Spl:T1ON 1. 539 Since therefore all the injuries that I have mentioned against God and man are committed by the murder of one's self as well as one's neighbour, it has pleased God severely to prohibit all murder, and he has fixed the sixth commandment in the table of his moral law, where it stands like a cannon planted with open month against the man that dares such a public and spread- ing injury to God and man. It is a piece of divine artillery charged with eternal death. 1 John iii. 15. "No murderer bath eternal life abiding in him," that is, has no right to eternal life, for he has not the principles or seeds of it in his heart ; and then surely eternal death belongs to him, and must be his portion. Another prohibition of murder is found among the first laws that God gave to the new race of men after the flood ; Gen. ix. 6. " Whosoever slteddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made heman." I confess there is some difficulty in determining precisely in what sense we must take the image of God in this place : For the moral image of God which consisted in righteousness and holiness was lost by the fall, whereas that part of the divine image which stands here as an argument against the destruction of man is supposed to continue in his fallen estate. Shall we then suppose it has a reference to the erect posture of bis body, or the shape and figure of mankind, in which God might appear to our first parents ? Then murder is forbid upon this account because it destroys the honourable figure and cha- racter of human nature, whereby it is superior to all brutal ani- mals, and whereby it was dignified either by the appearance of God the Father, or rather his son Jesus Christ in it : Now this reason stands firm against the destruction of ourselves as well as of others. Or does it mean the dominion of man over brute creatures, wherein he bears some image or resemblance of God's dominion over this lower world ? But that reaches not beyond this life, and therefore there is an end put to this dominion, to this part of the divine image, by all murder, whether of others or of our- selves. Or shall we say, that the immortality of the soul of man is that image of God which is here designed ? Now though the soul cannot be slain, yet by murder, an immortal creature is sent into a certain and determined state of happiness or misery, for a long eternity, and the great Godwill not suffer any man to take upon him tosend an immortal soul into so awful an estate on a sudden, and by the mere caprices of his own will : And there- fore he bath required blood for blood : and since he bath ap- pointed that man should execute that sentence on the murderer of,another man in this world, we have abundant reason to believe
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