appointment, than if every one had been appointed to stand for
2. There was a greater tendency to a happy issue, in such an appointment, than if every one had been appointed to stand for himself; especially on two accounts. (1) That Adam had stronger motives to watchfulness, than his posterity would have had; in that not only his own eternal welfare lay at stake, but also that of all his posterity. (2) Adam was in a state of complete manhood, when his trial began. It was a constitution very agreeable to the goodness of God, considering the state of mankind, which was to be propagated in the way of generation, that their first father should be appointed to stand for all. For by reason of the manner of their coming into existence in a state of infancy, and their coming so gradually to mature state, and so remaining for a great while in a state of childhood and comparative imperfection, after they were become moral agents, they would be less fit to stand for themselves, than their first father to stand for them.
If any man, notwithstanding these things, shall say, that for his own part, if the affair had been proposed to him, he should have chosen to have his eternal interest trusted in his own hands: 'tis sufficient to answer, that no man's vain opinion of himself, as more fit to be trusted than others, alters the true nature and tendency of things, as they demonstrably are in themselves. Nor is it a just objection, that this constitution has in event proved for the hurt of mankind. For it don't follow, that no advantage was given for a happy event, in such an establishment, because it was not such as to make it utterly impossible there should be any other event.
3. The goodness of God in such a constitution with Adam appears in this: that if there had been no sovereign gracious establishment at all, but God had proceeded only on the foot of mere justice, and had gone no further than this required, he might have demanded of Adam and all his posterity, that they should perform perfect