived, turn to his grief and vexation, agreeably to the use of a parallel phrase, Prov. xx. 17, "Bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel." When a man has eagerly taken into his mouth that which he accounted a sweet morsel, but finds it full of dirt, it moves him immediately to spit it out, and so to endeavour to clear his mouth of what he had taken as eagerly as he took it in. So Satan is from time to time made sick of his own morsels, and to spit them out again, and vomit up what he had swallowed

down, as the whale vomited up Jonah, and as the devil vomited up Christ, when he saw that he had swallowed down that which when within him, gave him a mortal wound at his vitals.

[456] Gen. iii. 14, 15. "And the Lord said unto the serpent," &c. In this first prophecy ever uttered on earth, we have a very plain instance of what is common in divine prophecies through the scripture, viz. that one thing is more immediately respected in the words, and another that is the antitype principally intended, and so of some of the words being applicable only to the former, and others only to the latter, and of God's beginning to speak in language accommodated to the former, but then as it were presently forgetting the type, and being taken up wholly about the antitype. Here in the 14th verse, the words that are used are properly applicable only to that serpent that was one of the beasts of the field; so here it is said, thou art cursed above all cattle; which shows that this prophecy has some respect to that beast that is a type of Satan. But, in the things spoken in the next verse, the beast called a serpent seems to be almost wholly forgotten, and the speech to be only about the devil; for the enmity that is there spoken of, is between the Seed of the man, and that Seed a particular person; for the words in the original are, "He shall bruise thy head, and thous halt bruise his heel;" it is (He) in the Hebrew, and auros in the Septuagint; as is observed in Shuckford, vol. I. p. 286.

[322] Gen. iii. 20. "And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." What Adam in this has respect to, doubtless is that which God had signified in the 15th verse, viz. that Eve was to be the mother of that Seed that was to bruise the head of the serpent, the grand enemy of mankind, that had brought death on them, and had the power of death, and so was to be the author of life to all that should live, i. e. all that should escape that death. So Eve was the mother of all living, as all that have spiritual and eternal life are Christ's, and so the woman's seed, because Christ was of the woman. Adam, when he had eaten the forbidden fruit, and his conscience smote him, had a terrible remembrance of the awful threatening, "Dying, thou shalt die ;" and therefore took great notice of those words which God spake concerning the seed of Eve bruising the Serpent's head; which seem to afford some relief from his terror, and therefore he thought it worthy to give Eve her name from it, as the most remarkable thing that he had observed concerning Eve, and the thing that he thought more worthy to be remembered, and could think of with greater delight and pleasure than any thing else concern

ing her, and therefore he thought it above all things worthy that her name should be a continual memorial of it.

That the thing of which Adam took special notice in giving his wife this name, was not her being the universal mother of mankind, or the universality of her maternity, but the quality of those that she was to be the mother of, viz. living ones, is evident from the name itself, which expresses the latter, and not the former: the word in Chavah, which we render Eve, expresses Life, the quality of those that she was to be the mother of, and not the universality of her maternity. And it is not likely this would have been if there was nothing in this quality of her posterity that did at all distinguish her from any other mother; which would have been if all that was intended by her being the mother of those that were living, was that she was to be the mother of such as were to live in the world; for so all other mothers might be called Chavah as well as she, or by some name that expressed that quality of life. A name is given for distinction; and therefore doubtless Adam gave her a name that expressed something that was distinguishing; but if what was meant was only that she was the mother of all mankind, then the thing that was distinguishing of her, was merely the universality of her maternity, and not at all the quality of her posterity. Why, then, was not the universality, the distinguishing thing, expressed in the name, rather than the quality, which was not at all distinguishing?

Again: It is not likely that Adam would give her a name from that which did not at all distinguish her from him. If persons have not names that shall distinguish them from all others, yet doubtless they ought to have names to distinguish them from those with whom they always live, and from whom there is most occasion to distinguish them. But if it was not the quality of her posterity, but only the universality of her progeniture of mankind, to which he had respect, that was what was common to her with himself.

If it had been only her being the mother of all mankind to which Adam had respect, it would have been more likely that he would have given her this name on her first creation, and on her being brought to him; which was after that benediction, "Be fruitful and multiply;" but we find that this name was not given on that occasion, but then Adam gave her another name, Gen. ii. 23," He called her Ishah, from her being taken out of man; but the name of Chavah, as the mother of all living, is given on another occasion, viz. just after God had promised that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and immediately after God had pronounced the threaten

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