66

"of God." Indeed (laying aside that reverence which we owe to so consentient a judgment of the church of God, both before and after Christ) there is light enough in the text itself (as we have already intimated) to direct us to this interpretation. For ?rf St. Paul affirms the Ephesians avaкaivoûσdai, to be renewed, after this image of the Creator. Now to be renewed most properly signifies "to receive again something which we once had, but lost." So the active verb avakawview is manifestly used, Heb. vi. 6. And so also the Hebrew word very often signifies, to restore a thing unto its former estate, as Psalm ciii. 5. Lam. v. 21. Man therefore once before had (viz., in the state of integrity) that image of God, to which he is formed and fashioned again by the grace of Christ the Redeemer. So the apostolical writer Irenæus (V. 12.) paraphraseth on the place: "In that he saith, who is renewed in knowledge, "he shews, that the very man who before was ig"norant of God, is by the knowledge of him re"newed. For the knowledge of God renews a man. "And in that he saith, according to the image of the Creator, he expresseth the restoration of that

66

66

66

man, who was in the beginning made after the image of God1." And what the same Irenæus

k Hinc discimus, tum quis sit finis regenerationis nostræ, hoc est, ut Deo reddamur similes, ac in nobis reluceat ejus gloria: tum quæ sit Dei imago, cujus mentio fit apud Mosem, nempe totius animæ rectitudo et integritas, ita ut homo sapientiam Dei, justitiam, et bonitatem quasi speculum repræsentet. Calvin. in Col. iii. 10.

1 In eo quod ait, qui renovatur in agnitionem, demonstrabat quoniam ipse ille qui ignorantiæ erat ante homo, id est, ignorans Deum, per eam quæ in eum est agnitionem renovatur. Agnitio enim Dei renovat hominem. Et in eo quod dicit, secundum

otherwhere tells us (III. 20. [c. 18. p. 209.]) is apparently the sense of the catholic church, viz., "That "what we lost in Adam, to wit, the divine image "and similitude, that we receive again in Christ "Jesus m."

I am sensible that my zeal of vindicating the catholic doctrine hath carried me a little beyond my design. To return again to the matter proposed, it is abundantly manifest from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors of the church did with a general consent acknowledge, that our first parents in the state of integrity had in them something more than nature, that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity. Yet the most learned Grotius will by no means grant this hypothesis. He acknowledgeth indeed, innocentiam quandam fuisse in Adamo priusquam peccavit, (and we owe him no thanks for that concession; for Socinus will confess as much; and Grotius himself tells us ", that he is not well in his wits that shall deny it,) but that Adam in the state of integrity was spiritual, or had any thing of the Holy Spirit in him, he will by no means admit of. A man might well expect, that so learned a man as Grotius was, and otherwise so great a reverencer of antiquity, should not without most evident reasons maintain an opinion so manifestly thwarting the stream and current of the catholic doctors. But

imaginem Conditoris, recapitulationem manifestavit ejus hominis, qui in initio secundum imaginem factus est Dei.

m Ut quod perdideramus in Adam, id est, secundum imaginem et similitudinem esse Dei, hoc in Christo Jesu reciperemus.

n Vide Grot. Not. in Cassand ad Art. 2. et Vot. pro Pace ad eundem artic. et discus. p. 30.

66

alas! he hath but one argument to defend his hypothesis, and that argument too, when examined, will appear to be a very weak one, yea a very gross fallacy. The argument is this, "St. Paul, when (1 Cor. xv. 45,) he opposeth the earthly Adam to the spiritual Adam, considers Adam as he was at first created, "and not as fallen, &c., whence it follows, that we "have another kind of nature from Christ, than we "should have had, if Adam had remained in his first "estate, and begotten children like himself "."

66

With the same weapon an author, very ancient, but disallowed and censured by the learned as one that prepared the way for the Pelagian heresy, oppugned of old this catholic doctrine; I mean the author of the book of Questions out of the Old and New Testament, which by a gross mistake usurps a place among the works of St. Augustin. The cxxIII. Question, which he propounds, is this, "Whether "Adam had the Holy Spirit?" And in the entrance to his resolution of this question he tells us, "that "this was indeed affirmed by the generality of Christ"ians in his time upon this ground, that we receive "in the second Adam what we lost in the first." But he declares his own opinion to the contrary, and proves it from the forementioned text, 1 Cor. xv. 45, &c. From whence he thus argues: "What is more "manifest, than that Adam had not the Holy Spirit? "for he was made a living soul, and it is by Christ "that man is made a quickening spirit P." But it is apparent, that the text alleged hath quite another

o Vot. pro Pace ad Art. 2.

p Quid tam apertum, quam quod Adam non habuit Spiritum S.? factus est enim in animam viventem, per Christum autem in spiritum vivificantem.

sense than what is supposed in this objection. For the apostle in that chapter, discoursing of the resurrection of the body, shews, in the verses referred to, the difference betwixt the body of man, considered not only in the state wherein it was after the fall, but as it was at first created, and the glorious body which Christ received in his resurrection, and we expect in ours. The difference is this; that the first Adam (as likewise all that descend from him) needed meat and drink, and other external helps, for the conservation of his body: but Christ, the second Adam, after his resurrection, received a body in its own nature, and by an internal principle immortal; and the like body is promised to all those that believe in Christ at the last and general resurrection. And what is all this to the purpose of the objectors? Surely there is no repugnancy at all betwixt those two propositions, that Adam before his fall had an animal body in the sense explained, and that Adam in the same state and condition had a spiritual soul, or a soul elevated and raised by the divine Spirit. For both these meet together in every true Christian, only with this difference, that our bodies now are not only in a possibility, but under a necessity of dying, the sentence of death being passed on every man; but the body of the first man, although it was in its own principles mortal and subject to death and corruption, yet it should never have died, if man had not sinned, but should have been preserved by the special grace and favour of God to an incorruptible estate. Nay, this argument of the objectors may be

¶ See St. Austin excellently explaining the text, De Civitat. Dei, XIII. 23.

retorted upon themselves thus: It is evident from the Scriptures, and the perpetual tradition of the church, (and Grotius himself confesseth as much,) that the first man, whose body was of itself and in its own nature earthly, and so mortal, should yet by the grace of God, and by a certain divine power, (of which the tree of life was a sacrament,) have persevered in a blessed immortality, and never have died if he had not sinned. Therefore the protoplast had a gift of grace and supernatural power granted him as to his body, whereby that should have been elevated and raised above its natural constitution; and why then should we so pertinaciously refuse to acknowledge a like supernatural gift afforded him as to his soul?

And now seeing we have left the judgment of the church, and are fallen to our own reasonings, I crave leave to take my turn, and to propose an argument or two (as an overplus to those reasons that have been above suggested) in vindication of this doctrine of the catholic Fathers, taken out of the history of the primitive state of the first man, as it is delivered by Moses himself. And these arguments, if they be not demonstrative, yet sure I am they are far more considerable than any thing that hath been yet produced in defence of the contrary novel opinion.

1. It is apparent from the account of Moses, that the first man in the state of integrity was (as we have heard Tertullian expressing it) Deo de proximo amicus, "the intimate friend of God," that he could cœlestia portare, "bear heavenly things," and sustain the approaches of the shechinah, or majestic presence of God, without any regret or starting