site, and unabating, even the vengeance of eternal fire: Here the unrighteous are favored with the enjoyment of many good things; they are often distinguished with the greatest share of temporal pleasures and profits and preferments: there their pleasures must give way to pain; their honors to shame and everlasting contempt; and their outward affluence to poverty and want, the denial of ' even a drop of water to ease their anguish in the flames. "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels; in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power." Such is the knowledge of evil which Adam derived from eating the forbidden fruit; he incurred the penalty denounced and became liable to death; death spiritual, natural, and eternal. But this misery was not incurred merely on himself; the shock is felt by every son and daughter that has sprung from his loins, and will be felt by all succeeding generations. With more than the lightning's speed, it pervaded the human family and shook the very pillars of the earth. In Adam all died: "All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell forever."

I feel constrained to notice an objection which has been frequently, and vehemently urged against this doctrine of christianity. The enemies of revealed truth have pronounced it" injustice in the extreme to inflict calamities so awful for an offence so inconsiderable; to doom a world to everlasting misery merely because an individual tasted a little fruit that was forbidden.",

NOTE.

*Paine, in his age of reason, assails this article of christian faith with raillery, his common and most successful weapon: He speaks in the most wanton, contemptuous manner of the "story of Eve and the apple :" He pronounces it a most ridiculous "conceit that the almighty should come to die in our world, because they say one man and one woman had eaten an apple :" Men generally form their estimate of the enormity of sin, rather from the tenor of their own conduct, than from the dictates of sound reason or divine revelation. It is therefore reasonably to be expected, that a man who has indulged, to a proverb, all conceivable filthiness, both of the flesh and spirit, should think little of ordinary crimes. But supposing that Paine had considered "the story little and ridiculous," ought he not to have spoken, and written of it, in a style more decent and respectful? Waving the consideration that this event is recorded by inspiration of God, as the origin of all our misery, has it not been firmly believed by millions of his fellow men; by millions who were as capable of examining its evidence as himself, and were, at least, as honest to acknowledge the result of their examination? Has it not been publicly vindicated with the mouth, and the pen, by hundreds in different ages? By hundreds who have equally outshone himself in the elevation of their understanding, and the excellence of their morals. But he who does not fear God will net regard man. That bosom which is an utter stranger to the generous emotions of love or reverence for the majesty in the heavens, cannot entertain much respect either to the feelings or judgment of mortals.

K

They have confidently asserted, "that there is not even the shadow of proportion between the crime and the punishment." To all these reasonings and murmurings of man it might be sufficient to reply, that the Lord God is best acquainted with the nature of his own government, with the majesty of his own law, and is therefore most capable of determining what particular punishment ought to be inflicted on the offender; and the mortal who insolently finds fault, who arrogantly asks by way of cavil or complaint, what doest thou, uses such liberty at an infinite peril. Besides, shall the living God be denied a prerogative which is readily allowed to all legislators upon earth? They claim the privilege of enacting their own laws; they determine, without consulting every subject, what penalty shall be executed upon the transgressor of these laws; and shall HE, whose throne is in the heavens, whose kingdom ruleth over all, who is universally acknowledged as KING of all other kings, and LORD of all other lords, shall He be denied a prerogative which is claimed by every petty prince and potentate on earth? Must HE, by whom kings reign, from whom their authority is now derived, and to whom they are responsible for the exercise of that authority, must HE enquire of every moral agent what laws should be enacted, or with what penalties these laws should be sanctioned?

But the transgression of Adam, if duly examined, is not so inconsiderable in its demerit as may at first appear. An offence always rises in aggravation in proportion to the dignity of the person against whom it is committed, and our obligation to love and obey him. An insult offered to a magistrate or prince is deemed a greater evil, and consequently exposes to severer punishment than an insult to an ordinary man: An offence therefore committed against Jehovah, who is a being infinitely glorious, a being infinitely entitled to our love and obedience, must be an infinite evil, and expose the offender to an infinite punishment. Besides, the act of our first father in eating the forbidden fruit, which is frequently thought a trifling offence, when examined in all its circumstances, must be considered as manifesting ingratitude and insolence in the extreme. Let us suppose that a parent favored one son above every child in his family; gave him authority over the rest, appointed him the sole heir of his estate, and allowed him the unlimited enjoyment of all that he possessed, with the exception of a single article; but commanded him under the severest penalty to leave that untouched, merely as an expression of love and subjection: Nay, let us suppose that the father engaged to this son that, upon condition of his refraining from that article, he would entail the estate upon him and his

offspring forever.-Should this son, thus highly favored, immediately and wantonly intrude in the instance prohibited; who would not reprobate at once his ingratitude and infatuation; who would not justify the father in immediately disinheriting both this son and his issue. This is only a faint representation of the favor manifested to Adam, and his ingratitude and infatuation in abusing it. The Lord God formed him after his own image, admitted him into the most intimate fellowship with himself, gave him "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth; placed him in the garden of Eden, causing to

grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden" as a visible pledge of that eternal life which he should receive as the reward of obedience; of every tree of the garden gave him liberty freely to eat with this single restraint, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it. As the Egyptian monarch addressed Joseph, Jehovah virtually addres sed the first Adam, " thou shalt be over my house and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled, only in the throne will I be greater than thou;" "I make over as thine this lower world, the cattle on ten thousand hills, and every thing that moveth upon the earth to be ruled by thee; all the