Sect. 1. — The Promise made to Adam.
SECTION II. — OF THE PROMISE.
Sect. 1. — The Promise made to Adam.
Ant. I beseech you, sir, proceed also to the second thing; and first tell us when the Lord began to make a promise to help and deliver fallen mankind.
Evan. It was the same day that man sinned, which I suppose was the very same day he was created. For Adam, having become the child of wrath by his sin, and being subject to the curse both in body and soul, and seeing that nothing was due him but the wrath and vengeance of God, he was “afraid, and sought to hide himself from the presence of God,” Gen. 3.10. Thereupon the Lord promised Christ to him, saying to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed;” he (that is to say, the seed of the woman, for so the Hebrew text reads) “shall break your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This promise of Christ, the woman’s seed (ver. 15), was the gospel; and it was the only comfort of Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the godly fathers, until the time of Abraham.
Nom. Let me ask you, sir, what ground do you have to think that Adam fell the same day he was created?
Evan. My ground for this opinion is Psalm 49.12; Mr. Ainsworth makes the 13th verse to be this text, and reads it thus, “But man in honour does not lodge a night; he is likened to beasts that are silenced.” That may be taken, he says, both for the first man Adam, who did not continue in his dignity, and for all his children.
Ant. But, sir, do you think that Adam and those others understood that promised seed to mean Christ?
Evan. Who can doubt that the Lord had acquainted Adam with Christ, between the time of his sinning and the time of his sacrificing, even though both were on one day?
Ant. But did Adam offer a sacrifice?
Evan. Can you have any question that the bodies of those beasts, whose skins went for a covering for his body, were immediately before offered in sacrifice for his soul? Surely these skins could be none other but those of beasts that were slain and offered in sacrifice; for before Adam fell, beasts were not subject to mortality or slaying. And God’s clothing of Adam and his wife with skins signified that their sin and shame were covered with Christ’s righteousness. And without question, the Lord had taught him that his sacrifice signified his acknowledgment of his sin, and that he looked for the Seed of the woman, promised to be slain in the evening of the world, thereby to appease the wrath of God for his offence. Undoubtedly Adam acquainted his sons, Cain and Abel with this when he taught them also, to offer sacrifice.Gen 4.4
Ant. But how does it appear that this sacrificing was the very same day that he sinned?
Evan. It is said in John 7.30, concerning Christ, “That they sought to take him, yet no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come;” but after that when the time of his suffering was at hand, he himself said, John 12.23, “The hour has come.” This day is expressly set down by the Evangelist Mark to be the sixth day, and ninth hour of that day, Mark 15.34, 42 when “Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered up himself without spot to God.” Heb 9.14 Now, if you compare this with Exo. 12.6, you will find that the paschal lamb, a most lively type of Christ, was offered the very same day and hour, even the sixth day, and ninth hour of that day, which was at three o’clock in the afternoon. And the Scripture testifies that Adam was created the very same sixth day; and this gives us ground to think that he sinned the same day. And do not the previously declared Scriptures afford us warrant to believe that it was the very same hour of that day, Gen. 1.26, when Christ entered mystically and typically upon the work of redemption, in being offered as a sacrifice for Adam’s sin?
And surely we may suppose that the covenant (as you heard) being broken between God and Adam, justice would not have allowed one hour’s respite before it had proceeded to execution, to the destruction both of Adam and the whole creation, had not Christ, at that very time, stood as the ram (or rather the lamb) in the bush, and stepped in to perform the work of the covenant. And I conceive that this is why Saint John calls him the “Lamb slain” from the beginning of the world, Rev. 13.8. For as the first state of creation was confirmed by the covenant which God made with man, and all creatures were to be upheld by means of observing the law and condition of that covenant; so that covenant being broken by man, the world should have come to ruin, had it not been, as it were, created anew, and upheld by the Covenant of Grace in Christ.
Ant. Then, sir, you think that Adam was saved?
Evan. The Hebrew doctors hold that Adam was a repentant sinner, and they say that he was by wisdom (that is to say, by faith in Christ) brought out of his fall; yes, and the Church of God holds, for necessary reasons, that he was saved by the death of Christ; yes, says Mr. Vaughan, it is certain that he believed the promise concerning Christ, in whose commemoration he offered continual sacrifice; and in the assurance of it, he named his wife Hevah [Eve], that is to say, life, and he called his son Seth, settled or persuaded in Christ.
Ant. Well, now I am persuaded that Adam did understand that this seed of the woman meant Christ.
Evan. Assure yourself that not only Adam, but all the rest of the godly fathers so understood it, as manifested in the Targum, or Chaldee Bible, which is the ancient translation of Jerusalem. It has it thus: “Between your son and her son;” adding further, by way of comment, “So long, O serpent, as the woman’s children keep the law, they kill you! And when they cease to do so, you sting them in the heel, and have power to hurt them much; but whereas for their harm there is a sure remedy, for you there is none; for in the last days they shall crush you all to pieces, by means of Christ their king.” And this is what supported and upheld their faith until the time of Abraham.