curse falling on all other oblations, and them that offer them, Mai. i. 14. The purity of the snow is not to be compared with the white- ness of this lily, of this ^rose of Sharon, even from the womb: "For such an high j)riest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, sepa- rate from sinners," Heb. vii. 26. Sanctified persons, whose stains are in any measure washed away, are exceeding fair in the eye of Chiist himself "Thou^ art all fair," saith he, "my love, thou hast no spot in thee." How fair, then, is he who never had the least spot or stain !
It is true, Adam at his creation had this spotless purity; so had the angels : but they came immediately from the ^hand of God, without concurrence of any secondary cause. Jesus Christ ■* is a plant and root out of a dry ground, a blossom from the stem of Jesse, a bud from the loins of sinful man, — born of a sinner, after there had been no innocent flesh in the world for four thousand years, every one upon the roll of his genealogy being infected therewithal. To have a flower of wonderful rarity to gTOW in2J«?'rtd'/se,agarden of God's ovvn planting, not sullied in the least, is not so strange ; but, as the psal- mist speaks (in another kind), to hear of it in a wood, to find it in a forest, to have a spotless bud brought forth in the luilderness of cor- rupted nature, is a thing which angels may deshe to look into. Nay, more, this whole na,ture was not only defiled, but also accursed; not only unclean, but also guilty, — guilty of Adam's transgression, in whom we have all sinned. That the human nature of Christ should be derived from hence free from guilt, free from pollution, this is to be adored.
Objection. But you will say, " How can this be? who can bring a clean thing from an unclean? How could Christ take our nature, and not the defilements of ife, and the guilt of it? If ^Levi paid tithes in the loins of Abraham, how is it that Christ did not sin in the loins of Adam?"
Answer. There are two things in original sin: —
[] .] Guilt of the first sin, which is imputed to us. We all sinned in him. 'Ep' c5 vdvTsg TJ/xaprov, Rom. V. 12, whether we render it relatively " in whom," or illatively, " being all have sinned," all is one: that one sin is the sin of us all, — " omnes eramus unus ille homo." We were all in covenant with him ; he was not only a natural head, but also a federal head unto us. As Christ is to believers, Rom. v. 1 7 ; 1 Cor. XV. 22, so was he to us all ; and his transgression of that covenant is reckoned to us.
[2.] There is the derivation of a polluted, corrupted nature from him: ''" Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?" " That
'Cant. ii. 1. 2 Cant. i. 15, 16, iv. 1, 7, 10. ^ Eccles. vii. 29.
♦ Isa. liii. 2. « Ileb. vii. 9, 10.^
" Job xiv. 4; ^^avn/aa rris ra^x-ii, Roni. viii. 7; John iii. G. Nooj T«{ traoKos, Col. ii. IS.
OF COMMUNION WITH THE SON JESUS CHRIST. 65
wliicli is born of the flesli is flesh/' and nothing else; whose wisdom and mind is conaipted also : a polluted fountain will have polluted streams. The first person coiTupted nature, and that nature cor- rupts all persons follo\v'ing. Now, from both these was Christ most free : —
1st. He was never federally in Adam, and so not liable to the imputation of his sin on that account. It is true that sin was im- puted to him when he was made sin;^ thereby he took away the sin of the world, John i. 29 : but it was imputed to him in the covenant of the Mediator, through his voluntary susception, and not in the covenant of Adam, by a legal imputation. Had it been reckoned to him as a descendant from Adam, he had not been a fit high priest to have offered sacrifices for us, as not being " separate from sinners," Heb. vii. 26. Had Adam stood in his innocency, Christ had not been incarnate, to have been a mediator for sinners ; and therefore the counsel of his incarnation, morally, took not place ^ until after the fall. Though he was in Adam in a natural sense from his first creation, in respect of the purpose of God, Luke iii. 23, 38, yet he was not in him in a law sense until after the fall : so that, as to his own person, he had no more to do with the first sin of Adam, than with any personal sin of [any] one whose punishment he voluntarily took upon him ; as we are not liable to the guilt of those progenitors who followed Adam, though naturally we were no less in them than in him. Therefore did he, all the days of his flesh, serve God in a covenant of works ; and was therein accepted with him, having done nothing that should disannul the vu-tue of that covenant as to him. This doth not, then, in the least take off from his perfection.