QI ESTIONXT, 333 world. Let us. consider. how far the word _cjuath ought reason- ably to be extended to each of these : I, Natural.' death, or the death of the body, is one thing! plainly designed in the first threatening, beyond all controversy. The natural life of the sinner is forfeited to him who gave it, when he has once broken his allegiance to his Creator and su preme Lord. That this is the first and most obvious idea of the punishment threatened-, may be plainly proved, because this is . the universal, common, and literal meaning of the word death, in all human languages. ,'Phis is also the very sense of the same. writer !loses, when he uses the same words in all other parts of his writings, viz. Than shalt surely die; or, dying thou shalt. die. In those places it means evidently temporal death, as might be proved easily if we consult all those places. And let it be observed, that in those early ages the future and invisibleworld. being very little brought into view,. the word death might na- turally include in it the forfeiture of all being and all comforts whatsoever, since it evidently means the loss and forfeiture of all visible being, life and comforts ; for all these appear to vanish at. death. And this notion of death will not be strange, if we can agree to the learned and ingenious Mr. Warburton's sentiment in his divine legation of Moses, viz. that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to befound in the Mosaic dispensation, nor did, it make any part of it; thoughI dare not so universally pronounce this opinion true. Besides, this,death of the body was positively foretold to Adam, and was the sentence pronounced upon him when he had actually sinned : Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou re- turn ; Gen. iii. 19. And accordingly we find, that when Adam is said to beget a son in his own likeness, that is, in his own mortal likeness, in contradiction to the glorious and immortal likeness of God, in.which the foregoing verses tell us he was first made' ; Gen. v.. 1 -3. Then the scripture goes onto prove it, by shewing how this .death.was executed : There is a plain ac- count follows of' the natural death. of Adam, and a long suc- cession of the deaths of his posterity, as being made mortal in the image of Adam, their natural head.. ` And as I have shown before, that not only life, but health and ease, and the comforts of life being the free gifts of God 'our Creator, they are all for- feited by the ofsence of his creature against him : And all the pains, and,sorrows, and sicknessesof this life, which by degrees tend to wear sut nature, and to bring man dòwn to the dust, maybejustly supposed to be implied in this threatening of death. And as this natural death of the body is plainly implied in the first threatening as a penalty for sin, to come uponAdam and his posterity; so not only all the books 'of Moses, but perhaps all the Old Testament, do scarce afford us any instances wherein
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