slaying beasts, but only to offer them in sacrifice, till after the flood. Men were not wont to eat the flesh of beasts as their common food till after the flood. The first food of man in paradise before the fall was the fruit of the trees of paradise ; and when he was turned out of paradise after the fall, then his food was the herb of the field: Gen. iii. 18. “And thou shalt eat of the herb of the field." The first grant that he had to eat flesh as his common food was after the flood: Gen. ix. 3. “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." So that it is likely that these skins that Adam and Eve were clothed with, were the skins of their sacrifices. God's clothing them with these was a lively figure of their being clothed with the righteousness of Christ. This clothing was no clothing of their own obtaining; but it was God that gave it them. It is said, “God made them coats of skins, and clothed them ;” as the righteousness our naked souls are clothed with, is not our righteousness, but the righteousness which is of God. It is he only clothes the naked soul.

Our first parents, who were naked, were clothed at the expence of life. Beasts were slain, and resigned up their lives a sacrifice to God, to afford clothing to them to cover their nakedness. So doth Christ,to afford clothing to our naked souls.* The skin signifies the life: So Job, ii. 4. " Skin for skin, yea all that a man hath will he give for his life ;" . e. life for life. Thus our first parents were covered with skins of sacrifices, as the tabernacle in the wilderness, which signified the church, was, when it was covered with rams skins died red, as though they were dipped in blood, to signify that Christ's righteousness was wrought out through the pains of death, under which he shed his precious blood.

We observed before, that the light that the church enjoyed from the fall of man, till Christ came, was like the light which we enjoy in the night; not the light of the sun directly, but as reflected from the moon and stars; which light did foreshow Christ, the Sun of righteousness, that was afterwards to arise. This light of the Sun of righteousness to come they had chiefly two ways: One as by predictions of Christ to come,

whereby his coming was foretold and promised; the other was by types and shadows, whereby his coming and redemption were prefigured. The first thing that was done to prepare the way for Christ in the former of these ways, was in that promise that was just taken notice of in the foregoing particular; and the first thing of the latter kind, viz. of types, to foreshow Christ's coming, was that institution of sacrifices that we are now upon. As that promise in Gen. iii. 15. was the first dawn of gospel light after the fall in prophecy; so the institution of sacrifices was the first hint of it in types. The giving of that promise was the first thing that was done after the fall, in this work, in Christ's prophetical office; the institution of sacrifices was the first thing that we read of after the fall, by which especially Christ exhibited himself in his priestly office.

The institution of sacrifices was a great thing done towards preparing the way for Christ's coming, and working out redemption. For the sacrifices of the Old Testament were the main of all the Old Testament types of Christ and his redemption; and it tended to establish in the minds of God's visible church, the necessity of a propitiatory sacrifice, in or◄ der to the Deity's being satisfied for sin; and so prepared the way for the reception of the glorious gospel, that reveals the great sacrifice in the visible church, and not only so, but through the world of mankind. For from this institution of sacrifices that was after the fall, all nations derived the custom of sacrificing. For this custom of offering up sacrifices to the gods, to atone for their sins, was common to all nations. No nation, however barbarous, was found without it any where. This is a great evidence of the truth of the Christian religion; for no nation, but only the Jews, could tell how they came by this custom, or to what purpose it was, to offer sacrifices to their deities. The light of nature did not teach them any such thing. That did not teach them that the gods were hungry, and fed upon the flesh which they burnt in sacrifice; and yet they all had this custom; of which no other account can be given, but that they derived it from Noah, who had it from his ancestors, on whom God had enjoined it as a VOL. I.

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type of the great sacrifice of Christ. However, by this means all nations of the world had their minds possessed with this notion, that an atonement or sacrifice for sin was necessary; and a way was made for their more readily receiving the great doctrine of the gospel of Christ, which teaches us the atonement and sacrifice of Christ.

IV. God did soon after the fall begin actually to save the souls of men through Christ's redemption. In this, Christ, who had lately taken upon him the work of Mediator between God and man, did first begin that work, wherein he appeared in the exercise of his kingly office, as in the sacrifices he was represented in his priestly office, and in the first prediction of redemption by Christ he had appeared in the exercise of his prophetical office. In that prediction the light of Christ's redemption first began to dawn in the prophecies of it; in the institution of sacrifices it first began to dawn in the types of it; in this, viz. his beginning actually to save men, it first began to dawn in the fruit of it.

It is probable, therefore, that Adam and Eve were the first fruits of Christ's redemption; it is probable by God's manner of treating them, by his comforting them as he did, after their awakenings and terrors. They were awakened, and ashamed with a sense of their guilt, after their fall, when their eyes were opened, and they saw that they were naked, and sewed figleaves to cover their nakedness; as the sinner, under the first awakenings, is wont to endeavor to hide the nakedness of his soul, by patching up a righteousness of his own. Then they were further terrified and awakened, by hearing the voice of God, as he was coming to condemn them. Their coverings of figleaves did not answer the purpose; but notwithstanding these, they ran to hide themselves among the trees of the garden, because they were naked, not daring to trust to their figleaves to hide their nakedness from God. Then they were further awakened by God's calling of them to a strict account. But while their terrors were raised to such a height, and they stood, as we may suppose, trembling and astonished before their judge, without any thing to catch hold of whence they could gather any hope, then God took

care to hold forth some encouragement to them, to keep them from the dreadful effects of despair under their awakenings, by giving a hint of a design of mercy by a Saviour, even before he pronounced sentence against them. And when after this he proceeded to pronounce sentence, whereby we may suppose their terrors were further raised, God soon after took care to encourage them, and to let them see, that he had not wholly cast them off, by taking a fatherly care of them in their fallen, naked and miserable state, by making them coats of skins and clothing them. Which also manifested an acceptance of those sacrifices that they offered to God for sin, that those were the skins of, which were types of what God had promised, when he said, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head;" which promise, there is reason to think, they believed and embraced. Eve seems plainly to express her hope in, and dependence on that promise, in what she says at the birth of Cain, Gen. iv. 1. " I have gotten a man from the Lord;" i. e. as God has promised, that my seed should bruise the serpent's head; so now has God giv en me this pledge and token of it, that I have a seed born. She plainly owns, that this her child was from God, and hoped that her promised seed was to be of this her eldest son; though she was mistaken, as Abraham was with respect to Ishmael, as Jacob was with respect to Esau, and as Samuel was with respect to the first born of Jesse. And especially does what she said at the birth of Seth, express her hope and dependence on the promise of God; see ver. 25. « For God hath appointed me another seed, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew."

Thus it is exceeding probable, if not evident, that as Christ took on him the work of Mediator as soon as man fell; so he now immediately began his work of redemption in its effect, and that he immediately encountered his great enemy the devil, whom he had undertaken to conquer, and rescued those two first captives out of his hands; therein baffling him, soon after his triumph for the victory he had obtained over them, whereby he had made them his captives. And though he was, as it were, sure of them and all their posterity, Christ the Re

deemer soon showed him, that he was mistaken, and that he was able to subdue him, and deliver fallen man. He let him see it, indelivering those first captives of his; and so soon gave him an instance of the fulfilment of that threatening, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head ;" and in this instance a presage of the fulfilment of one great thing he had undertaken, viz. his subduing all his enemies under his feet.

After this we have another instance of redemption in one of their children, viz. in righteous Abel, as the scripture calls him, whose soul perhaps was the first that went to heaven through Christ's redemption. In him we have at least the first instance of the death of a redeemed person that is recorded in scripture. If he was the first, then as the redemption of Christ began to dawn before in the souls of men in their conversion and justification, in him it first began to dawn in glorification; and in him the angels began first to do the part of ministering spirits to Christ, in going forth to conduct the souls of the redeemed to glory. And in him the elect angels in heaven had the first opportunity to see so wonderful a thing as the soul of one of the fallen race of mankind, that had been sunk by the fall into such an abyss of sin and misery, brought to heaven, and in the enjoyment of heavenly glory, which was a much greater thing than if they had seen him returned to the earthly paradise. Thus they by this saw the glorious ef fect of Christ's redemption, in the great honor and happiness that was procured for sinful miserable creatures by it.

V. The next remarkable thing that God did in the farther carrying on of this great affair of redemption, that I shall take notice of, was the first remarkable pouring out of the Spirit through Christ that ever was, which was in the days of Enos, This seems to have been the next remarkable thing that was done toward erecting this glorious building that God had begun and laid the foundation of in Christ the Mediator. read, Gen. iv. 26. "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." The meaning of these words has been considerably controverted among divines. We cannot suppose the meaning is, that that time was the first that ever men performed the duty of prayer. Prayer is a duty of natural relig

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