For immediately after a covenant of redemption was made, the first good man after it, in the very beginning of the world, and the beginning of his own life, after his first act of divine worship, and as soon as God had declared his good pleasure in it, was slaughtered like a beast.
Now can there be a fuller demonstration, that the covenant of redemption was for life and immortality in a future state? Otherwise the first good man in the world lost all the benefit of God’s covenant, merely because he was good; merely thro’ the devotion that he shewed towards God, and the favour which God shewed towards him.
Therefore either _Abel_’s blood cries aloud the absolute certainty of a future state, or _Abel_ must be said to have been undone, ruined, and deprived of all good, purely because of a friendship discovered between God and him.
This fact therefore, recorded by the Spirit of God assures all the Mosaic generations, that another life belonged to _Abel_ and to them, besides that which _Abel_ lost by his death. Does it not as directly, declare this, as when Christ said, his _kingdom was not of this world_? Does it not say the same thing, as when Christ said to his disciples, _fear not them that can only kill the body_? The same thing, as the voice from heaven, which cried, _blessed are the dead which die in the Lord_?
_Again_, Another proof of the same force, is the translation of _Enoch_. God saith by _Moses_, _Enoch walked with God, and was not, for God took him_. Now, could any the most expressive form of words, have told the ancient world with more certainty than this fact does, that God’s covenant with man, was for a kingdom of heaven?
Our blessed Lord, when departing out of this world, saith to his disciples, _I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, there ye may be also_. And does not _Enoch_’s translation say as much, as if he had been sent again by God to say, _God has taken me from this world into heaven, to make it manifest to you, that where I am gone, there are ye to come also_.
Behold here the adorable goodness of God to the first and succeeding ages of the world! These two great articles of faith, which are now the comfort of the Christian world, namely, victory over death, and ascension into heaven, had even then the utmost and most convincing proof given to them by God.
The old world, from the first man, were all in a covenant of redemption.――Life and immortality was both by doctrine and example, made known to them, and nothing remained as a mystery or wisdom hidden in God, to be revealed in the last times, but that one thing which could not be manifested, till by its own actual existence it manifested itself, namely, the wonderful process of Christ in our fallen nature. By which process alone it was that all the faith, as well before as after Christ, had all its efficacy.
Hence it is, that the faith and religion of the first world was in substance, the very Christian faith and Christian religion, one and the same way, and power of salvation; which oneness consists in this, that _Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever_, was the same mediator between God and man from the beginning of the world, one and the same power of life and salvation to murdered _Abel_, as to martyred _Stephen_.
This faith from this original, was their peace with God thro’ Jesus Christ, the very same faith of which Christ saith, _He that believeth in me shall never die_. The same faith of which he again saith, _If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink; he that believeth in me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water_.
That this was the catholic, saving faith, common to all the ♦patriarchal ages, we are assured by the Spirit of God in the epistles to the _Corinthians_ and _Hebrews_, telling in express words, “They did all eat the same spiritual meat, did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.”
♦ “patriarchial” replaced with “patriarchal”
Are we not told, that very same thing of the patriarchal generations, which Christ said to those that believed in him, that by eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, they have eternal life?
In the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the _Hebrews_, the same spirit, speaking of the patriarchal ages, saith, “All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were perswaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on earth,――who desired a better country, that is, an heavenly.”
Bishop _Warburton_ is so out of humour with this whole chapter, thus full of patriarchal light and glory, that he gives it the heathenish name of the _Palladium of the cause_, which he had undertaken to demolish. And he accordingly attacks it with a number of critical inventions, that may as truly be called heathenish; for they are in direct opposition to all Christian theology.