Notes: Sect. 2. — Adam’s Fall.
Notes: Sect. 2. — Adam’s Fall.
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These are two distinct questions, both of them natively arising from a legal temper of spirit: and I doubt if ever the heart of a sinner will receive a satisfying answer to either of them, until it comes to embrace the gospel-way of salvation — taking up its everlasting rest in Christ for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
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Immutability, properly so-called, or absolute unchangeableness, is an incommunicable attribute of God, Mal. 3.6; James 1.17; and mutability, or changeableness, is so of the nature of a creature, that it would cease to be a creature or a dependent being if it were to cease being mutable. But there is an immutability, improperly so-called, which is competent to the creature, whereby it is free from being actually liable to change in some respect; which in reference to man, may be considered in two ways. 1. As putting him beyond the hazard of change by another hand than his own. 2. As putting him beyond the hazard of change by himself. In the former sense, man was indeed made immutable in as to moral goodness; for he could only be made sinful or evil by himself, and not by any other. If he had been made immutable in the latter sense, that immutability was necessary either to have been woven into his very nature, or else to have arisen from confirming grace. Now God did not create man thus immutable in his nature; which is what the first question aims at; and for this very good reason, namely: that at that rate, man would have obeyed by fatal necessity and absolute determination, as one not having so much as a remote power in his nature to change himself. And thus neither glorified saints nor angels are immutable; their immutability in goodness entirely depends on confirming grace. As for immutability by confirming grace, which is what the second question aims at, it is conferred on glorified saints and angels; but why it was not afforded to Adam at his creation, our author wisely declines to give any reason. “The reason,” he says, “why the Lord did not create him immutable was because,” etc.; but why he did not uphold him with the strength of steadfast continuance, that rests hidden in God’s secret counsel.
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That is, he received so much strength, that it was not of weakness, but wilfulness, that he destroyed himself.