the whole creation groaneth, and travaileth in pain together until now."

And although we may conceive that during this long travail and warfare, some greater cause than that of our individual trials is carrying on in the process, yet are we sufficiently given to understand, that when we accept the terms of the Gospel, and become the faithful soldiers of Christ, we are under his redeeming banners, at the same time working out our own salvation.

According to Bishop Horsley, all through the Psalms there is discoverable the plaintive strains of a divine personage supplicating God to relieve his suffering church or community of subjects during their warfare with persecuting, insidious, and powerful enemies, led on by a strong adversary who is to be overcome at last; and whose adherents (or seed) are, by the Bishop, recognised and pointed out in his translation of the Psalms, under the designations of the atheistical, the apostate, and the irreligious factions. And the early corruption of the Jews, the chosen people of God, even while under the guidance of his especially appointed servants, gives

assurance either of the immediate power of Satan over their hearts, or of the intermixture of his agents among them.

The symbol given us at the first, whereby we might all through the Scriptures trace the power of Satan, was the serpent; and if his seed are to be corporally upon earth, it is to be expected in the merciful scheme of information, that when they are adverted to, they also will be characteristically mentioned, that is, according to the symbol given of him. And in the New Testament we find John the Baptist thus addressing some of the corrupt sects of the Jews, who came to his baptism Matthew, chap. iii. 7, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" And in chap. xxiii. our Saviour, contrary to his usually mild diction, after prefacing eight verses with "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, HYPOCRITES," adds, at the 33d verse, "Ye SERPENTS, ye generation of VIPERS, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" And there are other parts of the New Testament which show that our Lord considered the people he conversed with, as of the particular race of Satan.

In respect to the enmity of Satan's seed, we shall find that the haters of God are so frequently, and so emphatically, mentioned all through the Scriptures, as leaves room to think that more decided haters of God are often alluded to, than those who by dereliction and error have been estranged from him.

"It may be

It is made apparent in the Book of Job, that there were people in those days who cursed God in their hearts; and Job (chap. i. 5) being in fear that his sons might have so acted, rose early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts; thus did Job continually:" and in the second chapter, Job's wife desires him to curse God and die. This incidentally shows that there was in those days an active spirit of enmity to God, in some classes of the people, and which could not be from sheer ignorance, because Job, the most eminent personage in that country, set them a perfectly good example. Apparently it must have arisen from original hatred of God, and at the same time

allegiance to the diabolical power so prominent in the scene of the two first chapters; for of what service could it have been to any one to curse God, unless there was another power acknowledged, to whom those who could be prevailed on to renounce God, might, in their desperation, resort? And this seems to have been the temptation held out to Job, and afterwards alluded to by our Lord, Luke, chap. xvi. 9. "And I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." And against this power, and the cursers of God, part of the second commandment seems levelled: "I am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and show mercy unto thousands in them that love me and keep my commandments.”

But our regular pursuit must be to ascertain from the early chapters of Genesis whether any further declarations or intimations in them, show a continuation of the subject of the two seeds, so far as to sanction us in the prosecution of it: for

although venturing upon this inquiry, I am fearfully aware of the great care there ought to be in forming any conclusions during the course of it, beyond what Scripture itself fairly leads the way to; and, according to the context, appears systematically to support, from the first chapters of Genesis to the latest books of the New Testament, in which the called and the uncalled people, the elect and the non-elect, the children of the spirit and the children of the flesh, are so distinctly and specifically mentioned. The living after the spirit and the living after the flesh, is a mode of contrast frequently made use of in Scripture for the purpose of conveying moral instruction; but the being born of the spirit, and the being born of the flesh, must mean a real difference of origin, that is, as certain a difference as there is between a grain of wheat and

a tare.

In chap. xvii. of Revelations, which appears to describe the conflicts of the last times, there is mention, at the 8th verse, of those whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world. And, at the 14th verse of the