The first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit. Thus Christ begets in the church by his priests, as the same apostle saith; But I have begotten you in Christ. And thus Christ's seed, that is, God's Spirit, furnishes out the new man who was prepared in the womb of his mother, and received from the birth of the font by the hands of the priest, yet by the assistance of faith. For neither will he seem to be admitted into the church who has not believed, or to be begotten by Christ who has not received the Spirit. We must therefore believe that it is possible for us to be born. For so said Philip, If thou believest, thou mayest. Christ is to be received, that he may beget, because the apostle John saith, As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God. But these things cannot be accomplished otherwise than by the sacrament of baptism, and chrism, and the bishop. For they are purged from sin by bap tism; by chrism the Holy Ghost is shed upon them; and both these we obtain by the hand and mouth of the bishop. And so the new man is born again, and is renewed in Christ.

HONOURED SIR,

Feb. 3, 174.

WHAT you see here in the beginning of this sheet, is the passage of St. Pacian continued from the end of the last. It happened to be preserved in a loose paper, into which it was transcribed for me out of that Father's works, and from thence copied over again in the sheets which were burnt in the sudden devouring fire, that by night consumed, in most dreadful manner, the printer's dwelling-house

and warehouses, and all that he had therein k. It is no little trouble to me to think, that I, who ought to deny you nothing, cannot comply with your desire in. repairing what is lost in the burnt copy. Neither the short time the bookseller hath taken to publish your most excellent Life of the Bishop, nor my ill condition of health, will now suffer me to undergo such a labour, which were I able to endure, I should undertake with mighty pleasure, to testify thereby the great desire and many obligations I have to serve you, in whose conversation and friendship I have been very happy for so many years. There were too many particulars in the lost sheets for me to repair at this time, with the same pains and study as I formerly did. If you can but remember the half of them, you will, I am sure, excuse me: pray, sir, do but recollect upon how many subjects I was invited to discourse upon this very citation of St. Pacian, concerning the way whereby fallen man recovers the supernatural principle of the Spirit of God, by which we are regenerated and made new men. If you can remember no more than what from thence I discoursed on the subject of the moral shechinah from the New Testament, and the Book of Wisdom; of receiving the Spirit by

* [This fire took place in Bowyer's printing-house, Jan. 29, 1713. Nelson's Life of Bull and the works which accompanied it had been all printed, or nearly so, in 1712. This fire consumed the whole of the Life, and one thousand copies of eighteen sheets of the Works. There is an advertisement of Bowyer extant, dated Feb. 13. in which he expresses his hopes to reprint the lost part in a fortnight's time: but it appears from the letter of Dr. Hickes, that what he had written was irrecoverably lost. Nichols's Anec

the ministration and prayer of the priest or bishop in baptism, and by the imposition of the bishop's hands, and by chrism, and in discoursing of which I gave you my reasons, for which I thought it a rite of the apostolical age, and wished it restored to the church if you can also call to mind what I was invited to write of the dignity of the episcopal office, and ministry, from St. Pacian's words in 1 the margin, and what I wrote of repentance, by which we recovered the Spirit again, when we had lost it by. deadly sin after baptism and confirmation, I hope you will discharge me from the labour of making my discourses upon them again. And if you can remember what I wrote on the fourth or second apocryphal book of Esdras, upon observing how the learned bishop passed over the testimonies and authorities of it, both in the enclosed MS. and in his sermon of the middle state; and also can call to remembrance the most clear testimonies I collected from my little book of Clemens, concerning the holy and blessed Trinity, and the eternal generation of the Son, begotten not made; and his equality in essence with the Father, and of the deity of the Holy Ghost, which were not observed by the bishop, neither in his Fidei Nicene Defensio, nor in his answer to Gilbert Clerke, nor by Dr. Grabe in his additions to the former book: I doubt not then, sir, but you will, both in kindness and justice, excuse me from the pains of recomposing, and collecting

i Sic generat Christus, per suos sacerdotes. Hæc autem alias compleri nequeunt nisi lavacri, chrismatis, et antistitis sacramento. Lavacro enim peccata purgantur, chrismate S. Spiritus superfunditur, utraque vero ista manu et ore antistitis impe

tramus.

again, being not in a condition to study, and bear intense thinking. But were I able to do what you desire, the consideration of serving you would make the pains my greatest pleasure. But under the disability I now am, I am sure, sir, your candour and tender regard for me will oblige you to accept the good-will for the deed, and the desire to serve you for the performance, from

Your much obliged

and humble servant,

GEO. HICKES.

and sub

stance of

the fifth

discourse.

LXXXV. The sum and substance of the fifth The sum discourse is, that there was a covenant of life made with man in his state of innocency, and not, as some pretend, a law imposed upon him, established only by a threatening. For the prohibition given to Adam concerning the not eating of the tree of knowledge, is ushered in with this express donation or grant of God, that he might freely eat of all the rest of the trees in paradise, the tree of life not excepted. Now it is certain, the tree of life was so called, because it was either a sacrament and divine sign, or else a natural means of immortality. And the very commination itself, in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, manifestly implies a promise; this consequence being most firm, God threateneth death to man if he eat of the forbidden fruit; therefore he promiseth life if he do not eat. A full state and resolution of this matter is given by our author from Grotius, in his approved book, de Satisfactione, &c. The foundation being thus laid in the proof that Adam should never have died if he had not sinned, and that if he had continued obedient, he should have enjoyed an everlasting life;

he thinks it easy to collect from thence, that this life should not, nay could not, in any congruity, be perpetuated in the earthly paradise, and that therefore the man was in the design of God, after a certain period of time, to have been translated to a higher state, that is, a celestial bliss; and that it farther readily follows, that man, being thus designed for such a supernatural end, must be supposed gradually at least to have been furnished by God with means proportioned thereunto, which were certain supernatural gifts and powers which we commonly call original righteousness. The sense of the church of God upon this subject he reduceth to two propositions, which, he says, were constantly asserted and believed by the primitive Fathers.

I. "That paradise was to Adam a type of heaven; " and that the never-ending life of happiness which "was promised to our first parents, if they had con“tinued obedient, and had grown up to perfection "under that economy wherein they were placed, "should not have continued in the earthly paradise, "but only have commenced there, and been perpetuated in a higher state; that is to say, after "such a trial of their obedience, as should seem "sufficient to the divine wisdom, they should have "been translated from earth to heaven."

66

II. “That our first parents, besides the seeds of "natural virtue and religion sown in their minds "in their very creation, and besides the natural "innocence and rectitude wherein also they were

66

66

created, were endowed with certain gifts and powers supernatural, infused by the Spirit of God, and that in these gifts their perfection con"sisted."

66

Now because these two theses seemed to him the