The law was originally given to man in Paradise, as a covenant between God and him. It was not, indeed, written in a book ; but it was written on his heart. The terms of it were, that man was to obey whatever God should command ; and then both he and his posterity should live. But if he transgressed in any particular, he and all his posterity should die. This, indeed, is but obscurely intimated in the history of man's creation. It was there said to him, " In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." It is, however, most fully opened in the New Testa- ment. There it is said, " By one man's disobedience many were made sinners :" and again, " By the offence of one, many died ; and judgment came upon all men to condemnation." Now it is a plain indis- putable fact, that death came upon all men from the very moment that Adam sinned : it has come, not on those only who have sinned like him, but on mil- lions who never have committed actual sin ; whose sufferings, therefore, must have been the punishment of his transgression. If sin had not been imputed to infants, they could never have been called to bear the penalty of sin. But they do pay that penalty even from the womb; and therefore it is manifest that they are considered as having fallen in Adam, and as being in some way chargeable with his transgression. That is the covenant, under which every child of man is born into the world. The terms of the cove- nant having been forgotten, God was pleased to publish it by Moses, and with his own hand to write it upon tables of stone. The obligations of it were stated in the Ten Commandments : and the sanctions of it were added, " Do this, and live : Transgress, and die."
It is true, that to Israel in the Wilderness it was published in somewhat of a mitigated form : because it was introduced by that gracious declaration, " I am the Lord thy God." But still the terrors, with which the publication of it was accompanied, shewed, that it was " a fiery law," " a ministration of death," " a ministration of condemnation." It is from St. Paul's